Leaked LAPD Email Detailing Planned Arrests At Unhoused Encampment Leads To Condemnations

Earlier this week, an email from an LAPD officer was leaked online ahead of a planned homeless encampment sweep or cleanup in the San Fernando Valley, and immediately sparked backlash.

In it, officer Brittney Gutierrez of the Topanga Division said that “everyone will be arrested and all their belongings will be taken away by sanitation.”

“This is a hush hush task force,” she wrote, asking that those in the encampment not be approached in advance, as “I want to make sure all are there at the encampment on the 29th so I can arrest them.”

The email was published on Twitter by William Gude, who runs the account FilmThePoliceLA. LAPD spokesperson Norma Eisenman confirmed the email to be real.

In response, the LAPD released a statement saying that the email was “highly inappropriate and does not in any way represent the Department’s values, policies or practices related to People Experiencing Homelessness.”

Homeless encampment sweeps or cleanups are controversial and continue to occur across L.A., though the city contends that they’re conducted lawfully and differently from how the officer describes in the email.

“Homelessness will not be solved by mass arrests nor criminalization,” wrote L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in response to the email controversy. “It will be solved with housing and services, which is the model that Inside Safe and other efforts led by this office follows. Thank you to LAPD for acting quickly to ensure policy is followed.”

Advocates argue the cleanups are illegal in many cases.

“I’m not surprised [with the email]. I think one thing that’s constant is that the LAPD and the city have ignored the law or tried to skirt the edges of it over and over again,” said civil rights lawyer Carol Sobel. “You can throw away contaminated stuff, but they’re throwing away everything. So people lose their important papers, their medical records, their qualifying records for different public benefits. They lose things like family photos, they lose their medications. And the courts have said consistently you can not do that.”

In a statement, City Controller Kenneth Mejia said he considered the email “troubling” and said he’s launching an investigation “aimed at understanding the LAPD's approach to homelessness” to bring transparency to the costs of its tactics.

The cleanup has since been postponed.