What LAPD requires during stops — and where its gang unit fell short

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

If you were stopped by an LAPD gang unit officer in 2023, officers may have searched you or your property without consent, photographed you without a clear legal reason or failed to record the encounter.

An inspector general audit found failures to follow department protocols during traffic stops and other interactions the unit had with the public, including rules designed to protect people’s constitutional rights. 

“The review identified several areas in which compliance was not consistent,” Inspector General for the Los Angeles Police Commission Matthew Barragan reported. “These include consent searches, activation of body-worn and digital in-car video, photographing detainees, and maintaining gang photo books.”

The findings were presented Tuesday to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, where commissioners and community advocates questioned how the department can address the failures and repair public trust. The questions are particularly important for the gang unit, which works directly with community members and other organizations.

Department representatives noted that training has improved and complaints have declined since the data was collected in 2023.

What LAPD policy requires and what the audit found

Pretextual stops: Officers generally cannot use a minor traffic violation as a reason to investigate a more serious crime. Traffic stops are to enforce the vehicle code and to protect public safety. Officers are required to collect detailed data about traffic stops.

• What the audit found: Officers reported 60 of 300 stops as pretextual. The inspector general found a legitimate reason for all but four. The report found officers may have incorrectly recorded some additional stops inaccurately. 

Consent to search: Officers generally must get permission to search a person, property or vehicle without a warrant and tell people that consent is voluntary.

• What the audit found: Officers did not get consent in about 20% of encounters and failed to inform people that interactions were voluntary in about 75% of encounters.

Body and dash camera: Officers must activate their body cameras when starting or stopping an investigation, with some exceptions. 

• What the audit found: Body cameras were not properly activated in about 28% of encounters. Dash cameras were not activated in 40% of encounters. 

Gang investigations photos: Officers cannot force people to be photographed if they are not arrested or legally detained.

• What the audit found: About 83% of photos violated policy: 14 people were handcuffed, eight were threatened and eight did not consent. 

Detaining people: Officers must accurately record information about when they detain someone.

• What the audit found: Officers failed to record 61 detentions and incorrectly labeled 35% of recorded detentions as “curbside” when they were not.

Business card identification: Officers are required to give business cards to people they detain. 

• What the audit found: Officers failed to offer business cards to 97% of people who had no other way to identify the officers after an encounter.

Commissioners press LAPD over report

Commissioner Heather Aubry acknowledged that the report “details significant and some troubling deviations from department policy” that need to be addressed for the community to retain trust in the police department. 

“Commitment to future meaningful progress is essential not just to maintain and strengthen community police relations in neighborhoods particularly affected by gang activity but to ensure compliance with critical department policies and procedures, accountability and constitutional policing,” Aubry said. 

Commissioner Jeffrey Skobin expressed frustration over why the audit, conducted in 2024 on stops made in 2023, has taken so long to reach the commission and be presented publicly.

“We’re sitting here in September now of 2026 and we really don’t know what things look like today,” Skobin said.

How the audit was conducted

The inspector general reviewed a sample of 300 documented traffic stops from 2023 to see whether they involved any policy or procedure violations. 

The team searched more than 10,000 body-cam and dash-cam videos and found six encounters where stops were not reported at all by officers, a violation of policy. 

It also interviewed current and former members of the unit to learn more about how it operates. 

Police are required by California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act to report detailed information about stops and detentions. Some of the encounters reviewed for the study extended beyond the stop’s original legal basis and resulted in a search. Others did not result in a citation. In almost all cases, officers did not provide a business card when they were required to.

A captain from the LAPD’s internal affairs department also told the commissioners that in 2023, the study year, there were 28 sustained complaints against gang unit officers due to body-cam and search policy violations.

The inspector general also questioned the unit’s practice of photographing suspected gang members and how those records are stored and shared. In 2020, the department ordered officers to stop submitting such photos to a state database after the submissions were accompanied by false information and reports.

History of scrutiny 

The LAPD temporarily disbanded the gang unit at its 77th Street Division earlier this year while investigating allegations that some officers there and at another division had failed to activate body-worn cameras and properly report traffic stops, both required by policy. 

Hamid Khan, an advocate with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, emphasized that misconduct among the police department’s gang units has happened for decades. 

He referenced the Rampart scandal from the late 1990s and 2000s, in which officers were found to have planted evidence and used excessive force against members of the public, leading to more than 100 criminal convictions being overturned.

For Khan, audits and reports by the commission can’t undo the irreparable harm that misconduct has done to the community’s trust in the police. 

“Recommendations are recommendations, they’re on paper,” Khan said, adding, “we have to acknowledge that the department is flawed by design.” 

Grace Zhang, another advocate with the coalition, echoed that skepticism. 

“I think that ultimately the OIG does not actually have any power in changing the ways that LAPD fundamentally operates, which is to cause harm in our communities, to criminalize Black and Brown people, to target poor people, to stalk women,” Zhang said.

LA Documenter Martin Romero contributed reporting to this story.

LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org