For the better part of a year, a Los Angeles police officer working in the department’s recruitment office secretly recorded dozens of conversations in which fellow cops hurled racist and derogatory comments against Black police applicants, female colleagues, and lesbian and gay co-workers, according to a complaint filed with the LAPD.
In one conversation, a Latina LAPD officer offered this advice on how to fight African Americans: “You hit black people in the liver; I heard they got weak livers,” according to the complaint filed Jan. 5 with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau and the inspector general’s office. The same officer allegedly described a Latina janitor to her colleagues as a “wetback” after the janitor complained about the officer.
Little, it seems, was out of bounds for the accused officers, who referred to a female supervisor as a “gay ass bitch,” according to the complaint. After one female officer suggested “black people enjoy grape soda,” another Latino officer chimed in, “black people enjoy watermelon in between basketball,” according to the complaint.
The complaint, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times, details portions of roughly 90 recordings made in the department’s Recruiting Division Personal History Section and portrays officers and supervisors voicing open discrimination against potential recruits and colleagues based on race, sex and sexual orientation. These same officers were tasked with deciding who could join the LAPD.
Details of the complaint were shared last month with Mayor Karen Bass, who told The Times that the allegations were “especially outrageous and unacceptable.” The actual language that the officers used, however, has not been reported until now.
Attempts to reach the officials named in the complaint were unsuccessful.
The conversations were recorded between March and October in the city’s personnel building several blocks from police headquarters.
In the complaint, LAPD Sgt. Denny Jong, who is Asian, stands accused of leading the prejudicial banter. In one conversation with subordinates about Dodgers baseball legend Fernando Valenzuela’s death from septic shock, he said: “I know why he died, he ate too much Tacos,” according to the complaint. The officers referred to other colleagues they believed to be queer with a slew of derogatory terms, and, in unrecorded conversations, the officers reportedly referred to Black people as monkeys, the complaint said.
Lt. Louis Lavender, who oversaw the section, “witnessed and heard these conversations going on … [He] has done nothing,” the complaint alleges. In November, Lavender, who is Black, walked into the office and was told by an officer, “You’re just in time for the naked mud wrestling.”
Lavender replied, “Man, we’re going to end up in the L.A. Times the way you all talk in here. You all can bring down the whole department.”
Department officials said they have made their investigation into the matter a top priority, assigning three investigators, a lieutenant and a captain to the case. They have started to pore through the recordings and interview some of the officers in the unit. The city’s personnel department is running a parallel probe into what impact the case might have had on the Police Department’s recruitment efforts.
The department is haunted by a sordid history of officers caught making inappropriate remarks. While the LAPD is undergoing a generational shift, fewer, if any, rank-and-file officers recall the 1991 beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers and subsequent riots following the acquittals.
A report that followed the King beating found that the officers involved had previously made racist comments about another Black motorist they stopped. Transcripts of in-squad computer messages that were released with the report showed that one of the officers referred to the King beating as a “big time use of force.” Another wrote, “I haven’t beaten anyone this bad in a long time.”
Sometimes, racist language came from the top of the organization, such as the time former Chief Daryl Gates infamously declared that “Blacks might die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as ‘normal people.’” The comment sparked a firestorm of protest.
More recently, a SWAT officer was suspended for two days after he was caught on camera saying, “Happy hunting,” as his colleagues prepared to confront an armed suspect who had holed up in a downtown apartment building.
Although the department was 59% white in 1992, it now roughly mirrors the city it serves. Nearly half of the LAPD’s roughly 8,700 sworn officers are Latino, while Black and Asian officers make up 10% and 9% of the force, respectively.
A scandal in recruiting couldn’t come at a worse time. Since George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in 2020 cast policing in a negative light — and left many officers feeling unsupported during ensuing protests — the LAPD has struggled to recruit new blood. More than 150 cops are expected to leave the force by June next year, dropping the department to 8,620 officers — the lowest deployment in roughly 30 years.
When news of the complaint broke last month, Chief Jim McDonnell removed a lieutenant, a sergeant and four officers from the unit, saying he was “deeply disappointed by reports that certain officers were recorded making racist and offensive comments regarding department applicants.” McDonnell acknowledged that at the time of his appointment, the department had 1,200 fewer officers than when he last served in the department 15 years ago. He hopes to recruit 585 officers this year — a target the department hasn’t reached in years.
The complaining officer, a Latino 10-year department veteran, initially made his written accusations anonymously. But he has now handed over dozens of hours of recordings. (The officer’s name was redacted in the copy of the complaint reviewed by The Times.)
“The officer is cooperating and we are in contact with the inspector general because of concerns about retaliation and personal safety,” the officer’s attorney Greg Smith said. The officer has also alleged that time cards were misrepresented to show more hours than were actually worked, that confidential information was disclosed to other agencies and that racial and sexual biases were applied to the selection of officers.
One department source described the alleged remarks as “worse than what Nury Martinez and the council members said,” referring to a City Hall scandal in which city and labor leaders were secretly recorded making offensive comments about Black people, Indigenous Oaxacans and others.
In that case, LAPD detectives launched a criminal investigation to identify who made the recordings because recording conversations without a person’s consent is illegal under California law, with rare exceptions. But L.A. County prosecutors declined to bring felony charges against the suspected recorders — a married couple who have denied any wrongdoing. L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office has announced there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue misdemeanor wiretapping charges.
LAPD officials said they would also investigate whether the latest recordings were made illegally.
Smith said: “The officer that recorded and reported repeated offensive racial epithets and slurs concerning female officers and their sexual orientation, by those who are recruiting officers to serve the City of Los Angeles, should be celebrated as a hero. Instead, we now know he is being investigated by LAPD for secretly audio recording these disgusting statements. This officer is a whistleblower that reported egregious unlawful conduct by his supervisors and had no alternative but to secretly tape record the individuals to prove this conduct was occurring.” (The Times did not review the audiotape itself.)
Smith said LAPD officers cannot “realistically claim an expectation of privacy from these types of recordings while uniformed in a public building ridiculing the very people they took an oath to serve.” Smith said the recordings were given to the inspector general.
According to the complaint, Jong, who ran the office day to day, bragged about an “Asian Invasion” and said, “We are taking over.” He allegedly derided a female civilian supervisor for looking like a man to his subordinates and then made a crude joke about the genitalia of Asian women after learning that a colleague’s son liked an Asian girl, according to the complaint.
In addition to allowing the crude banter, the supervisor is accused of letting his officers review the names of new background investigators for the unit, then allowing officers to veto them as they came up for hiring.
In October, when Jong told Officer Shirley Burgos that a supervisor was transferring someone into the unit, Burgos allegedly replied, “Oh, she cannot bring anybody over here because [a sergeant] is just like her, she’s a gay ass bitch.”
Another officer, who is identified only as McKay, asked Burgos who the sergeant was, and she replied, “He is the little gay one.”
According to the complaint, Burgos referred to the recruiting division acting officer in charge — a female sergeant — by the c-word. The complaint also alleged that Burgos often pulled officer candidate profiles to see what they looked like and failed candidates on the basis of their appearance. She has made fun of overweight candidates and, in her opinion, “ugly, creepy” candidates, according to the complaint.
Burgos, a Latina, is the officer who allegedly called a Latina janitor “wetback” in front of Jong and others, and who said Black people have weak livers. It was allegedly Burgos and McKay who talked about Black people liking grape soda, with Burgos stating, “Black people drinking Kool Aid but they go by color not flavor.”
In October, Burgos allegedly bragged in front of Jong about releasing disqualified candidate’s information to other police agencies — something that is strictly forbidden. “I shouldn’t be doing this. But you scratch my back; I’ll scratch your[s],” the complaining officer quotes her saying.
McKay and Burgos, during a Sept. 4 conversation, dubbed one officer applicant “Cheese Dick.” Then, on Sept. 11, McKay called about an applicant and advised Jong not to hire them. McKay made racist comments about Black people and stated, “The only race I can’t hit on is Hispanics.” The next day, McKay and Burgos commented about deporting a candidate, according to the complaint.
McKay, whom sources identified as a Black officer, is alleged to have called Black people monkeys, and commented “what’s new,” “those people are horrible” during television news programs that showed images of Black people accused of crimes.
In May 2024, Latino Officer Christian Flores allegedly stated, “black people enjoy watermelon in between basketball,” after Burgos was talking about Black people enjoying grape soda. Flores bragged that he lived in Simi Valley and called the police on some Black kids selling chocolate because “They do not belong here.”
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing the department’s rank-and-file officers, has distanced itself from the accused officers.
“Any roadblock to growing the ranks of the LAPD must be eradicated and that includes any alleged conduct that does not uphold the high standards we, as police officers, are held to. Accountability is a cornerstone of any healthy organization and we believe it is being applied to this particular incident,” according to a statement from the police union.
The whistleblower has told investigators that he fears for his future at the department after exposing the comments.
“I have been very scared and unsure to even submit this letter because Sgt. Jong has eyes and ears everywhere. And most likely will be warned about this letter. But I feel that I need to take a stand and say something,” the officer wrote to internal affairs. “Officers and candidates are being cheated and it needs to stop.”
Other members of the unit have, in recent years, come forward with allegations about the existence of a hostile work environment.
In one case, a Black officer named William Faulkner filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that he faced racial discrimination in the office. In particular, he singled out a supervising sergeant who he claimed frequently made derogatory statements about Black applicants and rejected Blacks at far higher rates than applicants of other ethnic backgrounds. The lawsuit, which is winding its way to trial, says that Faulkner tried to report the misconduct to his superiors, but that they ignored him.
After he complained, Faulkner said, he was subjected to retaliation in the form of a suspension after he was accused of failing to call candidates.
