A state appeals court panel Monday reversed a judge’s ruling that found three Los Angeles Police Department officers factually innocent of charges that they falsified records indicating people they had stopped on suspicion of minor offenses were gang members.
The charges against Rene Braga, Raul Uribe and Julio Garcia were dismissed in February 2022 by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor, with the judge subsequently granting their petition for a declaration of factual innocence.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office appealed the factual innocence finding.
“The respondents in this case did not fully dispel all suspicion regarding their intentions in filling out the FI (field identification) cards. Therefore, they are not entitled to a finding of factual innocence,” Associate Justice Gregory J. Weingart wrote on behalf of the panel.
“Although the respondents in this case failed to meet the `incredibly high’ burden for a finding of factual innocence … that in no way suggests that we believe the trial court erred when it dismissed the charges against the officers after the preliminary hearing. The People conceded the dismissal was proper when they failed to challenge it, and have not presented any arguments here for us to disagree with the magistrate’s conclusion,” Weingart wrote, with Presiding Justice Frances Rothschild and Associate Justice Helen I. Bendix concurring.
The appellate court panel’s 32-page opinion noted that the justices “echo the trial court’s assessment, upon dismissing the charges, that `there’s a notion of trickle-down responsibility in this case,’ in which three officers are singled out to face criminal charges under a poorly drafted and administered policy, while higher authorities within the department escape similar levels of scrutiny.”
Braga, Uribe and Garcia — who were all assigned to the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division — were accused of falsifying field interview cards used by officers to conduct interviews while they were on duty, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors claimed some of the false information on the cards was used to wrongfully enter the names of people into a state gang database.
Prosecutors alleged the officers wrote on a field information card that a person admitted being a gang member even though body-worn camera video showed they either never asked the individuals about gang membership or that the people had denied gang membership when they were asked.
Braga had been charged with one count each of filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence. Uribe and Garcia were charged with one count each of preparing false documentary evidence.
Their current employment status with the LAPD was not immediately available.
Similar charges were also filed against three other officers from the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division, but charges were subsequently dismissed against two of them — Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez — after Deputy District Attorney Kaveh Faturechi cited “additional evidence” that had been received during the February 2022 hearing. The case against another officer, Braxton Shaw, is still pending, according to court records.
At one point, the LAPD indicated that about two dozen officers were under investigation over the completion of field interview cards. The LAPD was investigating alleged misuse of the CalGang system, a statewide database used by law enforcement for sharing intelligence regarding potential gang members, after it was announced in January 2020 that a teenager with no gang affiliations was entered into the system.
The appellate court opinion noted that the LAPD stopped participating in the Calgang system in June 2020.