A Los Angeles Police Department officer who pleaded no contest to six felony counts of filing a false report was sentenced Wednesday to 250 hours of community service and two years probation.
Braxton Shaw, 41, was also required to relinquish his peace officer certification as a result of a plea deal July 25.
During the sentencing hearing, Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter denied a motion to reduce the charges to misdemeanors, according to Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon.
The prosecution is reserving the right to object to any future defense motion to reduce the charges, Akemon said.
Shaw’s current status with the Los Angeles Police Department was not immediately available, although he signed a form in court in July in which he surrendered his certification as a peace officer.
Shaw — who had been set to go on trial this month — could face a maximum of seven years and four months in state prison if he violates any of the terms of his probation, the judge said at the time of Shaw’s plea.
The six charges involve reports filed between March 2018 and February 2019.
“Mr. Shaw’s betrayal of the oath to serve and protect the community is not only disappointing, but undermines the integrity of our law enforcement and the trust that the community places in them,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement released after the officer’s plea.
Shaw was among six LAPD officers who had been assigned to the department’s Metropolitan Division and who were charged by the District Attorney’s Office in 2020.
Shaw was charged in July 2020 along with fellow officers Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez in connection with allegations that field interview cards used by officers to conduct interviews contained false information and that some of that information was used to wrongfully enter individuals into a state gang database.
Shortly after that case was filed, the LAPD said the charges stemmed from a “misconduct investigation conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Internal Affairs Group and monitored by the Office of the Inspector General.”
The case against Coblentz and Martinez was subsequently dismissed in April 2022 after Deputy District Attorney Kaveh Faturechi cited “additional evidence” received during a hearing in which another judge had ruled about two months earlier that there was not sufficient evidence to require Officers Rene Braga, Raul Uribe and Julio Garcia to stand trial on charges that they falsified records indicating that people they had stopped on suspicion of minor offenses were gang members.
In a ruling last October, a state appeals court panel reversed Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor’s ruling finding Braga factually innocent of one count each of filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence and Uribe and Garcia factually innocent of one count each of preparing false documentary evidence.
“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.”