A judge who previously ruled that five of six Los Angeles police officers who say they experienced retaliation after speaking out about commanders allegedly enforcing illegal quotas for gang contact and gun-related arrests and seizures can move forward to trial with their claims is now mulling whether the sixth should as well.
The lead plaintiff is Officer Samantha Fiedler. She and the other officers contend in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that management imposed career-impairing actions against them, including taking their guns and badges away and assigning them to home duty. Fiedler was the first to sue when she brought her complaint in August 2020 before all the suits were combined into one.
The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Officers Mario Fernandez, Julio Garcia, Rene Braga, Raul Uribe and John Walker. On Feb. 13, Judge Michael Small heard the city’s motion to dismiss all claims by all plaintiffs. He took the issues under submission and ruled in March that all but Uribe can take their cases to trial.
On Friday, the judge heard arguments on the plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration of his ruling regarding Uribe. He did not immediately rule and instead took the case under submission.
In their court papers, the plaintiffs’ attorneys maintain Small was wrong to remove Uribe as a plaintiff in the case because there was a reasonable inference that the department believed Uribe could disclose an alleged directive to arrest more gang members.
“Plaintiff submits that the court erred because the evidence presented supports such an inference and a triable issue therefore exists,” the officers’ attorneys’ contend in their pleadings.
The officers also presented evidence that before Jan. 2, 2020, supervisors specifically warned officers in their platoon that if they complained about the arrest recap directives, they would be punished…,” according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ court papers.
In his ruling removing Uribe as a plaintiff, the judge said the officer’s evidence of Board of Rights proceedings against him and referrals of him to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution, both actions that he alleged were retaliatory, were not in his lawsuit and therefore the city was entitled to dismissal of his claims.
Fiedler, who was a member of the LAPD Metropolitan Division, contended in a sworn declaration that management for years enforced an unofficial quota system rewarding officers who identified and arrested many alleged gang members and punishing those who failed to do so.
“The primary focus of my position in Metro was to acquire recap via crime suppression,” Fiedler said. “The specific recap requested was any sort of documentation, arrest, ticket or encounter with a gang member. And the crown jewel of recap was a gang-related gun arrest.”
Fiedler said taking an alleged gang member into custody who had a weapon was the “most favored arrest, not only because it was talked about in every roll call, but if you made that arrest, you would get emails from command staff all the way up the chain congratulating you on the arrest.”
Fiedler further maintained a lieutenant told her that her promotions were heavily dependent on recap numbers.
Some of Fiedler’s fellow plaintiffs were charged with deliberately misidentifying people as gang members, but a judge later dismissed the case against them. Fiedler, the daughter and sister of LAPD officers, subsequently obtained a law degree and moved out of state in order to “stay afloat financially and to find a new identity outside of the stress, retaliation and things that kick the LAPD dust back up in my life,” she said.
The City Attorney’s Office maintained Fiedler testified during a deposition that no one told her that she needed to increase the number of gun seizures she produced or that she needed to increase the number of arrests she made.
Fiedler was assigned home in early 2020 because the LAPD had initiated an investigation alleging acts of serious misconduct related to falsification of field interview cards and shortly thereafter, the department issued a request to downgrade her, the City Attorney’s Office further stated in its court papers.
A field interview card is a form officers fill out to document contacts with individuals they stop or question in the field.
Trial of the case is scheduled for June 8.