LAPD sent officers to train in Israel, can’t explain what they learned

Over the last decade, the Los Angeles Police Department sent employees to Israel to train or be trained by the country’s counterterrorism experts on at least nine occasions.

But officers who attended these training sessions and dozens of other overseas seminars and conferences routinely failed to document what they learned or keep track of who they met with.

Those are among the findings of a new report from the Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General, which found that the department lacks a system for tracking employees who train with law enforcement agencies from around the world.

The LAPD’s relationship with Israeli security forces has come under scrutiny amid the country’s ongoing military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths and drawn allegations of genocide.

Apart from visits to Israel, LAPD officials have traveled to Italy and France in preparation for hosting the Olympics, and visited countries around the world, from Mexico to Thailand, for various gatherings to discuss investigative techniques and police tactics.

The inspector general’s report examined 117 “foreign training activities” attended by 243 LAPD employees since 2014, seeking to determine how and why they benefited the department. LAPD officials said the department hadn’t adopted any “tactics, altered policies, or developed training programs” based on the trips abroad, but the report’s authors said the dearth of records made that claim impossible to verify.

Department officials are required to seek permission for traveling for department-related business, but the report found that a lack of proper record-keeping meant investigators were “unable to evaluate the key takeaways and potential benefits.”

In most cases, participants only filed “brief” statements about their trips, but otherwise failed to “document or memorialize key takeaways, practical applications, or potential benefits to the Department,” the report said.

The LAPD has been sending officers to train with Israeli security forces since the 1980s, and ramped up the trips after the 9/11 attacks, based on what officials have said is a shared goal of fighting extremism. Since 2014, the inspector general’s report found, 18 LAPD officials took trips to Israel that cost a combined $87,000.

The department sent an unnamed deputy chief and seven other employees to Israel for an event called “Command and Control Counter-Terrorism” under a federal grant that covered the $52,470 price tag for the trip. But beyond noting that the training was intended to promote “executive development,” police officials said they didn’t have any information about what the trip accomplished or how it benefited the department.

At Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, LAPD officials acknowledged the department needed to do a better job of staying on top of overseas travels by its employees, and said they had already started creating a better tracking system. Officials said that many travel records prior to 2021 were deleted in accordance with the department’s data retention guidelines.

Nearly a quarter of the trips documented in the inspector general’s report were to Canada, where LAPD personnel traveled to learn about best practices in investigating human trafficking and clandestine drug labs.

LAPD officials also trained on crowd-control tactics with the Royal Thai Police and authorities in Austria, and attended police aviation conventions in Colombia, the U.K., Mexico, Germany and Poland. They also sent officials to Singapore, France and England for Interpol-led instruction on investigating crimes against children.

The report found that roughly 80% of all overseas trips were financed through outside funding, such as police foundations and grants. In cases where someone else was footing the bill, the inspector general’s office found there were even fewer detailed records, since there was no expectation for LAPD personnel to justify their travels in those instances.

Although donations to cover travel don’t have to be disclosed under state and federal law, the report noted that the “potential risks and the perception of conflicts of interest associated with such funding outweigh the benefits of maintaining the anonymity of funding sources.”

The department also “lacks any process to adequately assess and identify potential security risks within host countries,” the report said, noting failures to vet foreign contacts with U.S. national security agencies to ensure they are not members of an intelligence service or extremist groups.

At a minimum, the inspector general’s office said, the LAPD should keep track of the location, category and topics covered at each training event. Ideally, the report said, the department would also require participants to complete an evaluation report detailing what lessons they learned and “practical applications for Department operations.”

The inspector general’s office cited reporting by The Times around the decision by the department to allow five members of the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Interior to train at the LAPD’s Police Academy in the summer of 2023. Some questioned the appropriateness of the LAPD’s relationship with security services from the Persian Gulf nation and other countries accused of human rights violations.

Amr Shabaik, legal director Council of American-Islamic Relations’ greater Los Angeles chapter, said he hoped officials would re-examine the issue when more information becomes available. His group and others sent a letter to the Police Commission pointing out the perception of bias created by sending personnel to study and train in Israel.

“What are they learning, what are they bringing back home? All of that is not documented and is concerning,” said Shabaik. “There’s also the concern of private funding of these trips, and that obviously can create conflicts of interest.”

LAPD officials have said in the past that cultural exchanges help promote a better understanding between agencies at a time when large cities increasingly grapple with international organized crime and terrorist threats.

The absence of detailed records makes it nearly impossible to assess the value of the department’s trips “to determine whether the tactics, strategies, or procedures being introduced through these trainings are consistently aligned” with existing policies, the inspector general’s report said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.