A city staffer’s call to police made Fox News. LAPD wants to find the leaker

The Los Angeles Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the leak of information about a call allegedly made to the department last week by an aide to City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, which later showed up on Instagram and Fox News.

LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz said the department will seek to determine who distributed a photo or screenshot of information displayed on the city’s computer assisted dispatching system, which appears on the screens of laptops inside LAPD squad cars and shows such details as the time, place and a general summary of an incident.

Such reports are generally not public, Muniz said, because they could contain identifying details about victims of a domestic assault or other investigative information.

The screenshot of the dispatch entry said the LAPD received a request on Feb. 1 for overnight patrols of a white Lexus owned by a council member that had broken down in Echo Park.

At least a portion of the information on the screenshot turned out to be untrue.

Soto-Martinez, who took office in December, drives a Prius, not a Lexus. Nick Barnes-Batista, a spokesperson for the council member, told The Times on Friday that an aide to Soto-Martinez contacted the LAPD about his own car, which was parked behind the council member’s Echo Park office part of last week.

“We are investigating this matter internally and will be taking appropriate action,” Barnes-Batista said. “Councilmember Soto-Martinez is very upset as this does not reflect the values of transparency, responsible governance, and being accountable to the community that elected him.”

The screenshot of the LAPD service request was first posted on Instagram by Susan Collins, who ran for City Council unsuccessfully in 2020 and has been sharply critical of Soto-Martinez’s public safety views. But it quickly became part of the ongoing back-and-forth between Soto-Martinez, a sharp critic of the LAPD who has called for the eventual abolition of existing policing systems, and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the rank-and-file police officers’ union.

On Friday, Fox 11 in Los Angeles ran a story relying partly on the LAPD’s dispatch information, identifying the car’s owner as David Mai, a staffer in Soto-Martinez’s office. During that report, a board member with the Police Protective League called Soto-Martinez a hypocrite and argued that police have too much work to do to monitor the cars of city staffers.

Fox News produced its own piece, again featuring criticism from the police union, which sent multiple election mailers denouncing Soto-Martinez last year.

Soto-Martinez, in a statement issued Tuesday, called the LAPD’s investigation a “step in the right direction.” He said he expected the probe of the leak would lead to “true accountability.”

“A police officer leaking confidential information is deeply disturbing, and whoever did this showed the city they care more about political ideology than public safety,” he said.

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson also chimed in, saying on Twitter that “a call for help” had been “swiftly weaponized for special interest propaganda.”

Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the Police Protective League, took a sharply different stance. He said Soto-Martinez still needs to explain why someone on his staff sought an overnight police patrol for his personal car.

“Hugo’s got to own it,” he said. “If they want to abolish the police, why would they call the police?”