Los Angeles police officers sue owner of killercop.com for putting 'bounty' on their lives
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Three Los Angeles police officers are suing the owner of killercop.com, accusing him of publishing their photos on his website and putting a “bounty” on them. In a tweet mentioned in the lawsuit, Steven Sutcliffe, who posts under the handle @KillerCop1984, allegedly wrote, “Remember, #Rewards are double all year for #detectives and #female police.”
The tweet included an image of a monetary reward for killing an LAPD officer, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday by the Los Angeles Police Protective League on behalf of Officers Adam Gross, Adrian Rodriguez, and Douglas Panameno, asks that the photos and other identifying information be taken down from the killer cop site.
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'Clean head-shots on these #LAPD officers. A to Z'
According to the lawsuit, a later tweet allegedly included a link to a database of officer photos along with the caption, “Clean head-shots on these #LAPD officers. A to Z.” “It’s malicious. It’s retaliatory. It is vindictive and frivolous. Their motion is filled with lies,” Sutcliffe said in an interview on Friday, as per Los Angeles Times.
Remember, #Rewards are double all year for #detectives and #female cops. https://t.co/ddUmauxplT pic.twitter.com/Q1dbfhbkWB
— Killercop™ (@killercop1984) March 20, 2023
Clean head-shots on these #LAPD officers. A to Z.https://t.co/x4wEMV2fNS
— Killercop™ (@killercop1984) March 21, 2023
“They are trying to silence my free speech. The truth cannot be retaliatory. It is 1st Amendment protected speech.” The information about the officers was turned over by LAPD officials in response to a public records request by a journalist with the nonprofit newsroom Knock LA, then posted by Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a group that wants to abolish traditional law enforcement but in the interim has pushed for radical transparency, mentioned the report.
“The posts, the nature of the posts, they’re not just intimidation. They’re threatening, and they may constitute a crime,” said LAPD chief Michel Moore. “This is one of those things that I was worried about and feared when we released these photographs ostensibly to be transparent, that others were going to use them to threaten our officers.”
The release of the photos has rocked the LAPD
The release of the photos has rocked the LAPD. Sources said that it has spurred some officers to consider retirement. Dozens of undercover officers are expected to bring a class-action lawsuit against the department, according to attorneys representing those officers. Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the Police Protective League, said the union is more concerned about the city’s “colossal blunder” than with the journalist who first received the photos or the watchdog group that published them.
“The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Sutcliffe claim that the alleged threats combined with their photos being circulated online have caused them emotional distress,” the LA Times reported. “The three do not work in undercover assignments. Saggau said that Panameno works in the department’s Motor Transport Division. The assignments of the other two officers were not disclosed.”
The union filed a formal complaint against Moore and Lizabeth Rhodes
The union filed a formal complaint against Moore and Lizabeth Rhodes, director of the LAPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing. Multiple LAPD sources not authorized to discuss the photo scandal said that Rhodes, who oversaw the photo disclosure, should have ensured that any officer working in an undercover capacity was excluded from the information release. Moore has asked the inspector general to take over the probe to avoid a conflict of interest. In 2003, Sutcliffe pleaded guilty in federal court to eight felony charges of using a website he had created to threaten executives at Global Crossing Ltd., a fiber-optic network company in Beverly Hills, from which he was twice fired as per the New York Post.