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

Over the past decade, the Los Angeles Police Department has 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 seminars and conferences abroad generally failed to document what they learned or keep track of who they met.

Those are the findings of a new report from the Police Commission’s Office of Inspector General, which finds the department does not have a system for tracking trained employees from law enforcement agencies around the world.

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

In addition to their visits to Israel, LAPD officials traveled to Italy and France to prepare for hosting the Olympics, and visited countries around the world, from Mexico to Thailand, for various meetings to discuss investigative techniques and police tactics.

The inspector general’s report examined 117 “foreign training activities” undertaken by 243 LAPD employees since 2014, seeking to determine how and why they benefited the department. LAPD officials said the department adopted “no tactics, changed policies or developed training programs” based on the foreign trips, but the report’s authors said a lack of documentation made that claim impossible to verify.

Ministry officials are required to seek permission to travel for ministry-related reasons, but the report found a lack of proper record-keeping meant investigators were “unable to assess key takeaways and potential benefits”.

In most cases, participants filed only “brief” statements about their trips, but failed to “document or memorize 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 stepped up such trips after the Sept. 11 attacks, based on what officials said was a common goal of combating extremism. Since 2014, according to the inspector general’s report, 18 LAPD officials have taken trips to Israel that cost a total of $87,000.

The department sent an unnamed deputy chief and seven other employees to Israel for an event called “Counterterrorism Command and Control” using a federal grant that covered the $52,470 price of the trip. But beyond the fact that the training was intended to promote “executive development,” police officials said they had no information on the results of the trip or the benefits it brought to the department.

At Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, LAPD officials acknowledged that the department needs to better track its employees’ overseas travel and said they have already started creating a better tracking system. Officials said many travel records from before 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 went to learn about best practices for investigating human trafficking and clandestine drug labs.

LAPD officials also trained in crowd control tactics with the Royal Thai Police and Austrian authorities, and participated in police aerial conventions in Colombia, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany and Poland. They also sent officials to Singapore, France and England to follow instructions led by Interpol on investigating crimes against children.

The report found that about 80 percent of all foreign trips were financed by outside funds, such as foundations and police grants. In cases where someone else footed the bill, the inspector general’s office found that there were even fewer detailed records because LAPD personnel were not expected to justify their trips in those cases.

Although donations to cover travel do not have to be disclosed under state and federal law, the report notes that “the potential risks and perceived conflicts of interest associated with such funding outweigh the benefits of maintaining the anonymity of funding sources.”

The department also “lacks processes to adequately assess and identify potential security risks in host countries,” the report said, highlighting the failure to screen 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 during each training event. Ideally, the report said, the department would also require participants to complete an evaluation report detailing the lessons they learned and “practical applications for department operations.”

The inspector general’s office cited Times reporting on the department’s decision to allow five members of the United Arab Emirates Interior Ministry to train at the LAPD Police Academy in the summer of 2023. Some have questioned the propriety of the LAPD’s relationship with the security services of that Persian Gulf country and other countries accused of human rights abuses.

Amr Shabaik, legal director of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said he hopes officials will revisit the issue when more information becomes available. His group and others sent a letter to the Police Commission highlighting the perception of bias created by sending personnel to study and train in Israel.

“What are they learning, what are they taking home? All of this is undocumented and is concerning,” Shabaik said. “There is also the concern of private financing of these trips, and this can obviously create conflicts of interest.”

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.