The release of headshots and career information of Los Angeles police officers has become a point of contention between community organizers and the Los Angeles Police Department.

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition runs an online, searchable database designed to hold LAPD officers accountable and provide transparency for residents called: “Watch the Watchers.”

The platform allows people to look up LAPD officers and provides headshots of the officers, their rank, their badge number and their salary.

“The goal was for the people of Los Angeles to get to know who their local cops are,” said Hamid Khan, an organizer with the coalition. “And I think when we look at the broader scheme of things, there’s no other public employee that I can think of where our communities would come in more contact with.”

Khan joined “Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen to talk about the Watch the Watchers program.

The officers’ information being made public comes after many public records requests and a lawsuit started by Los Angeles journalist Ben Camacho. Once he got the information, Camacho shared it with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

The release of officers’ information created safety concerns from the Los Angeles Police Protective League, or LAPPL, and the LAPD officers’ union. Both the LAPPL and the city of Los Angeles feared making this information public would endanger officers.

The LAPPL is now suing the LAPD for releasing the information to Camacho. The LAPD is suing both Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition to get the information taken down. At the center of the lawsuits is the definition of an undercover officer. Lawyers for the LAPPL argue releasing this information puts officers working on sensitive or undercover cases at greater risk.

“This was data, this was information released under the California Public Records Act… of public employees, in their capacity as public employees, who are sworn officers when they wear their uniforms… there is no information about their private lives, because that is none of our business,” Khan said.

Mayor Karen Bass, in her recent State of the City address, spoke about concerns she had about the information causing more police officers to leave the LAPD. The department has already been dealing with a higher attrition rate over the last few years.

“This has been an ongoing trend in LA and in cities across the country, and so I’m concerned that the department’s recent release of information will cause more officers to leave,” Bass said.

Although Khan sees the worries of officers’ safety as misguided and just another way to silence whistleblowers. He points out both the LAPD itself and the LAPPL have published the same information for officers in the past.

“I think this is a double standard, and this is the hypocrisy,” Khan said. “It’s again blame the true tellers and criminalize those who are just speaking the truth.”

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