A veteran detective who once landed in trouble for disguising himself as an agent and sneaking into Men's Central Jail has resigned from the South Pasadena Police Department amid recent allegations that he repeatedly gave a Nazi salute last year during a training conference hosted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, according to a news release and internal records.
City police officials announced Mark Lillienfeld’s decision to resign Wednesday, hours after The Times first reported on the Sheriff’s Department investigation into the 2023 allegations that ultimately earned him a “No” designation. rehire.”
As documented in a 40-page internal affairs report Released by the Sheriff's Department earlier this month, the investigation found that Lillienfeld had violated an equality policy while lecturing at a training session for homicide investigators in May 2023. The report said one of the deputies who attended, a black woman from the Los Angeles Police Department, accused Lillienfeld of making several inappropriate comments, once referring to Asian officers as “Chinese” and then saying that she and another black officer in the class would be the most likely suspects if someone attacked him in the parking lot later.
At the time of the conference, Lillienfeld had already retired from the Sheriff's Department and was working as an outside salesperson. State records show he began working as a detective for South Pasadena earlier this year.
“The city of South Pasadena and its Police Department take this report seriously and in no way does the department condone this type of behavior by any officer in its department,” South Pasadena's news release said last week. “The officer in question submitted his resignation, which Police Chief Brian Solinsky accepted.”
Also last week, the Sheriff's Department said it would not hire Lillienfeld as an instructor for future classes. Meanwhile, the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which oversees law enforcement training standards across the state, said in a statement that it had recently learned of the allegations and is currently approving the instructors based on information submitted by local agencies, but not having a means to remove them.
“The Commission met last week and discussed this regulatory matter and is planning to make changes so that in the future we have the ability to remove instructors like this,” the statement said.
Although Lillienfeld did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday, his lawyer, Tom Yu, said last week that the allegations were “completely baseless.” He said that since Lillienfeld had already retired, he had “no right to appeal or complain about the unilateral investigation.”
In 2008, Internal affairs records show Lillienfeld was reprimanded for referring to a woman as “broad” and using profanity repeatedly during a different training conference. Following his retirement in 2016, he began working as an investigator for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, where he later served. caught on camera posing as a deputy to smuggle fast food to an inmate at Men's Central Jail.
Subsequently, it was temporarily banned in county jails. In 2019, he returned to the Sheriff's Department to join then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva's controversial public corruption squad, a shadowy unit accused of targeting the sheriff's critics, including oversight officials, county leaders and a former Times reporter who had received a leaked list of problematic deputies.
Lillienfeld left the department again in January 2023 after Villanueva lost re-election and He has since recounted the incident at Men's Central Prison. It was part of a plan to overturn a wrongful conviction by gaining the trust of the real murderer.
The complaint that led to the “Do Not Rehire” designation arose from a two-week homicide investigation course that drew about 30 officers and deputies from departments across Southern California. The Sheriff's Department omitted all of their names from its 40-page report, as well as the name of the Los Angeles police officer whose concerns spurred the investigation.
“Throughout the lecture, subject Lillienfeld was rude, condescending, unprofessional, and made inappropriate comments to several students in the class,” investigators wrote in a summary of their interview with the Los Angeles officer.
They said the officer told them he believed Lillienfeld targeted Asian and black students with off-color jokes, once calling the only two Asian students “Chinese” and repeatedly mocking a woman's name. The officer also told investigators that Lillienfeld talked a lot of “nonsense” about the Los Angeles Police Department and how its investigations were “wrong.”
During the conference, the report says, “Lillienfeld also put his heels together and extended one of his arms like Hitler,” while saying something that sounded like “walk” or “height.”
The Los Angeles police officer said she thought Lillienfeld might have done it as a prank, but she thought it was inappropriate because “it seemed like something white supremacist groups do,” according to the report.
At the end of the class, she claimed, Lillienfeld apologized to her and the other black woman, an officer with the Menifee Police Department, and thanked them for allowing him to mock them. Then, he told investigators, Lillienfeld allegedly told class participants that if they saw him outside in the parking lot with two bullets in the back of his head, they should consider the two black women as suspects.
The Menifee police officer told investigators that she remembered Lillienfeld being funny, but that she did not feel singled out for his jokes. Although she told investigators she remembered hearing Lillienfeld's comments about black women “throwing on him,” she said she was not offended. He also said he did not remember seeing him give the Nazi salute.
When Internal Affairs investigators interviewed the other officers and deputies in the class, most said they did not remember seeing anything inappropriate. Some said Lillienfeld was funny or praised his lecture. One, a La Verne police officer whose name was also withheld, said Lillienfeld repeatedly did a “strange thing” during class in which he put his heels together and raised his arm in a way the officer described as a “Nazi salute.” ”. At one point, Lillienfeld said “Sieg Heil” while making the gesture, the officer told investigators.
The officer said he thought Lillienfeld gave the Nazi salute while trying to clarify something about one of the investigations he was teaching, but he couldn't remember the details.
After the class ended, the LAPD officer detailed her concerns in her class evaluation, sparking the internal investigation.
When investigators attempted to interview Lillienfeld in April, the filing says, he asked several questions about the case before refusing to conduct the interview. This year, after the internal affairs investigation concluded, the department confirmed it placed a “Do Not Rehire” designation on Lillienfeld's file.
Hours after the Times story was published Wednesday, Hans Johnson, a member of the county Sheriff's Civilian Oversight Commission, sent an email to South Pasadena officials expressing his concerns.
“Why is someone with so many red flags of disqualifying misconduct now on staff at South Pas? Police department? Johnson wrote, according to a copy of his email shared with The Times. “Are South Pasadena police so understaffed that they don't thoroughly check the backgrounds of the detectives they hire or, worse yet, notice those red flags but ignore them?”
It's unclear how many others reached out with similar concerns, but in its news release last week the South Pasadena Police Department said it had received “many calls and messages” about the matter.
“I want to make it clear that our police department does not tolerate racism or unacceptable epithets of any kind from any member of our organization,” Solinsky wrote in the statement. “Such acts are not in line with our values and the expectations that our City Council and our residents have of the members of our police force.”
