Over the past decade, the Los Angeles Police Department sent employees to Israel to train or be coached 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 routinely did not document what they learned or keep track of who they met with.
These are among the findings of a new report from the Police Commission's Office of Inspector General, which found that the department lacks a system to track employees who train with police agencies around the world.
The LAPD's relationship with Israeli security forces has come under scrutiny amid the country's ongoing military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths and sparked accusations of genocide.
In addition to visits to Israel, LAPD officers have traveled to Italy and France in preparation for hosting the Olympic Games, and have visited countries around the world, from Mexico to Thailand, to attend various meetings discussing investigative techniques and police tactics.
The inspector general's report examined 117 “foreign training activities” attended by 243 LAPD employees since 2014, seeking to determine how and why they benefited the department. LAPD officials said the department had not adopted any “tactics, altered policies or developed training programs” based on foreign travel, but the report's authors said a paucity of records made that claim impossible to verify.
Department officials must seek permission to travel on department-related business, but the report found that a lack of proper record-keeping meant researchers “failed to evaluate key findings and potential benefits.”
In most cases, participants submitted only “brief” statements about their trips but otherwise failed to “document or recall key findings, practical applications, or potential benefits to the Department,” according to the report.
The LAPD has been sending officers to train with Israeli security forces since the 1980s, and increased travel after the 9/11 attacks, based on what officials have said is a shared goal of fighting extremism. Since 2014, according to the inspector general's report, 18 LAPD officers took 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” under a federal grant that covered the $52,470 price of the trip. But beyond noting that the training was intended to promote “executive development,” police officials said they did not have any information about what the trip accomplished or how it benefited the department.
At Tuesday's Police Commission meeting, LAPD officials acknowledged that the department needed to do a better job of staying on top of its employees' overseas travel and said they had already begun creating a better tracking system. Officials said many travel records prior to 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 traveled to learn about best practices in investigating human trafficking and clandestine drug labs.
LAPD officers also trained in crowd control tactics with the Royal Thai Police and Austrian authorities, and attended police aviation conventions in Colombia, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany and Poland. They also sent officials to Singapore, France and England for Interpol-led training on investigating crimes against children.
The report found that approximately 80% of all foreign trips were funded by external funds, such as police foundations and grants. In cases where someone else footed the bill, the inspector general's office found there were even fewer detailed records, since there was no expectation that LAPD personnel would justify their trips in those cases.
Although donations to cover travel do not have to be disclosed under state and federal laws, the report noted 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 any process to adequately assess and identify potential security risks within host countries,” the report says, noting failures to vet 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 track the location, category and topics covered at each training event. Ideally, according to the report, the department would also require participants to complete an evaluation report detailing the lessons they learned and “practical applications to the Department's operations.”
The inspector general's office cited reporting from The Times about 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 questioned the appropriateness of the LAPD's relationship with the security services of the Persian Gulf nation and other countries accused of human rights violations.
Amr Shabaik, legal director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he expected officials to reexamine the issue when more information is available. His group and others sent a letter to the Police Commission pointing out 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 that is undocumented and worrying,” Shabaik said. “There is also concern about private financing of these trips, and that can obviously create conflicts of interest.”
LAPD officials have said in the past that cultural exchanges help promote better understanding between the agencies at a time when big cities increasingly face international organized crime and terrorist threats.
The absence of detailed records makes it nearly impossible to evaluate the value of the department's trips “to determine whether the tactics, strategies or procedures introduced through these trainings are consistently aligned” with existing policies, according to the inspector general's report.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
