A few days before 2022 ended, I received an email that stopped me in my tracks. It had no subject or body, just an eight-digit-long serial number and an attached pdf.
The sender's address was even spammier sounding:
“professionalStandardsBureauEvaluationSection”
I initially deleted it on reflex because it looked like spam. Then, for some strange reason, I immediately retrieved it to double-check; it was a letter signed by the LAPD’s Chief of Police, Michel R. Moore.
On the evening of October 20, 2021, I filed a formal complaint on behalf of L.A. TACO Staff Investigative Reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray. The complaint was in reference to an incident that happened a few nights earlier when Ray was out in the field on assignment doing a profile on William Gude, a well-known cop watcher and police critic known on social media as Film The Police L.A.