This newsletter was emailed to subscribers on July 31.
Welcome to L.A. TACO’s weekly Investigations Newsletter, I’m Lexis-Olivier Ray, the Head of Investigations for L.A. TACO. Here’s what we’re looking into this week.
Some of you might remember back in May when LAPD Officer Robert Lockhart briefly detained me and threatened to take me to jail for allegedly stepping into the street while I covered a protest outside of the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown for L.A. TACO.
The deadline for me to respond to that infraction is today.
But so far, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office hasn’t filed a case against me.
According to my attorney, the City Attorney technically has up to a year to decide if they’re going to charge me, but I don’t think they’ll move forward with the case.
In the past decade, the City Attorney has only pursued cases against three people for allegedly stepping into an active roadway, according to data that I obtained through a public records request. So almost nobody. If they filed a case against me, I’d only be the fourth person in 10 years.
Footage of LAPD officers detaining me for allegedly being in the road while covering the May Day protest in Downtown for @lataco.bsky.social. You can clearly see that other people are in the road. But I was the only person who was detained and cited.Video by Benjamin Hanson.
— Shot On 35mm (@shoton35mm.bsky.social) 2026-05-03T23:09:14.035Z
But in some ways, the damage has already been done.
As Adam Rose of the Press Freedom Foundation always says, “You can beat the rap, but not the bus ride.”
By detaining me and threatening to arrest me, LAPD Officer Lockhart interfered with my ability to document the protest, threw off my focus, and for the rest of the day, made me think twice about stepping into the roadway again or putting myself in a situation where I might end up in handcuffs (which is almost how my day ended).
Plus the door has been left open for the City Attorney to charge me at any time during the next nine months. And given the current dynamic between the LAPD and members of the press, I worry that we might see more LAPD officers issuing citations to journalists for minor infractions at protests.
As it is, the LAPD has been accused of targeting journalists with arrest and excessive force dozens of times within the last year.
During the May 1 protest that I was detained at, photojournalist Nick Stern was “prodded” with batons and arrested. A month earlier, Stern was kicked in the chest by an LAPD officer.
And it’s not just independent journalists and journalists who work for small news outlets that are having their rights violated, in March, an LAPD officer grabbed an LA Times staff reporter “by the literal collar” and escorted them outside of the “front area” of the Metropolitan Detention Center as they covered a protest. Then officers blocked them from entering the area again.
I share this to be transparent with you all about the risks that reporters take to bring you these stories.
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