A trove of sensitive LAPD records, including officer personnel files and documents from Internal Affairs investigations, are among the materials believed to have been seized by hackers in a breach last month involving the LA city attorney’s office.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that unauthorized individuals had gained access to a digital storage system containing discovery documents from previously adjudicated or settled LAPD civil litigation.
“We take this incident very seriously and are working with the LA City Attorney’s Office to gain access to the impacted files to understand the full scope of the data breach,” the department stated.
Some of the records have started surfacing on social media platforms including X. Among the first to post a file from the hack was the account @WhosTheCop, which regularly posts about information related to police accountability.
The account’s administrator told a security researcher first disclosed the breach. The files apparently had been taken down by Tuesday afternoon.
City and LAPD officials did not comment on whether the hackers requested a ransom in return for not releasing the information and whether the city paid one.
Under state law, most police officer records are considered private. If authentic, the disclosure represents a stunning breach of police data. Only rarely do Internal Affairs documents surface in civil lawsuits and criminal cases, and even then they are often heavily redacted.
In all, according to posts about the data breach, there were 7.7 terabytes of information available for download and more than 337,000 files. The trove included sensitive records turned over as part of discovery in court cases, such as witness names, health information, unredacted criminal complaints and investigative files.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.
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