The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has launched a criminal investigation to determine whether the racist conversation between city officials and councilmembers leaked earlier this month was illegally recorded, CNN reports.
On Tuesday (October 25), Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said that the four city officials involved in the racist audio leak, including former City Council President Nury Martinez, council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, and ex-Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera had filed a complaint at the station, claiming their private conversation was illegally taped.
“The department has initiated a criminal investigation into an allegation of eavesdropping,” Moore said during a press conference Tuesday.
It is against the law in California to record private communication without consent.
In the leaked audio of the 2021 conversation, which was initially posted anonymously on Reddit and obtained by The Los Angeles Times, city officials can be heard making racist remarks about a fellow councilmember's Black son, who Martinez said behaved "like a monkey" in Spanish and was paraded around by his father like an "accessory."
Martinez and Herrera both resigned from their posts following backlash from the leaked conversation, while Cedillo and de León resist pressure to step down from community members and officials as high up as President Joe Biden.
Moore said Tuesday that the department was looking into “how such a recording was made and identify, if possible, the person or persons responsible.” He noted that no suspects had been identified.
Once the investigation concludes, investigators will bring the results to the appropriate prosecuting agency, Moore added.
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