LAPD clarifies circumstances of calls made to Councilman Mike Bonin's home and neighborhood

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Police Department sent a letter to Councilman Mike Bonin clarifying the circumstances of multiple calls made to his home and neighborhood in recent months.

A posted public records request indicated multiple calls were made to Bonin's home and neighborhood. FOX 11 reporter, Bill Melugin, first shared the documents which appeared to show  LAPD was called to his home eight times since April.

Mike Bonin, LAPD Councilman

"Last Friday night, I logged on to Twitter and suddenly saw this tweet claiming I had made repeated calls for LAPD presence at my house which I knew we had not done. I made a point of consistently telling LAPD please do not send patrols especially with a protest, there are much better places for LAPD to be than looking out for an elected official," said Bonin in an interview with FOX 11.

Bonin has posted text messages between him and an LAPD Captain and the Chief. Bonin is an advocate for "reimagining police," and voted to defund police.

"Officers tend to roll out or get assigned when there's protests, I have indicated to LAPD and we've posted text messages between me and the captain and the chief saying please do not send anyone," said Bonin.

The LAPD said the calls within the request were either officer-initiated or made for administrative purposes.

"I was really glad to see the Police Department's letter today saying no, you made none of those calls and in fact, the Police Department's letter actually walked back some of the initial data and said wow there weren't even calls to your house on some of these dates at all," said Bonin.

Bonin discussed the "backlash" received from the request.

"The implication of the story was oh look at this guy, a progressive hypocrite was the way it got spread around the world and it was based on a fallacy. It further implied that I was somehow seeking protection from protesters and I think it seemed to indicate oh he may talk like he likes the BLM guys, but he's afraid of them. These were not BLM protesters outside my house though. These were people who were tearing down my BLM signs. These were people who were writing in chalk BLM is a hate group," said Bonin.  

Bonin said he wants the conversation to continue about reimagining public safety.

"I just want to set the record straight and move on and get back to the serious issues of how do we reimagine public safety in Los Angeles and I have been advocating along with some of my colleagues to take LAPD out of nonviolent 911 response for homelessness and mental health but I've also been really unspoken along with my colleague about trying to eliminate the phenomenon of people getting pulled over for driving while black," said Bonin.

The confirmed letter from the LAPD Chief of Police, Michel Moore, states:

"On July 28, 2020, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) responded to a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request (No. 20-4815) for information related to calls for service at your residence. The request specifically requested information regarding calls for service, officer-initiated (Code 6) calls for service, and "LAPD response" to your residence on April 4th, April 5th, April 7th, April 9th, May 17th, May 21st, May 24th, June 7th and June 14th.

Pursuant to that request, the Department provided information via the City of Los Angeles Next Request CPRA Portal. The information as posted erroneously gave the perception that you or someone at your residence called 911 resulting in a police response to your residence. A more comprehensive review of the data shows that the police responses to your residence on those dates were not as a result of calls for service made by you or anyone at your residence. Please know that this matter is being corrected to properly reflect that the police responses were not initiated by you or anyone at your residence.

Calls for service that were listed for April 4, 2020, and April 5, 2020, were incidents created by Communications Division for administrative purposes. Officers were not dispatched to your residence as a result of these incidents and the requester will be notified that these were not calls for service. Officers did, however, respond to your residence on April 4, 2020, at 2319 hours to conduct extra patrol. This response was officer-initiated and was not provided in the original response to the CPRA request. This officer-initiated activity has since been determined to be a "responsive record" and will be posted as a response to the original request.

Six additional calls for service records were released and of those only one was in response to a 911 radio call. This incident occurred on May 17th, and that 911 call did not come from your residence. The remaining calls for service were officer-initiated activities.

All officer-initiated activities will be described as such in the CPRA response clarification. This clarification will be sent to the requester and made available for public view via the Next Request Portal. The Department regrets any inconvenience that this may have caused you and your family. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if I can be of further assistance."
-CHIEF MICHEL MOORE

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