Following the release of information about thousands of Los Angeles police officers who placed activists on a public online database, City Att

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Hydee Feldstein Soto is trying to convince California lawmakers to weaken the state’s public records law.

While Feldstein Soto describes her proposal as a minor amendment to the California Public Records Act, civil rights advocates say it would seriously undermine the strength of basic state law that allows access to information held by local governments and state agencies.

That proposal would be perfectly fine under the Public Records Act, said Melanie Ochoa, an attorney who is the director of police practices for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, after reviewing a copy obtained by The Times.

There really would be no element of transparency in the PRA if that became law.

The city attorney’s effort amounts to the latest salvo in an ongoing battle between city officials and community activists who have used the public records law to obtain information they deem useful to hold police accountable for misconduct.

Feldstein Sotos suggested in a two-page document she has asked several state lawmakers to file since a bill would allow state agencies to deny requests for public records seeking images or data that could personally identify an individual whose information the agency collects, like its employees.

California’s public records law already exempts disclosure of public officials’ home addresses and phone numbers, as well as other information that “could constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy.” So the change to the

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attorney may deter the public from identifying government employees in their professional capacity.

While she formulated her proposal as a necessity to protect a large public

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workers in the industry who may be subject to harassment, including sanitation

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homeless camps and public health workers promoting vaccinations. Feldstein Soto acknowledged it was inspired by the public records request that led to the release earlier this year of photos and records of more than 9,300 LA police officers.

I’m trying to address the mass doxxing of people we depend on to do the business of government for no reason other than the position they happen to hold, Feldstein Soto said.

Having a tool in the activists’ toolbox that doesn’t necessarily target government policies, but aims to intimidate the individuals who implement the policies, seems to me to be something where we could all come together to try and get the working people to protect .

Feldstein Soto traveled to Sacramento last month and said she met with two dozen lawmakers about her proposal. None so far

theirs

have agreed to put it in an invoice

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but Feldstein

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remains hopeful. While several lawmakers were skeptical of the idea, she said many more were affirmatively enthusiastic and supportive.

Lawmakers in Sacramento are halfway through the 2023 legislative session, making passing a newly introduced bill a major political lift. Legislation introduced on this point

in the year

would go through a shortened review process, giving legislators less time to scrutinize the proposal and allowing for limited public input.

Assembly chair Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) met with Feldstein Soto about her desire to change the public records law and is sympathetic to the issue, Rendon spokesman John Casey said. Rendon asked his staff to look for a way to get her proposal into a bill, Casey said, but so far that hasn’t happened in the Assembly. In the Senate, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said her staff met with Feldstein Soto about the proposal, but that Atkins is not considering enacting it into legislation.

In addition to allowing local governments to withhold photos and identifying information about their employees from the public, the bill that Feldstein Soto drafted would also allow local governments to

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disclosing information that identifies people who are homeless or receiving government benefits, as well as information about the services provided to them. She said she strives to protect people who are moved into housing or shelter from being tracked down by pimps and drug dealers.

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a discretionary waiver to essentially preserve the people’s safety, she said. We

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redacting the information that would allow someone to target them.

But his requests for information about LA cops that have sparked the biggest metabolism about the power of the

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In March, a group called

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Stop LAPD Spying Coalition launched a searchable online database containing the names, photos, ethnicity, rank, hire date, division/bureau and badge numbers of more than 9,300 officers, including several hundred who work undercover or in other sensitive positions. The group encourages community members to observe and document police abuse, especially arrests and other violence, according to its website, and publishes a guide for activists on how to use public records laws to further the goal of abolishing promote the police.

Leaders of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition previously told The Times that the information they published was obtained from the Los Angeles Police Department through a public records request. City officials say the undercover officers were accidentally involved in the response and are investigating how it happened.

In an effort to reclaim the undercover officers’ photos, the city sued the Knock LA journalist who filed the public records request and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

who posted the officers’ information online

. Last month, a Los Angeles judge rejected the city’s controversial request to order the journalist to return a flash drive of police officers’ photos.

Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said that since the database was updated, several officers have received threats and reported them to the department, but declined to provide details.

When

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we transferred to the

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Torney that if a bill was introduced that would prevent these kinds of doxxing revelations, chances are we would support it.

So said the president of the union representing social workers in Los Angeles

although while

it does not yet have a formal position on Feldstein Sotos’ proposal, it sounds attractive as a potential tool to protect workers. Social workers who intervene when families are in crisis have faced death threats and harm to their families, posting confidential information about themselves on social media, said David Green, president of SEIU Local 721.

It is waiting for an accident, he said. I am a big believer in transparency and accountability, but at the same time I had to represent the workers

…, as president of the union, [

whose

]

health and safety and their lives are sometimes really threatened by the people we serve, unfortunately.

But civil rights lawyers countered the idea that the public records law puts government employees at risk. It does not allow disclosure of personal information, such as home addresses or family information, said Ochoa, the ACLU attorney only work-related information.

The courts have recognized that knowledge of who is working in public and for the public is something the public has a right to know, she said.

Ochoa pointed to the Public Records Act as a critical tool in efforts to improve policing practices and hold law enforcement agencies accountable because it can be used to identify specific officers. Without that power, she said

,

it would have been impossible to advocate for other transparency laws that California has passed in recent years to demand increased disclosure of internal records of police shootings and

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create a system for decertifying officers for serious misconduct.

That wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t been made aware that the same cop who killed someone went to another agency and killed someone else, Ochoa said.

We oppose any attempt to benefit the PRA in this way.