LAPD captain claims she saw cops slamming teen into concrete — then faced union’s wrath
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The incident that put Los Angeles police Capt. Silvia Sanchez on a collision course with the union for more than 8,000 rank-and-file cops began with a 911 call about a fight on the city’s Eastside.
Two Hollenbeck Division officers showed up to find two young women arguing in the street next to a gray SUV. They decided to arrest the younger of the couple, a 16-year-old, on suspicion of domestic violence, detaining her without force — or so they wrote in their report.
A routine review found nothing amiss with their actions, and the case was all but closed and forgotten. Then Sanchez, the Hollenbeck patrol captain, intervened.
After receiving a complaint about the March 30, 2022, incident, she went back and reviewed the officers’ body-worn camera footage. The video seemed to show one of the cops grabbing the teen by the neck and slamming her against a concrete barrier, Sanchez alleged.
Sanchez ordered an investigation into the officers’ “illegal detention followed by an unauthorized use of force” and their failure to document it, she said in a government claim she filed against the city in October.
The department is down hundreds of officers from its 2019 ranks and projects that it will continue to dwindle in fiscal year 2025.
Her moves have drawn the ire of the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League. The veteran female commander and her allies allege she has become the target of a smear campaign by union leadership to turn the department against her. The union’s president has accused Sanchez of her of going out of her way to railroad a pair of officers for doing their jobs.
The case has become the latest lighting rod in a long-running debate over how to reform the department’s disciplinary system. Amid numerous reports that have faulted the department for how it investigates its own, critics both inside and outside the LAPD believe the process remains inconsistent at best and fundamentally broken at worst.
The sentiment among many lower-ranking officers is that they are under a microscope while their bosses are rarely held accountable for misconduct. On the other side are commanders like Sanchez, who alleges she was targeted after calling out bad behavior.
Sanchez’s claim, which typically serves as the precursor to a lawsuit, says that after ordering the investigation into the 2022 incident she faced retaliation and “resistance” from Hollenbeck’s then-senior Capt. Al Mendoza and others in “her command, who appeared intent on brushing this incident under the rug.”
The Police Protective League, which represents cops up to the rank of lieutenant, has defended the officers Sanchez put under scrutiny. Last summer in the union’s monthly magazine, Thin Blue Line, League President Craig Lally blasted an unnamed female captain that fit Sanchez’s profile. Around the time it was published, an unnamed LAPD official filed a formal complaint against Sanchez, alleging she had handled the situation inappropriately.
Sanchez and her attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
The Times obtained a copy of the police report from the 2022 incident. The officers said when they arrived to the 100 block of North Myers Street — near the 1st Street Viaduct heading into Boyle Heights — one of the two women they encountered insisted that nothing was wrong and said they were looking for a lost pendant that had fallen off a broken gold chain.
The police report did not provide an age for the second woman, but department sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said she was older and appeared to be an adult.
According to the police report, the pair “refused to cooperate” and began walking away.
The officers wrote that when they decided to make an arrest, the teenager “began screaming,” then “threw herself” into a concrete barrier and began flailing her legs, kicking both officers. She was then “detained without further incident,” the report said.
The officers called an ambulance after the younger girl said she was suffering a panic attack. Both women were later released at the scene and could not be reached for comment.
An LAPD lieutenant whose officers are accused of trying to cover up illegal traffic stops and thefts by turning off their body-worn cameras has filed a lawsuit claiming he was “set up to fail” and unfairly punished after the scandal became public.
After Sanchez reviewed body camera footage of the call, she concluded that the officers had committed “an illegal detention followed by an unauthorized use of force,” grabbing the teen by the neck and slamming her into the concrete wall as she started to walk away. Sanchez also faulted them for using a homophobic slur toward the couple.
Other department officials who reviewed the case insisted there was nothing wrong.
But Sanchez took the matter up to her boss, Cmdr. Michael Oreb, who leads the Central Bureau. He agreed that the officers’ actions needed to be reviewed and should have been documented in their report. It’s unclear whether the officers were investigated or faced any punishment, as most police discipline matters are shielded from public view under state law.
The recent claim is not the first time Sanchez has blown the whistle on what she alleged was problematic behavior at Hollenbeck.
Assigned to the station on the city’s East Side as a newly minted captain in 2022, Sanchez said in her claim that she encountered a culture of hostility toward women that has led to numerous complaints by sworn and civilian employees.
Such behavior was tolerated by supervisors, Sanchez said. She asked Mendoza, the senior captain, to take a personnel complaint against an an unnamed male officer for misogynistic remarks, including saying “that women don’t belong on the job, or words to that effect,” according to her claim. Mendoza refused, she alleges.
Instead, her claim says, the officer who made the comments received what’s known as a comment card — the department’s equivalent of a slap on the wrist. From then on, Sanchez said, she was subjected to “frivolous complaints” and “openly disparaged” by colleagues as an “incompetent DEI captain,” forced to transfer and twice passed over for promotions.
In August, Sanchez was transferred again to Custody Services, where she was given a limited supervisory role. In September, she received a two-day suspension for alleged misconduct, which she deemed to be “bogus discipline.” She was also issued an official reprimand in another matter.
Her departure came amid a flurry of other leadership changes at Hollenbeck in recent months, including the transfer of Mendoza, the captain she accused of attempting to cover up the Myers Street incident.
A lawsuit by former SWAT officer Timothy Colomey accused leaders of the LAPD tactical unit of working to conceal unlawful killings and retaliating against him when he spoke to internal investigators.
Mendoza did not respond to an email sent to his work account and is not named as a defendant in Sanchez’s claim.
The League and its backers have for months argued that Sanchez’s case has laid bare a double standard in the way that command staff and rank-and-file officers are treated, which has hurt morale.
Amid the union indignation, Cmdr. Lillian Carranza, one of Sanchez’s supervisors, came to her defense. LAPD sources, who sought anonymity to discuss matter without risking retaliation, said Carranza met last summer with then-interim Chief Dominic Choi. The sources said she called for an internal investigation against Lally, the union president. She allegedly accused him trying to make an example of Sanchez — a warning for other senior officers about the consequences of reporting misconduct.
Lally referenced Carranza’s support of Sanchez in his August column, writing that “apparently this captain must have skipped the training on retaliation at captain’s school.”
Carranza declined to comment when reached this week.
The Police Protective League’s board of directors released a statement on Wednesday that said they “stand solidly behind what was exposed in our Blue Line publication that detailed the serious LAPD policy violations and flagrant disregard for our member’s rights by Captain Silvia Sanchez.”
The union’s statement added: “When it comes to discipline in the LAPD it is well past time that command staff are treated the same way as the rank and file.”
The Los Angeles Police Protective League has filed a lawsuit accusing LAPD Cmdr. Lillian Carranza of improperly accessing the officers’ union’s records.
Carranza and the League have been locked in their own bitter legal battle after the union accused her of inappropriately accessing its internal communications, an allegation she denies. The union was forced to refile its lawsuit against the Carranza earlier this year after a judge dismissed the initial claim.
New Chief Jim McDonnell has said he wants to review the department’s disciplinary procedures to identify areas that officers believe are unfair and possibly make changes.
While the police union maintains that commanders and officers with connections receive preferential treatment, statistics tell a different story.
Data compiled by the Professional Standards Bureau show that complaints against command staff — captains and above — are sustained at roughly the same rate as those against lower-ranking officers, who have far more encounters with the public. Of the 262 complaints against commanders, nearly 9% were upheld versus roughly 12% of 17,800 complaints against the rank-and-file.
“Outcomes of complaints are driven solely by the evidence to support the allegation, the type of misconduct and the employee’s prior complaint history,” said deputy chief Michael Rimkunas, who runs the Professional Standards Bureau. He pointed to recent cases involving “senior Department officials who have been held accountable for their actions, regardless of their rank in the organization.”
Yet the vast majority of cops remain frustrated. A recent League survey found that only 3% of its members reported feeling supported by the department’s command staff.
Mario Munoz, a former LAPD internal affairs lieutenant, said that a lack of transparency around how internal investigations are handled is feeding the perception that some officers are not held accountable.
“It’s supposed to be fair and consistent. But consistency is one of the things that we’re missing here,” he said.
Once a member of the vaunted Robbery-Homicide Division, Det. Kristine Klotz alleges she was demoted after calling out harassment by a male supervisor.
For decades the department has weathered lawsuits — sometimes resulting in large payouts — from officers who claimed that decisions about discipline unfairly revolved around rank and whether they were liked by their superiors.
Some in the department derisively call it the “LAPD lottery,” with plaintiffs said to weaponize the internal affairs system in search of a big payout.
According to her claim, however, Sanchez was just trying to do the right thing after catching her officers breaking the rules.
After seeing the video of the arrest, she wrote, she took “steps to have these matters properly investigated and corrected.”
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
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