LAPD Lawsuits: Payouts, Verdicts, and Oversight Gaps

Lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department have become one of the city’s largest financial liabilities. Since September 2019, Los Angeles has paid roughly $384 million on nearly 2,000 claims tied to the LAPD, and annual police misconduct payouts rose from $15 million in 2020 to $50 million in 2024.¹² The cases run across excessive force, wrongful death, gender discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, protest injuries, and a recent data breach that exposed hundreds of officers’ records.

The count is growing. Lawsuits filed against the city rose from 1,131 in 2021 to 1,560 in 2024, and the average payout per case nearly tripled from under $50,000 in 2022 to $132,180 in 2024. Verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more jumped from 17 in 2022 to 39 in 2024, and between July 2024 and March 2025 the city paid seven figures in 51 separate cases.²¹³

What the Payouts Cover

Civil rights violations — police shootings, excessive force, and illegal searches — account for the largest category, totaling $183 million since 2019. Traffic collisions involving city vehicles make up about 23% of claim amounts, and labor and employment disputes roughly 17%.¹

A handful of individual cases illustrate the range:

Tammy Murillo v. City of LA: over $25 million for the killing of a 32-year-old Navy veteran.
BD Impotex, LLC v. City of LA: $20 million for the LAPD bomb squad explosion that injured 17 people in South Los Angeles.
Paula French, et al. v. City of LA: $17.7 million involving an off-duty officer’s fatal shooting of a mentally disabled man in Corona.
Margarito Lopez: $8 million wrongful death settlement for a 22-year-old killed by officers, whose shooting was ruled unjustified by the Board of Police Commissioners and the former police chief.
Malcolm Thomas v. City of LA: $7.9 million for retaliation and discrimination against a police academy instructor.

The figures come from publicly available liability records.³¹

Whistleblower Retaliation at the Firearms Training Facility

In April 2026, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded $14.6 million to four veteran LAPD officers who reported safety problems at the department’s Edward M. Davis Training Facility in Granada Hills and were punished for it. The case went to verdict before Judge Kristin S. Escalante on April 23-24, 2026.⁴

The plaintiffs — armorers Craig Burns and Alexander Chan and senior firearms instructors Mark Hogan and Kristine Salazar — each had close to two decades of experience. Beginning in 2018, they raised concerns that staffing shortages were leaving recruits with inadequate firearms training and that a new supervisor had put in place protocols they believed violated the law.⁵

According to the officers’ attorneys, retaliation followed in 2019. Internal Affairs opened investigations against all four. Hogan and Burns were downgraded from Police Officer III to Police Officer II and involuntarily transferred, and Burns was removed from his armorer position. Chan received a negative personnel comment and was stripped of his Senior Lead Armorer role. Salazar was demoted, moved to patrol, and falsely accused of joining a “blue flu” sickout after taking a single sick day.⁶

Salazar filed a government claim in September 2019, and the formal complaints followed in January 2020. The legal theories included whistleblower retaliation under California Labor Code Section 1102.5 and discrimination and retaliation under the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. The city denied every claim.⁴⁶

Gender Discrimination and the Mehringer Verdict

On March 18, 2026, a Los Angeles County jury awarded former LAPD Commander Nicole Mehringer $5.7 million, finding the department had wrongfully terminated her.⁷ Mehringer’s firing stemmed from an April 2018 incident in Glendale, where she and a subordinate, Sgt. James Kelly, were found by Glendale police in an unmarked LAPD vehicle that had come to rest against a parked car. Both appeared intoxicated. Mehringer was charged with misdemeanor public intoxication, which was dismissed after she completed a 30-day recovery program; Kelly was charged with DUI. A Board of Rights hearing recommended her termination, and she was fired after declining a proposed demotion.⁸

At trial, Mehringer alleged that male command staff who committed similar or worse alcohol-related violations were allowed to keep their jobs, retire quietly, or receive promotions. Her attorney cited testimony that a former deputy chief withdrew his support for her after she chose to expose what she called departmental misconduct, and argued that former Chief Michel Moore had been untruthful about his oversight of disciplinary panels.⁷

Mehringer’s is one of many. Since 2019, the city has paid at least $11 million on gender-based discrimination, retaliation, and hostile-workplace lawsuits by LAPD officers, with another $12 million in jury awards to female officers under appeal. Roughly a dozen harassment and discrimination cases filed by female officers were pending as of late 2024, including one by 29-year veteran Kristine Klotz alleging retaliation after she reported sexism in the Robbery-Homicide Division.⁹

Wrongful Death: The Orellana-Peralta Trial

Not every high-profile case ends against the city. On December 23, 2021, LAPD Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. fired three rifle shots at a suspect inside a Burlington store in North Hollywood. One bullet killed the suspect, 24-year-old Daniel Elena-Lopez. Another passed through a dressing room wall and killed 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was hiding inside.¹⁰

No criminal charges were filed against Officer Jones. The Los Angeles Police Commission later ruled that one of his three shots was justified; former Chief Michel Moore concluded that all three were unjustified. Jones testified that he had mistaken a bike lock held by the suspect for a firearm.¹¹¹²¹³¹⁴

The Bomb Squad Explosion Settlement

On June 30, 2021, LAPD bomb squad technicians tried to destroy roughly 32,000 pounds of illegal fireworks seized from a South Los Angeles home. They packed nearly 40 pounds of volatile homemade material into a containment vessel rated for a maximum of 33 pounds. Federal investigators later found that technicians estimated the weight by sight rather than using a scale and ignored warnings from a team member to use smaller loads. The vessel exploded, injuring 17 people (10 LAPD officers, 6 civilians, and an ATF agent), damaging 22 homes, 13 businesses, and 37 vehicles, and displacing about 80 people.¹⁵

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a settlement of more than $21 million in July 2024, with individual payments to 17 claimants ranging from $100,000 to $2.8 million.¹⁶ Internal disciplinary outcomes surfaced in a 2026 document leak: two officers received 10-day suspensions and were transferred off the squad, a supervisor was suspended for 18 days, another officer received a 5-day suspension, and two were cleared.¹⁷

Anti-ICE Protest Cases

A newer wave of litigation stems from LAPD conduct during protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in June 2025. Protest-related cases since 2019 have already produced $20 million in payouts across 35 cases, and attorneys estimate the anti-ICE protests could add roughly $100 million in liability.¹

In a suit filed April 7, 2026, community organizer Jason Reedy and civil rights attorneys Ricci Sergienko and Shakeer Rahman alleged that LAPD Officer Rick Linton fired rubber bullets at them from a 40mm launcher during a June 9, 2025 march. According to the complaint, Rahman was shot in the groin twice after demanding that the officer, who had allegedly removed his name and serial number from his helmet, identify himself.¹⁸

A separate case filed March 9, 2026 by Rodolfo Cano alleges that officers tackled and beat him while he was livestreaming a June 11, 2025 protest from a public sidewalk, destroyed his recording device, and falsely accused him of felony assault on an officer. The Los Angeles County District Attorney rejected the charge, and no criminal case was filed against Cano.¹⁹

The 2026 Data Breach and Officer Suits

On March 20, 2026, a ransomware group known as WorldLeaks announced it had breached a document-sharing platform used by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to transfer legal discovery materials. The system was not password-protected because it was intended to be accessible to outside attorneys. The hackers took roughly 340,000 files, totaling 7.7 terabytes.²⁰

The stolen files included officer personnel records, Internal Affairs investigation documents, witness names and interview transcripts, personal medical information, and unredacted criminal complaints from hundreds of lawsuits involving the department. The LAPD said its own internal systems were not compromised. The FBI is assisting the investigation, and the city attorney’s office engaged external forensic experts.²¹²²

The breach is expected to trigger a new round of officer lawsuits over exposed records, on top of the roughly 900 officers already suing the city over a 2023 incident in which mugshot-style photos and demographic details of officers were inadvertently released in response to a public records request.²³

Rulings and Proposals Reshaping Future Cases

Two 2025 developments will affect the litigation to come. On November 10, 2025, the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that a longstanding warning on LAPD citizen complaint forms was unconstitutional. The warning, required by a 1995 state statute, told complainants: “It is against the law to make a complaint that you know to be false. If you make a complaint against an officer knowing that it is false, you can be prosecuted on a misdemeanor charge.” Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Joshua Groban held that the language created a “potent disincentive” to reporting misconduct and unconstitutionally chilled protected speech. The court also noted that the statute penalized false complaints against officers but imposed no similar consequences on witnesses who gave false statements defending officers.²⁴²⁵

City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto separately proposed state legislation in 2025 that would cap non-economic damages in lawsuits against California cities at $1 million or three times the economic losses, whichever was greater. More than 35 groups led by the Consumer Attorneys of California, the ACLU, and civil rights organizations opposed the proposal, arguing it would reduce legal rights for people harmed by police brutality, discrimination, and other government misconduct. No sponsor was secured, and the bill did not advance.²⁶

Oversight Gaps Behind the Numbers

The LAPD is supposed to submit Corrective Action Plans to the city council before settlement votes, explaining what will be done to prevent similar incidents. According to Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, those plans have not been provided. “How do we know that the corrective steps are being taken to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” she asked.¹

LA Controller Kenneth Mejia announced an audit of the city’s risk management practices in August 2025, aimed at whether departments are adequately identifying and addressing risks that lead to liability payouts. As of mid-2026, the audit remains ongoing, with results expected later in the year. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have argued that the city attorney’s office is pushing too many cases to trial instead of settling early, driving larger jury verdicts. Feldstein Soto has attributed rising costs to a post-pandemic case backlog and increasingly “antagonistic” juries.²

1
LA Public Press. LAPD Settlements
2
Los Angeles Times. As Los Angeles Faces Budget Crisis, Legal Payouts Skyrocket
3
LAist. Los Angeles Liability Payments Rise Nearing Fiscal Emergency
4
ABC7. 4 Los Angeles Police Officers Collectively Win More Than $14 Million in Retaliation Lawsuit
5
Los Angeles Times. Officers Called Out Serious Problems at Firearms Training Facility; LAPD Retaliated, Jury Finds
6
McNicholas Law. $14.6M Verdict Obtained in Retaliation and Discrimination Lawsuit Against City of Los Angeles
7
Los Angeles Times. LAPD Commander Nicole Mehringer Lawsuit Verdict
8
Police1. Ex-LAPD Commander Fired Over Public Intoxication Arrest Wins $5.7M in Discrimination Suit
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Police1. Veteran Female Officer Sues LAPD, Claims Retaliation for Reporting Hostile Workplace
10
Courthouse News. Attorneys Give Closing Arguments in Civil Trial Over LAPD Officers Accidental Shooting of 14-Year-Old Girl
11
Fox LA. LAPD Wrongful Death Trial Valentina Orellana-Peralta
12
KTLA. Wrongful Death Lawsuit Trial Underway Over 2021 LA Police Shooting of 14-Year-Old Girl
13
The Guardian. LAPD Teen Death Not Liable
14
KTLA. LAPD Officer Not Negligent, Burlington Girl Shooting
15
NBC News. LA to Pay $21M to Settle Claims From Botched Fireworks Detonation
16
NBC Los Angeles. Victims of LAPDs Botched Firework Explosion Receive $20 Million Settlement
17
Los Angeles Times. LAPD Leak Fireworks Blast Officer Suspensions
18
Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai LLP. Civil Rights Attorneys and Community Organizer File Suit
19
ABC7. Man Sues Los Angeles Police Department Alleging Officers Attacked Him as He Livestreamed ICE Protest
20
Los Angeles Times. LAPD Sensitive Files Leak Explained
21
Fox LA. LAPD Data Breach City Attorney Leak Investigation
22
MLQ AI News. Data Breach Exposes Thousands of LAPD Personnel Files and Internal Affairs Records
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Los Angeles Times. LAPD Records Suspected Hack
24
Courthouse News. California Supreme Court Shoots Down Police Report Disclaimers
25
CalMatters. LAPD Citizen Complaint Forms
26
CalBike. LA City Attorney Opposition Letter