Twitter suspended an account that offered bounties on the heads of Los Angeles police officers following the police department releasing photos, names and serial numbers for all cops in the city to an anti-police group.
“We are appreciative of Twitter acting swiftly to take down this dangerous site that called for the murder of Los Angeles police officers,” Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said in a press release Monday from the police union.
More than 9,000 photos, names and serial numbers for police in Los Angeles were released to anti-police group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition earlier this month through a public records request. The data was then published to a website run by Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, setting off concerns across the force that cops were left vulnerable, including officers working dangerous undercover jobs.
The release of the data soon surfaced on social media, including on a Twitter account called @KillerCops1984, which called for “payback time” on officers.
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Members of the LAPD make their way along Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“We have now #published over 9000 names and head-shots of numerous regular and #undercover #LAPD officers on ⋊i||ɘɿɔoq.ɔom online. A to Z. Let the games begin!! Remember, nobody pays more for LAPD head shots then ⋊i||ɘɿɔoq.ɔom Payback time!,” a tweet on an account previously reviewed by Fox News Digital stated last week.
“Remember, #Rewards are double all year for #detectives and #female cops,” another tweet posted earlier this month stated.
Twitter suspended the account for violating its rules and policies against inciting violence, the police union said in its press release.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League celebrated the suspension on Monday, slamming the account for offering “a bounty to anyone that killed a Los Angeles police officer.”
Los Angeles Police Department personnel gather at a crime scene. (LAPD Headquarters Facebook)
“This was not about freedom of speech or public discourse, this was about protecting officers and their families and for that we are grateful that this site is suspended,” Lally said of the account’s suspension.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League filed a lawsuit last week on behalf of three officers who named Steven Sutcliffe as the owner of the Twitter account and the website killercop.com, demanding they be taken down. The website is still active as of Monday afternoon.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore described the public release of the data by the department as a “big mistake” and told Fox 11 he “deeply [regrets] that this mistake happened.”
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Chief Michel Moore speaks at a news conference at LAPD headquarters on Nov. 17, 2022. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“I understand personally, given my own death threats and on matters of me as a public figure and my family has endured as a chief and even before that, how troubling this can be to a member of this organization, and even more so to those that are involved in sensitive and or confidential investigations,” Moore told the outlet.
Moore said the department made mistakes on two issues regarding the release: The department should have told members on the force when it reached a settlement to release the information to the anti-police group, and that the department should not have identified cops working undercover and provided the information for public consumption.
LAPD detective Jamie McBride told Fox 11 that the matter is “not a mistake,” but “reckless.”
“I’ve been notified by a few officers already saying that they’re looking at other departments now before they get too much time invested here with the Los Angeles Police Department because they don’t feel that this department has their best interests at heart,” said McBride.
The downtown Los Angeles skyline as seen from the Pico-Union area at dusk, Sept. 28, 2022. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
McBride joined “Fox & Friends First” on Monday and said the release of such information “is uncharted territory for all of us.”
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“This has never happened before in my 32-year career… this is uncharted territory for all of us,” McBride told Fox News’ Ashley Strohmier. “These officers are very dedicated to what they’re doing in their investigations. They’re going to take precautions now and constantly look over their back on their way home from work.”
“When they’re out with their families, if somebody… yells your name, they got to realize, is this a friend or is this a foe? They don’t know,” he continued. “This is something we’ve never seen before.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Twitter for comment on the suspension, but has received no reply beyond the standard automated response.
