TORRANCE - The Inglewood Police Department systematically and unlawfully violated the California Public Records Act (CPRA) by stonewalling from public view serious police misconduct and use of force records made disclosable under SB 1421 and SB 16, according to a state court ruling Thursday.
The court granted ACLU SoCal’s motion for summary judgment, finding that Inglewood engages in a pattern and practice of failing to comply with CPRA requirements and deadlines. This included failing to timely produce records and routinely failing to produce all disclosable records or any records at all.
“This ruling is a rebuke of Inglewood’s sustained, years-long attempt to deny the public rightful access to these records and shroud in secrecy egregious police misconduct and uses of force,” said Tiffany Bailey, senior staff attorney and the deputy project director of criminal justice and police practices at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “It is also a powerful victory for families like those of Ms. Kisha Michael who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Inglewood Police Department and who will finally learn the details of their deaths, something that was once unlawfully denied to them.”
For the next three years, the Inglewood Police Department will be required to affirmatively post all SB 1421 and SB 16 records on their website without the public having to file a request.
Thursday’s ruling caps a long and troubling history of Inglewood resisting transparency, including years of stonewalling and repeated attempts to destroy police misconduct records. After the "Right to Know” transparency law, SB 1421, was passed in 2018—but a few weeks before it went into effect—Inglewood destroyed decades of use of force and internal investigation records that would soon become publicly disclosable.
Three years later, Inglewood authorized the destruction of decades of use of force and internal investigation records just before SB 16 expanded transparency requirements, but those efforts were thwarted by this litigation.
Latham and Watkins served as co-counsel in the matter.
Read the order: https://www.aclusocal.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites/default/files/112805306_11_20_2025_minute_order.pdf
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ACLU SoCal v. Inglewood
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