Judge orders LAPD to destroy photos taken inside BLM attorney’s home while hunting a thief

A Los Angeles judge sided with a Black Lives Matter leader’s attorney and ordered police to destroy photos obtained through an alleged “swatting” incident that triggered an internal affairs investigation.

BLM’s ongoing conflicts with law enforcement took a new turn in Los Angeles amid an ongoing lawsuit against the police dating back to 2020. While local leader Melina Abdullah had sued the LAPD for allegedly violating her civil rights during the height of the George Floyd riots in response to a “swatting” incident, her attorney Dermot Givens made the same claim after a Tuesday raid at his home.

“It’s totally f*cking embarrassing. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but this is something that was planned,” claimed the lawyer to the Los Angeles Times.

Givens, one of the lawyers handling Abdullah’s suit against the LAPD, decried the actions of law enforcement whom he alleged “ransacked” his home after an AirTag tracking device was said to have led them to the area related to some theft.

“I go, ‘Are you all swatting me?'” he told the Times. “And they said, ‘Who are you?’ And I said, ‘I live here!'”

The attorney lamented that files regarding Abdullah’s case were out on a table and photographed by the officers executing a warrant said to pertain to an individual named “Tyler.” Erin Darling, another attorney for the California State University, Los Angeles professor of Pan-African studies, filed an application to destroy the photographs, return any materials taken, and provide a copy of the search warrant.

In the filing for which Judge Rupert Byrdsong granted the request, Darling claimed the papers documented contained “portions of Mr. [Givens’] case file, and potentially attorney work product.”

“The LAPD has trampled on [Givens’] attorney work product,” she added.

Along with the routine rabble-rousing witnessed across the country by BLM activists, in 2020, after the first “swatting” of Abdullah, she could be heard on the doorstep of then-Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s house, confronting the prosecutor’s husband who had pulled a gun in self-defense.

As she asked if the DA was home, David Lacey responded, “I will shoot you, get off my porch!”

In her own reaction to LAPD executing a warrant at Givens’ home, the activist told the Times, “The first thing [I thought] was, like, ‘Oh, that’s crazy that they swatted the attorney who is suing them on my behalf for swatting me. Along with, ‘Is Dermot OK?'”

Likewise, she took to social media to further her allegations against law enforcement and wrote on X, “So now LAPD is swatting the attorneys who represent us? This is NUTS!”

For their part, the LAPD gave a standard response amid an ongoing investigation and spokesperson Capt. Kelly Muniz told the Associated Press “This is an open criminal investigation as well as an internal affairs investigation.”

Kevin Haggerty

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