Skip to main content

To: Mayor Eric Garcetti

Fire LAPD Chief Michel Moore

Fire Michel Moore as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Why is this important?

Chief Michel Moore is responsible for the dramatic increase in the level of police violence and abuse against Angelenos, especially of the City's Black, Brown, poor, and unhoused residents. Under Chief Moore the Los Angeles Police Department is the most murderous and corrupt police department in the nation. Rather than accountability, Moore is requesting a $213 million budget increase. We must both #BlockTheBudgetIncrease and #FireLAPDChiefMoore for a host of reasons, most recently:
-In 2021 LAPD killed 18 people and shot 38 Angelenos, more than any other police force in the country. This number includes the murder of 14-year-old #ValentinaOrellanaPeralta, who was killed while trying on dresses at Burlington Coat Factory.
-In addition to the "officer-involved shootings," on June 30, 2021 LAPD detonated explosives in a South Central neighborhood, bringing the deaths of retired school teacher Auzie Houchins and elderly resident Ramon Reyes, and displacing 88, Black and Brown residents.
-Under Chief Moore's watch LAPD violently targeted community organizers, including surrounding the home of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles leader Dr. Melina Abdullah with assault rifles, endangering her life and the lives of her three children, THREE TIMES in the span of about a year.
-Moore utilized his personal security to wrongfully accuse and detain French citizens while traveling overseas on official LAPD business.
-The Chief created conditions that enabled a gun scandal where senior officers and civilian workers, skirted basic firearm laws and regulations, putting 44 guns illegally onto the streets.

On March 10, 2021 an independent investigation of the Los Angeles Police Department's handling of the 2020 uprisings in the name of #GeorgeFloyd confirmed on-the-ground accounts of rampant police abuse, brutality, and violence levied upon righteous protestors. Hundreds of demonstrators reported injuries; many were beaten, shot with rubber bullets, pepper sprayed, and brutalized to the point of hospitalization. Others were criminalized, held for hours, terrorized, arrested, and abused for daring to raise their voices. Even after the mass #GeorgeFloyd uprisings, LAPD officers were green-lit to ferociously attack peaceful protestors who had gathered in front of the Mayor's Mansion in an effort to #BlockGarcetti from being appointed to the Biden cabinet in December 2020. This appalling mistreatment has been the basis of several lawsuits, including a class action filed by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, Los Angeles Community Action Network, and the National Lawyers Guild.

The recently-released, 101-page report explicitly names Chief Moore's failures to properly plan and, worse, give his "direct approval" of many of the most abusive tactics. We want to be clear: who was harmed are regular people who felt duty-bound to speak out and stand up against police violence. In doing so, they experienced police violence - the very thing that they were protesting. This nation, and Los Angeles in particular, must drive out such brutal forces and those who claim leadership, beginning with the firing of LAPD Chief Michel Moore.

This is not the first or last of Michel Moore's offenses. Prior to the uprisings, Chief Moore was found to have
1. Used a white-supremacist media outlet (Breitbart) to recruit LAPD officer applicants.
2. Enabled anti-Black racism by allowing Black people to be stopped by LAPD at 5 times their population share and searched at 3 times the rate of everyone else.
3. Fostered a culture of corruption under which officers in South Central Los Angeles were found to have illegally and unjustly entered the names of Black and Brown residents into gang databases.
4. Presented internal investigations that repeatedly avoid accountability, including finding that not a single one of the 4862 racial-bias complaints filed by the public was valid.
5. Lobbied each year for LAPD to be awarded more than 50% of the City of Los Angeles’ general fund at the expense of vital city services and resources.
6. Failed to mandate the wearing of masks by LAPD officers, tolerating statements like "COVID isn't real," even after eight LAPD staff have died from the virus.
7. Attempted to shield murderous police officers from disciplinary action, including the officers who killed #GrecharioMack, #AlbertRamonDorsey, who were given rare “out of policy” findings by the Los Angeles Police Commission.

During and since the uprisings, Michel Moore has:
8. Stated that protestors were just as responsible for the death of #GeorgeFloyd as were the officers who killed him. Asserting that protestors were “capitalizing” off Floyd’s death, and that “his death is on their hands as much as it is those officers [who killed him].”
9. Created a culture where officers were enabled to circulate a "Valentine Card" with a despicable reference to Mr. Floyd and the words "you take my breath away."
10. Refused to disclose or publicly hold to account the LAPD officers who participated in the failed coup on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
11. Compared Black Lives Matter to the right-wing extremist group the Proud Boys, stating that both “represent ideology that’s counter to this democracy.”
12. Colluded with member(s) of the Board of Police Commissioners (Steve Soboroff) on votes and positions taken by the supposed oversight body.
13. Lied on the record about the number of traffic stops made in South Central Los Angeles in 2021, stating that the number was 74, when the actual recorded number was 639.

Over his 4 years as Chief, Michel Moore has established a horrendous record of mismanagement, corruption, and brutality, which has had a particularly brutal impact on Black communities. It is imperative that he be immediately removed as Chief for both his most recent and longstanding pattern of abuse.

Link to 3/10/2021 independent investigation: https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2020/20-0729_rpt_CLA_03-11-21.pdf

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Maps © Stamen; Data © OSM and contributors, ODbL

Updates

2021-03-16 21:05:43 -0700

1,000 signatures reached

2021-03-16 10:18:21 -0700

500 signatures reached

2021-03-15 00:57:53 -0700

100 signatures reached

2021-03-14 20:39:04 -0700

50 signatures reached

2021-03-14 19:49:34 -0700

25 signatures reached

2021-03-14 19:47:31 -0700

10 signatures reached