L.A. files lawsuit to retrieve photos of undercover officers taken by journalist and activist group.

The city of Los Angeles has sued a journalist and an activist group over the online publication of undercover LAPD officers’ pictures, which the city had itself provided. The city claims the release of the images in response to a public records request and related litigation by Knock LA journalist Ben Camacho was “inadvertent” and posed a safety risk to the officers. Legal experts have rejected the lawsuit as baseless and ripe for dismissal under the 1st Amendment and other well-established legal protections for journalists. The lawsuit follows weeks of controversy after the Los Angeles Police Department’s release of the names, photographs and other identifying information of more than 9,300 officers in response to a public records request and subsequent litigation by Camacho.