Materials seized by hackers in last month’s breach involving the LA City Attorney’s Office are believed to include a trove of sensitive LAPD records, including officer personnel files and documents from internal affairs investigations.
Some records have started surfacing on social media platforms like X. Among the first to post files from the suspected hack was the account @WhosTheCop, which regularly posts information related to police accountability.
The account’s administrator said a security researcher first disclosed the breach in a post that was removed by Tuesday afternoon.
It was not immediately clear whether the hackers requested a ransom for not releasing the information and whether the city paid the ransom.
There has been no public acknowledgment of the hack from city or LAPD officials. A department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under state law, most police officer records are considered private. If authentic, this revelation represents a stunning breach of police data. Internal Affairs documents are rarely revealed in civil lawsuits and criminal cases, and even then they are often heavily redacted.
In total, according to the post about the data breach, 7.7 terabytes of information and more than 337,000 files were available for download. The trove included sensitive records handed over as part of discovery in court cases, such as witness names, health information, unredacted criminal complaints and investigative files.
