LOS ANGELES — After the LAPD response to a 2020 protest outside the mayor's mansion led to an excessive force lawsuit, attorneys representing the Police Department insisted they had turned over all relevant evidence.

But then lawyers for the plaintiffs — activists from Black Lives Matter-L.A. — found footage recorded on the officers' body-worn cameras showed them tapping out messages on their phones, apparently sending texts to other LAPD officials that were never handed over.

Late last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with the activists by sanctioning the city, finding that an LAPD captain probably destroyed text messages that might have helped them prove that police were planning to aggressively break up the demonstration.

Judge Theresa M. Traber wrote in a preliminary ruling in October that LAPD Capt. Warner Castillo probably deleted messages by running a "factory-reset" on his phone in November 2023 "around the same time that it became apparent that Plaintiffs knew he had been texting during the protest and intended to seek those texts." The court also found reason to believe that Castillo later wiped all backups of the messages from his iCloud account.

Traber remarked that she didn't arrive at her decision lightly and called the allegations involved "extremely grave," but said she found Castillo's explanation — that he was texting with his family in the midst of the protest — unconvincing.

Traber wrote in her preliminary ruling that the missing evidence from Castillo "had a substantial probability" of helping the Black Lives Matter activists prove their case.

The city has repeatedly asked Traber to reconsider her decision. In a hearing this week, the judge reiterated that she believed Carrillo had deleted his texts, but said she needed time to consider a new trove of messages that the city said it had previously missed. Emails seeking comment from Castillo and the L.A. city attorney's office went unreturned Wednesday, and the LAPD said through a spokesman that it doesn't comment on pending litigation.

John Washington, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, said the city argued fiercely for months that it had turned over all evidence related to planning of the police's protest response while denying the existence of the missing text messages. Only by going back and watching body camera footage for glimpses of officers texting and then comparing those time stamps to the few messages the city had produced did the plaintiffs learn that other materials may have been withheld, he said.

"It's pretty telling as to what they contain if they're spending this much effort deleting it," said Washington, of the firm Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP.

Washington said that the withholding or deleting of certain records made him question what else the city was hiding. "The public has to be able to have confidence that the police are doing their jobs appropriately and that's been shaken in a big way recently," he said.

Washington said the case is embarrassing for the LAPD because several officers were recorded making disparaging comments about then-Mayor Eric Garcetti's wife, referring to her as "The Worst Lady" — a play on her title as the city's "First Lady." Garcetti's wife, Amy Wakeland, had been known to routinely call police that year about protesters making noise outside her home, which she said caused disruptions for the rest of the neighborhood.

In the city's response filed in court, Castillo initially claimed that he had been texting back and forth with his family, and denied texting other officers or supervisors. He said the reason that there were no backups of the text messages was because he had gotten a new phone from his wife, who buys new devices for their entire family every year on Three Kings Day, a post-Christmas holiday.

A police sergeant whom the LAPD identified as its subject matter expert on data retention testified in a deposition that the department has no policy against deleting text messages on city phones.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022, stems from a protest outside Getty House held two years earlier in opposition to Garcetti getting a job in former President Biden's administration. It alleges assault and battery on the part of officers, and claims that protesters' rights were violated as a result of threats, intimidation and unreasonable force.

Video from the scene of the confrontation showed officers swinging their batons at protesters and knocking them to the ground — offering no justification other than that one individual with a bullhorn was violating a noise ordinance. One plaintiff had a tooth knocked loose when an officer struck her in the head with a baton.

In addition to the city and Castillo, the lawsuit names as defendants three other individual LAPD officers — Lt. Carlos Figueroa and officers Daniel Orlik and Brittany Primo — who it says were involved in the fray or in overseeing the officers who were.

Attorneys for Black Lives Matter argue that the text messages probably contain evidence showing how LAPD officials had coordinated a plan to rush the protesters — thereby provoking clashes that they could then use to justify making arrests. Until that point the demonstration had been peaceful, they argued.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they reviewed videos recorded on the body cameras and found evidence of numerous officials standing around, texting on their phones. In one video — a zoomed-in still shot of which was presented as evidence — a camera captured a clear view of a text message on Primo's phone, showing someone had texted her: "I feel bad for BLM," and "you better not be [jaw, or jew] jacking with metro."

Castillo is heard on camera "during a critical point" saying that he is "responding to [then deputy police chief Robert 'Bobby'] Arcos," as he holds up his phone in his hand texting, the plaintiffs argued. But those text messages weren't released either, they said.

The city is expected to turn over the last of its discovery evidence sometime this month. At a follow-up hearing this week, attorneys for the city said they had discovered an additional roughly 1,000 text messages that hadn't previously been disclosed, Washington said.

Susan Seager, a civil rights attorney who has frequently sued the department, said that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that police officers have a limited expectation of privacy on their personal cellphones. The law is less clear on what information be obtained from an officer's personal cellphone if it is used for work-related reasons — which the city has argued at times in this case.

From the beating of Rodney King to the LAPD's violent clearing of Echo Park, officers' text messages and other electronic messages often provide key evidence that the officers could be lying when they claim that they shot or beat someone because they were afraid for their lives, she said.

"It's this kind of crazy setup where LAPD is allowing them" to destroy public records, she said.

A civil trial in the Black Lives Matter lawsuit is expected to begin later this year or in early 2027.

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