Long Beach pays Times $245,000 in attorney fees over disclosure fight
The city of Long Beach and its police union have paid The Times $245,000 in attorney’s fees covering a years-long fight that went all the way to the California Supreme Court over the disclosure of names of officers involved in shootings, according to attorneys.
The city and the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. agreed to each shoulder half the cost of the payments to The Times, which intervened in the case arguing that the identity of officers who use deadly force was a matter of vital public interest, said Kelli Sager, an attorney for the newspaper.
The Long Beach City Council signed off on the payment on Tuesday after the parties reached a settlement on the fees.
The case stemmed from a 2010 shooting of a Long Beach man holding a pistol-grip garden hose nozzle, after which the union sought a court injunction barring the city from identifying the officers who had fired the fatal shots. An autopsy showed the man had been shot 12 times.
A Times reporter filed a public records request for the names of those officers and other members of the Long Beach Police Department involved in on-duty shootings in recent years.
Although the city initially said it intended to release the officers’ names, it later sided with the union in the case and opposed the newspaper. The case ultimately ended with the state Supreme Court ruling in May that officers’ names should be disclosed unless there is a specific showing that releasing their identities would pose a safety threat
The high court’s ruling is expected to reverse a widespread trend among California police departments of withholding officers’ names. Many agencies, including the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, had interpreted a 2006 decision on the confidentiality of police personnel records to include the identities of officers who had fired shots.
Separately, a federal jury found the city of Long Beach liable in the 2010 fatal shooting and awarded the man’s family $6.5 million.
Neither the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. nor representatives of the city responded to requests for comment.
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