LAPD officer charged with distributing explicit images of wife to their co-workers
A Los Angeles police officer accused of sending sexually explicit photos and videos of his wife, another officer, to some of their LAPD colleagues and other men faces misdemeanor charges, according to recent court filings.
Brady Lamas, 45, was charged with six counts of disorderly conduct by distributing a private intimate image, according to a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday. His bond was set at $20,000.
The charging document suggests the images were shared between Dec. 29, 2021, and Jan. 24 but offers no further details. Lamas’ wife is identified in the document by only her first name and last initial.
But an application for a restraining order against Lamas alleges that his wife found the explicit photos on his phone the morning of Jan. 30. She saw a group chat on the messaging app Kik in which Lamas had shared nude photos and explicit videos with a man she didn’t know, the filing said.
An LAPD officer says her husband and fellow cop surreptitiously took photos and shared them. She says the department didn’t protect her from the harassment that followed.
“As I continued scrolling through the messages, I observed nude photos of me that were sent to that same unknown man. I did not know the photos were taken of me and did not give my consent for any photos of me to be shared with anyone,” she wrote in the filing.
She wrote that she felt “frozen and in fear” and alleged that she later discovered Lamas had sent nude photos of her to other men in the chat, as well as to others via text message and WhatsApp.
“I also worried about how my husband would react when he found out I had discovered his horrible disturbing acts,” she wrote.
Two years after Los Angeles police leaders set tougher limits on the LAPD’s use of facial recognition, a follow-up report said that the department still lacks a system for tracking when the technology misidentifies someone.
An LAPD spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday that Lamas has been on home assignment since January, when the department launched an investigation into him.
“The Department is fully cooperating with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office with this matter and is troubled by the officer’s alleged off-duty conduct which does not reflect the values of the Los Angeles Police Department,” the statement read.
Lamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. His arraignment has been scheduled for next week at the Santa Clarita Courthouse.
In the restraining order application, Lamas’ wife alleged that he surreptitiously took photos of her naked body during several visits at a doctor’s office after she had breast augmentation surgery. Lamas allegedly shared the images with other men, referring to them as “before and after pics,” the filing said.
Some of the male LAPD employees who had received the explicit images would approach her at work, staring at her “intently” and making comments such as, “Brady is a lucky man” and “He doesn’t know how good he has it,” according to the filing. She found their comments “unusual” at the time, the filing said, not knowing about the images he’d sent them.
She reported the images to her supervisor and went to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department station in Santa Clarita to file a report. An internal affairs investigation was also opened, according to the filing.
The CHP commander’s death comes two days after a California man was arrested in connection with the slaying of her husband, with whom she was in divorce proceedings, according to police records.
Lamas’ wife said discovering the images was “devastating to my dignity” and left her feeling humiliated and afraid to return to work. She added that his actions were “tantamount to a sexual assault.”
“My own husband is a predator and he preyed on me,” she wrote. “I would have preferred that he punched me in the face.”
“What is worse is this humiliation will keep repeating, perhaps forever, because the private pictures and graphic videos are now in the hands of strangers and multiple co-workers at the LAPD,” she wrote.
The case is the latest in a series of explicit photo-sharing scandals to rock the department in recent years.
The city paid out $1.5 million in 2020 to settle a lawsuit by an LAPD detective who accused a fellow officer of beating her and threatening to share sexually explicit images he had secretly taken if she tried to end their relationship.
And in September, a jury awarded an LAPD captain $4 million in damages after she sued the city over a nude photograph that was doctored to look like her and shared around the department.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
