After 5 months and over $12,000 in legal fees, Laguna Beach releases video of city manager’s traffic citation

Laguna Beach officials hoped publishing footage Friday from a traffic stop involving City Manager Shoreh Dupuis would exonerate her of accusations that she tried to use her office to pressure the officer who pulled her over.

People who spent months trying to gain access to the video say the city paid well over $12,000 in attorney’s fees fighting its release.

The interaction captured by the body-worn camera of Laguna Beach Officer Matt Gregg happened shortly after 9 a.m. on Nov. 16 near Pacific Coast Highway and Glenneyere Street. He was on his motorcycle when he rolled past Dupuis’ white Lexus sedan and spotted her speaking into her cellphone. She still had the device in hand as he introduced himself.

“We cannot be on the phone today,” Gregg said after pulling the city manager over and exchanging polite greetings with her.

“I was talking to [Police Chief] Jeff Calvert, sorry,” Dupuis replied.

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The video shows that after Dupuis handed over her license and registration, Gregg walked back to his motorcycle and called Calvert.

“Sir, were you on the phone with the CM a few minutes ago?” Gregg is heard asking after apparently dialing the chief of police. Calvert’s response was inaudible in the recording.

“Oh, so she wasn’t talking to you when I actually pulled her over,” Gregg continued, according to captions included in the footage released by city officials. “Ok, so she was on her phone before she called you then. So she’s gonna get a ticket cuz she lied to me about it, okay. Because she was on her phone prior to me pulling her over.”

Phone records show Dupuis and Calvert were on a call with each other at the time she was stopped. City officials described the discrepancy as a “misunderstanding” in commentary text accompanying the video they released.

“Per Chief Calvert, he did not tell the officer that he was not on the phone with the City Manager,” Laguna Beach spokeswoman Cassie Walder wrote in an e-mail.

Gregg returns to check Dupuis’ insurance information, then explains why he is giving her a ticket. She accepts the citation without complaint and leaves.

“She didn’t do anything wrong,” Laguna Beach City Mayor Pro Tem Sue Kempf said during a public meeting on March 21. “On the other hand, I don’t want to fuel this any longer. Because it’s just, to me, it’s a nonissue; she got a ticket and a lot of people in this town get a ticket.”

Kempf and Mayor Bob Whalen voted against making the video public. They were among four out of five council members who said they found no evidence of wrongdoing in what they had seen.

Michele Monda, a local resident and former columnist for the Laguna Beach Independent, learned about the traffic stop and began filing public records requests two days after it happened. After going back and forth with officials and attorneys that she said were specifically hired to resist her inquiries, she views things differently from Kempf and other members of the council.

She and others who have been pushing for the release of the body cam video believe Dupuis dropped Calvert’s name in an attempt to affect the outcome of the traffic stop.

“To say ‘I’m on the phone with the chief’ is really, to me, a way of attempting to obstruct the officer in the performance of his duty,” Councilman George Weiss said during the March 21 meeting. “It’s unduly influencing him.”

Weiss submitted a motion to make the footage public. Council members Alex Rounaghi and Mark Orgill also voted in favor of it, even though they agreed with dissenters Kempf and Whalen that Dupuis had done nothing wrong.

“I too, originally when this first happened, thought, ‘Let’s just get it out of the way and release it’ because of the fact that there was nothing in it,” Orgill said. “After I saw the video, to be honest, I felt even stronger about that.”

Monda began working with attorney James Grossberg after her initial requests for records were denied. During a City Council meeting in January, Dupuis read a written statement dismissing their inquiry and denying any wrongdoing. She also accused them of bullying her at meetings and online. Monda said she has not been active on social media.

As she and others pressed for more information, they learned that the law firm Liebert Cassidy and Whitmore had been hired to respond to their appeals for information. The cost of services they rendered between Nov. 16 and Jan. 31 totaled $12,468.50, according to bills obtained by Monda.

Monda said this is not the first time footage has surfaced depicting what some have interpreted as Dupuis attempting to use her position to gain special treatment. On Jan. 7, 2022, the city manager introduced herself as “Shoreh” as she and a relative who was visiting from Colorado were approached by an animal control official responding to reports of dogs off leash at a public park.

Dupuis’ niece was given a written warning during that encounter but no citation or fine. Monda believes the city manager would be recognizable by first name to most city employees, and based on what she observed in the video, she thinks that may have contributed to the leniency they received during that exchange.

Footage of that warning was “inadvertently” made public, city officials told Monda after she had asked to view that prior incident. Although the Laguna Beach Police Department does not have an official written policy on the sharing of body-worn camera video and other materials from non-critical events, it has by and large denied requests to do so.

“It has been the past practice and policy, albeit not written, of the police department that body camera videos and dispatch call logs are not disclosed in response to public records act request,” City Atty. Philip Kohn said during the March 21 council meeting. “So, in a sense, it would be precedent in that it would be in contrast to what the past practice has been. But whether the determination tonight is to apply to simply this instance or to all cases would be something warranting further discussion.”

Orgill had expressed interest in cementing such a policy. However, Whalen said he could not foresee such a discussion reaching their agenda in the near future.

“I think it would be difficult if not impossible to draft a policy for all situations that is factually driven,” Whalen said during a brief interview Tuesday. “If things come up in the future, I think we’ll have to address it on a case by case basis.

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