I first visited Europe as a senior during a high school trip.
Together with other students, I washed cars and held pizza nights and raffles for several months to cover our $2,500 bill. Additional parent and student contributions accounted for about 95% of money needed for flights, hotels, meals and tours, with our school kicking in the last 5%.
With 10 students and two chaperones, we toured Italy, France and Spain for 10 days during spring break in what for years was the seminal trip of my life.
When we returned stateside, I had to write a report and deliver a presentation on what I‘d seen, learned and experienced. The school may not have kicked in much for the trip, but it wanted to see the results.
So, I was a bit envious to read the Los Angeles Police Department seems to have a different standard for sending teams for training, as documented by my colleague Libor Jany.
He wrote that LAPD officers visited Israel and other international locales for counterterrorism and Olympics events training. Participants didn’t keep very detailed documentation of what they learned, and it’s not clear any of it was ever adopted, a Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General report confirmed.
So, what did LAPD officers see, learn and experience? Well, let’s get into that.
Where did LAPD personnel visit for training missions?
The LAPD has trained with Israeli security forces for decades, though that relationship has come under scrutiny amid what many experts are calling a genocide in Gaza.
LAPD officials have also traveled to Italy and France in preparation for hosting the Olympics, and to Mexico and Thailand to study investigative techniques and police tactics.
Nearly a quarter of the trips were to Canada, where LAPD personnel went to learn about best practices in investigating human trafficking and clandestine drug labs.
LAPD officials also trained on crowd-control tactics with the Royal Thai Police and authorities in Austria, and attended police aviation conventions in Colombia, the U.K., Mexico, Germany and Poland. They also sent officers to Singapore, France and England for Interpol-led instruction on investigating crimes against children.
Who’s going on these trips and who pays for them?
The inspector general’s report looked at 117 “foreign training activities” attended by 243 LAPD employees since 2014, seeking to determine how they benefited the department.
The report found 18 LAPD officials took trips to Israel that cost a combined $87,000.
It said roughly 80% of all overseas trips were financed through outside funding, such as police foundations and grants.
The perception of bias
Although donations to cover travel don’t have to be disclosed under state and federal law, report authors noted that the “potential risks and the perception of conflicts of interest associated with such funding outweigh the benefits of maintaining the anonymity of funding sources.”
The department also “lacks any process to adequately assess and identify potential security risks within host countries,” the report said, noting failures to vet foreign contacts with U.S. national security agencies to ensure they are not members of an intelligence service or extremist groups.
Lack of paperwork
LAPD officials said the department hadn’t adopted any “tactics, altered policies, or developed training programs” based on the trips abroad, but the report’s authors said the dearth of records made that claim impossible to verify.
Department officials are required to seek permission for work-related travel, but the report found that lack of proper record-keeping meant investigators were “unable to evaluate the key takeaways and potential benefits.”
Recommendations for future trips
At a minimum, the inspector general’s office said, the LAPD should keep track of the location, category and topics covered at each training event.
Ideally, the report said, the department would also require participants to complete an evaluation report detailing what lessons they learned and “practical applications for Department operations.”
Click here to read more about the inspector’s report.
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