LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A grassroots group filed a petition today asking a judge to order the city of Los Angeles to abide by the California Public Records Act and turn over documents related to the police department's budget.
The city has balked at the coalition's repeated requests for the LAPD's full budget records, according to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.
"Without access to records accounting for LAPD's base budget, the public ... has no way to know how much is spent yearly by specific LAPD units, divisions and programs," the petition states. "This dynamic of the base budget snowballing with little public ability to understand what it contains has played a significant role in the unchecked yearly expansion of LAPD's spending."
A representative for the City Attorney's Office said his office will review the complaint, but that he had no further comment.
The legal action is part of the "Defund Surveillance" campaign launched by the coalition and the Free Radicals group.
"At a time of historic revenue shortfalls and widespread calls to defund the police, the need to expose LAPD's budget could not be graver," said Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying, a grassroots group based in the skid row area.