Police chief rejects Nithya Raman's accusations of LAPD cooperation with ICE

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell has reluctantly found himself in the middle of the L.A. mayor's race because one of the candidates has pledged to fire him if elected.

One of the reasons why L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman says she would fire LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell if elected has to do with accusations that the LAPD has protected and worked with ICE on the immigration raids.

"There has been reports, credible reports, that LAPD has actually shared information with ICE, including information from our fingerprint databases and through Flock cameras that has endangered Angelenos at this time when the Trump administration is wreaking havoc on our streets," said Raman during an interview with ABC7 this week.

"It is not true. I mean, she said that they were working on behalf of ICE. That is not true," Mayor Bass said about the accusation during her interview with ABC7 this week.

In an interview with ABC7, Chief McDonnell responded to Raman's accusation saying, "not at all. In fact, we're prohibited by state law in sharing information like that. When I look at the Flock camera situation, we're the ones who backed away from Flock because they weren't providing us with the comfort level we needed as the other two had in order to be able to ensure that the civil liberties issues that were raised were complied with...We work very closely with all of our federal partners, but we don't work with any of them on immigration enforcement. It's as easy as that."

On the fingerprint accusation, McDonnell said LAPD is required by law to share that information with the state, but maintains that's not the same thing as protecting and working with ICE.

"When we arrest somebody and book them, their fingerprints are taken. By state penal code, we are required to share that information with the California Department of Justice. The California Department of Justice then shares it with the federal database, and if you didn't do that, if somebody were to kill somebody in New York or Georgia or wherever and came to Los Angeles, when we run them through the system, we wouldn't know that they were a fugitive from justice. So, you could escape responsibility for a crime just by crossing state lines if we didn't have that national database," said McDonnell.

McDonnell says cooperation among local, state and federal law enforcement partners is critical to public safety, especially when it comes to hosting the Super Bowl next year and the Olympics in 2028. Raman hasn't said when she would fire McDonnell.

Raman has said McDonnell has not built trust with the immigrant community in Los Angeles.

"Well, that's kind of painful because that's not the read that I get now or the read that I've gotten in the 45 years I've worked with the, in policing in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County. When I look at where the organization was when I came on the job in 1981 versus where we are today, 57% of our sworn workforce are Latino. Over 50% of our civilian professional staff are Latino. And so we mirror the community that we serve and the members of this department come from our community," McDonnell said.

"When I hear that kind of thing I just shake my head and I, you know, I don't know there's the voice of the activists versus the voices of the public and I get the activists have their role and they're saying what they need to say based on their political agenda. And, I'm not a political person. I just focus on public safety," added McDonnell.

ABC7 reporter Josh Haskell asked McDonnell: "It doesn't really seem like you being thrust into this public debate has really bothered you too much?"

"No, you know, I've got thick skin. I've been doing this for 45 years. And you know I've run for public office, was the sheriff for four year and know what it's like in the political environment," McDonnell said. "It's ugly, you and some people take it to an extreme and do things they can't take back later."