LAPD Skid Row officers doxxed within 72 hours of fatal March 2015 shooting, children's school information posted

What happened

On the afternoon of March 1, 2015, LAPD officers fatally shot Charly Leundeu Keunang, a homeless man known on Skid Row as "Africa," during a struggle. Bystanders recorded the shooting on their phones, and the video circulated widely on social media that same day.

Within 72 hours, at least two officers were doxxed online. According to CBS Los Angeles, someone posted the officers' names, home addresses, and details about their children's schools. The LAPD would not confirm whether the doxxed officers were involved in the shooting. Police1 and The Independent reported the same in the first few days after the shooting.

The LAPD held back the names of the officers it identified as involved while it assessed threats. The department publicly named Sgt. Chand Syed, Officer Francisco Martinez, and Officer Daniel Torres on March 19, 2015, 18 days after the shooting. It is not publicly confirmed whether the doxxed officers were among those three.

The shooting itself was reviewed separately. In December 2016, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office declined to file criminal charges, concluding the officers acted in self-defense. In May 2018, a civil jury found that Officer Martinez used excessive force and that Sgt. Syed failed to intervene; it did not find Officer Torres liable (LAist). The city later approved a $1.95 million settlement with Keunang's family.

How the information spread

Doxxing like this does not require an inside source. The information sits in public records and on commercial data broker sites.

None of the reporting on the case describes how whoever posted the information obtained it. But the general path is well understood, and it does not depend on a leak. A video that identifies an officer's agency and assignment narrows the pool of possible names. From a candidate name, people-search sites typically return a home address, and reverse lookups return relatives.

School details usually come from a different layer: public school directories, youth sports rosters, and school-board records. Broker pages link a name to relatives, and once a relative is named, their school can be one search away.

The department held names back for 18 days to assess threats. Whoever assembled the officers' information did not wait for that review to finish.

Why this case matters

This is an early, widely reported case of officer doxxing where the posted information included where the officers' children went to school. That moved the exposure past the home address to the people who live there and where they spend their days.

In this case, the department delayed releasing names for safety, but the public records and broker listings were available the whole time. They did not wait for the internal review to finish.

For a sworn officer, the relative links on broker pages are the connection that matters most. A home address is bad on its own, but the broker links that tie it to a spouse and then to a school district are what put the whole family at risk.

What this means for your exposure

If you work high-visibility patrol or a specialized assignment, the same chain runs faster and cheaper today. A video can post within seconds, a name can be matched online soon after, and a broker report costs a few dollars.

California Government Code §6254.21 lets peace officers and certain other officials send a written demand to a person or website publishing their home address or phone number, and requires removal within 48 hours of that demand. Enforcement is reactive: it works demand by demand, and brokers often republish the same records later. Confirm your current rights under the statute before relying on it.

California does not have an equivalent of New Jersey's Daniel's Law, which gives covered officers a direct claim against brokers that refuse to remove their information. The federal Lieu Act covers federal judges and their families, not local police.

Removing the broker listings reduces what a name search returns and cuts the relative links that lead from an officer to a spouse and, from there, toward a school. Frontline Privacy finds these listings, files removals, and keeps checking for records that come back.

For how the doxxing chain works, see doxxing. For LAPD specifically, see the LAPD department page.