LAPD gang officers failed to inform people their encounters were voluntary in about 75% of stops, an Inspector General audit presented to commissioners Tuesday, Sept. 1, found.

The audit, first reported by LA Local, examined 300 gang unit stops from 2023 and found violations across nearly every category of department policy. Officers did not obtain consent before searching in about 20% of encounters. Body cameras went unactivated in 28% of stops. Dash cameras were off in 40%.

Inspector General Matthew Barragan told the Board of Police Commissioners that the review found compliance failures in consent searches, camera activation and photographing of detainees. His team reviewed more than 10,000 body-cam and dash-cam videos and found six encounters where stops went completely unreported.

The photo violations were especially stark. About 83% of gang investigation photos violated policy: 14 people were handcuffed, eight were threatened and eight did not consent. Officers failed to hand out business cards, required so detainees can identify who stopped them, in 97% of applicable encounters. Officers also failed to record 61 detentions entirely, while mislabeling 35% of recorded detentions as "curbside" when they were not.

Commissioner Heather Aubry called the findings significant and troubling. Commissioner Jeffrey Skobin questioned why the audit, conducted in 2024 on 2023 data, took until September 2026 to reach the public.

"We're sitting here in September now of 2026 and we really don't know what things look like today," Skobin said.

Department representatives told commissioners that training has improved and complaints have declined since 2023. An internal affairs captain said there were 28 sustained complaints against gang unit officers that year for body-cam and search violations.

The findings land amid broader scrutiny of LAPD gang units. The department temporarily disbanded the 77th Street Division gang squad in late May after officers were accused of turning off body cameras and failing to report stops. Fourteen officers and two sergeants were reassigned to administrative duties, according to the News Tribune. A separate Internal Affairs report in June described a San Fernando Valley gang unit as a "law enforcement gang" with a "rampant culture of misconduct," the Los Angeles Times reported. A majority of that unit's officers and supervisors have been fired or resigned.

Hamid Khan, an advocate with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, told commissioners that audits alone are not enough. He said the department is "flawed by design" and that recommendations on paper do not change how officers operate.

The Police Commission said it would wait for a second Inspector General audit reviewing pretext stops by non-gang unit officers before making further policy changes, the LA Times reported. No date has been set for that presentation.