An LAPD officer was charged this week with six misdemeanors for allegedly sharing explicit images of his wife, without her permission, with other officers, according to court records.
Officer Brady Lamas was charged under California’s relatively new, so-called revenge porn law — which makes it illegal to distribute private or explicit photos of another person without their permission, when the sharing is likely to cause serious emotional distress.
Lamas, through an attorney, denied the accusations.
A separate restraining order application filed in civil court by Lamas’ wife, who is also an LAPD officer, said she discovered the images and videos of herself by accident in January, and said she believes Lamas had used social media and messaging applications on his cellphone to send the material to other male officers.
The wife said she made a crime report with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which took her husband’s phone as evidence.
The LAPD said in a written statement Thursday that Lamas was removed from police work and assigned to his home soon after the wife’s complaint in Jan. 2022.
“The Department is fully cooperating with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office with this matter and is troubled by the officer’s alleged off-duty conduct which does not reflect the values of the Los Angeles Police Department,” the statement said, which was not attributed to an official or spokesperson.
Brady’s defense attorney, Sharon Beth Marshall, said in a emailed statement that Lamas should be presumed innocent, and, “I will vigorously and zealously protect him and do everything in my power to maintain that presumption.”
The LAPD has dealt with two recent employee lawsuits that involved officers sharing explicit photos, and in both cases, the victims said the Department did not initially take their complaints about the photo-sharing seriously.
In September a jury in Downtown LA awarded LAPD Captain Lillian Carranza $4 million, after she claimed Department executives ignored her reports officers were using their cellphones to share a faked topless photo that was purported to be her. Carranza said the episode has caused her great emotional distress.
In 2020 the City agreed to pay former detective Ysabel Villegas, the wife of former assistant chief Jorge Villegas, about $1.5 million. Villegas sued after another officer ‘sex-torted’ her by sharing explicit images and threatening to send explicit images to other officers. Villegas also claimed her efforts to get the LAPD to investigate weren’t taken seriously.
Source: NBC Los Angeles
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