LAPD officer pleads no contest to filing false reports

A Los Angeles Police Department officer who had been awaiting trial pleaded no contest Thursday to six felony counts of filing a false report.

Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter that the prosecution is reserving the right to object to any defense motion to reduce the charges against Braxton Shaw to misdemeanors at the defendant's sentencing Sept. 25 in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

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The prosecutor told the judge that the plea deal calls for the 41-year- old defendant to serve two years probation, surrender his peace officer certification and perform 250 hours of community service.

Shaw -- who had been set to go on trial in September -- could face a maximum of seven years and four months in state prison if he violates any of the terms of his probation, the judge noted.

The six charges involve reports filed between March 2018 and February 2019.

Shaw's current status with the Los Angeles Police Department was not immediately available, although he signed a form Thursday in court in which he surrendered his certification as a peace officer.

Shaw was among six LAPD officers who had been assigned to the department's Metropolitan Division who were charged by the District Attorney's Office in 2020.

Shaw was charged in July 2020 along with fellow officers Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez in connection with allegations that field interview cards used by officers to conduct interviews contained false information and that some of that information was used to wrongfully enter individuals into a state gang database.

Shortly after that case was filed, the LAPD said the charges stemmed from a "misconduct investigation conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department's Internal Affairs Group and monitored by the Office of the Inspector General."

The case against Coblentz and Martinez was subsequently dismissed in April 2022 after Deputy District Attorney Kaveh Faturechi cited "additional evidence" received during a hearing in which another judge had ruled about two months earlier that there was not sufficient evidence to require Officers Rene Braga, Raul Uribe and Julio Garcia to stand trial on charges that they falsified records indicating that people they had stopped on suspicion of minor offenses were gang members.

In a ruling last October, a state appeals court panel reversed Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor's ruling finding Braga factually innocent of  one count each of filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence and Uribe and Garcia factually innocent of one count each of preparing false documentary evidence.

"The respondents in this case did not fully dispel all suspicion regarding their intentions in filling out the FI (field identification) cards. Therefore, they are not entitled to a finding of factual innocence," Associate Justice Gregory J. Weingart wrote on behalf of the panel.

"Although the respondents in this case failed to meet the `incredibly high' burden for a finding of factual innocence ... that in no way suggests that we believe the trial court erred when it dismissed the charges against the officers after the preliminary hearing. The People conceded the dismissal was proper when they failed to challenge it, and have not presented any arguments here for us to disagree with the magistrate's conclusion," Weingart wrote, with Presiding Justice Frances Rothschild and Associate Justice Helen I. Bendix concurring.

The appellate court panel's 32-page opinion noted that the justices "echo the trial court's assessment, upon dismissing the charges, that `there's a notion of trickle-down responsibility in this case,' in which three officers are singled out to face criminal charges under a poorly drafted and administered policy, while higher authorities within the department escape similar levels of scrutiny."

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