Get your info off the Internet. Now!

Steve James, Long Beach POA

The Long Beach POA is an official PubSecAlliance Affiliated Organziation.

Submitted by Steve James, president, Long Beach Police Officers Association

Recently here at the Long Beach P.D. in California, we had a high profile use of force incident that made the national news. This situation showed once again that it is imperative for law enforcement officers to remove all their personal information from the Internet.

Our association worked closely with the officers involved in this incident and referred them to a company that provides this service, but this is not a good way to do this. Waiting until an incident occurs could be too late.

Back in 2012 the Long Beach POA fought an appellate court decision regarding the release of Long Beach police officers’ names to the press. The case stemmed from a public records request by the LA Times in December 2010. The Times requested the name of every officer involved in a shooting over the last five years. The City was about to release those names when the LBPOA, along with the City Attorney’s Office on behalf of the Chief of Police, acquired an injunction stopping the release.

In January 2011 the trial court ruled that officers’ names were not protected just because he/she they were as involved in a shooting. We appealed that decision to the California Appellate Court, and they subsequently issued a decision ruling that the officers’ names must be released (with a few exceptions).

Every law enforcement officer in the country should be working to remove their personal information from the Internet. While there is no way to remove 100 percent of your information, there are ways to remove most of it, and at the very least make it very difficult for a non-law enforcement person to obtain your personal information.

In Long Beach we have had personal information of several of our officers posted on public websites after their names were released to the media following high profile cases. One of those officers received harassing and threatening phone calls after the information was posted on the public site.

Current law requires that a police officer’s private information be removed from the Internet within 48 hours of receiving a written demand to remove that information. While you can do this yourself, it is laborious and time consuming.

I have found three companies who assist with removing personal information from the internet. I actually paid one company to remove my personal information which was successful. The company I used can be found at www.leprivacy.org. They may be willing to offer a discounted one time price of $108.75 for their service which normally costs $145. This price includes removing information for not only you, but also all of your family members who live at your primary residence. The service also includes four years of monitoring for no additional cost. The other two companies can be found at www.leowebprotect.com and www.privacyforcops.org.

The process can take approximately 30 days from the time you sign up until the information is removed. In other words, please don’t wait for a critical incident to occur to try and get your information removed. Most likely it will be too late. We have urged our members to check their privacy settings, and to be very careful about what you post. Often times we are our own worst enemies.