For years, Los Angeles police personnel have been dispatched overseas for specialized training. But when it comes to Israel, a new watchdog review says the city has almost nothing on paper to show what those officers actually learned or whether anything they picked up was ever used back home.
A review by the Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the Los Angeles Police Department sent employees on multiple training trips to Israel while keeping little or no documentation of the content, lessons, or follow-up from those exchanges. Inspectors say the recordkeeping gap spans more than a decade of foreign travel and leaves both the department and the public unable to judge whether those trips were worth the money or the political heat. The findings have revived calls for tighter rules on who pays for travel and how foreign partners are vetted.
According to a report by the Office of the Inspector General, the review covered Jan. 1, 2014, through Aug. 1, 202,4 and identified 117 foreign training activities attended by 243 LAPD employees. Within that tally, the OIG found at least nine trips to Israel involving 18 employees that cost roughly $87,000 in total. One "Command and Control Counter‑Terrorism" delegation carried a $52,470 price tag that was covered by a federal grant.
At a recent Police Commission meeting, department officials told commissioners that LAPD has not adopted tactics, changed policies or built new training programs based on any of the foreign trips. They also said they have started work on a more robust tracking system for international training. That account, along with other details from the hearing, was reported by the Los Angeles Times.
What the inspector general recommended
The OIG is not calling for an end to overseas training. Instead, it wants LAPD to treat it less like a mystery tour and more like an accountable program with receipts.
Investigators urged the department to document at minimum the location, category and topics covered at each foreign training event. They also recommended that LAPD require detailed after‑training evaluation reports that spell out "key takeaways" and "practical applications" for department operations, so supervisors and the public can see what, if anything, comes back to Los Angeles.
The review further calls for standardized security protocols and a process to vet foreign contacts and funding sources in advance to identify possible safety or conflict‑of‑interest concerns. The OIG report lays out specific steps for both the department and the Police Commission to adopt.
Community concerns and outside funding
Civil‑rights organizations that pushed for this review say the thin paper trail, combined with the role of private foundations and grants in bankrolling some trips, raises obvious questions about influence and accountability.
"What are they learning, what are they bringing back home? All of that is not documented and is concerning," Amr Shabaik, legal director at CAIR Greater Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times. Organizations including CAIR have previously pressed the commission for more transparency around LAPD’s international engagements, and CAIR-LA flagged concerns about Israel trainings in earlier communications to the oversight board.
Oversight and transparency ahead
Police commissioners are now expected to weigh the OIG's recommendations alongside the department’s proposed tracking system at upcoming public meetings. Community advocates say they plan to keep pressure on for full disclosure of who pays for international travel, what is taught abroad and how, if at all, it shapes policing on Los Angeles streets.
For now, the OIG review makes one thing plain: without better records, neither LAPD leadership nor the public can say whether overseas training has made the city safer or imported tactics that deserve much closer scrutiny.
