Journalist Ben Camacho filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit on Tuesday against the city of Los Angeles, asking a court to strike a lawsuit the city filed against him to retrieve photos it provided him on the grounds that he merely exerted his constitutional right as a reporter. “Mr. Camacho did nothing wrong. He relied on the City’s statement that the Photographs included no ‘undercover’ officers,” according to the lawsuit. “He had the right under the state and federal constitutions to petition the City for those records and publish them on the internet after the City gave them to him. The Photographs have been spread far and wide on the internet.” The city sued Camacho earlier this month after the Los Angeles Police Department mistakenly gave him a roster that contained the photos of undercover police officers, a lawsuit an expert told The Daily Beast was “plainly unconstitutional.”
