The Los Angeles Police Protective League is taking legal action against the owner of the "killer cop" website, alleging that he placed a bounty on them after releasing their headshots and other personal information.
The League filed the lawsuit late last week on behalf of Officers Adam Gross, Adrian Rodriguez and Douglas Panameno, according to the Los Angeles Times, requesting that their information be removed from killercop.com.
The lawsuit comes after the Los Angeles Police Department released pictures and names of thousands of officers, including those who work undercover, in response to a public records request.
LAPD detective Jamie McBride joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss his concern surrounding the move and why he believes the "reckless behavior" will "incite violence" against police officers.
"This has never happened before my 32-year career… this is uncharted territory for all of us," McBride told Ashley Strohmier. "These officers are very dedicated to what they're doing in their investigations. They're going to take precautions now and constantly look over their back on their way home from work.
"When they're out with their families, if somebody… yells your name, they got to realize, is this a friend or is this a foe? They don't know," he continued. "This is something we've never seen before."
The lawsuit mentions tweets from the owner of the "cop killer" website, Steven Sutcliffe, who allegedly suggested there would be a monetary reward for the killing of LAPD officers and detectives.
He posted under the Twitter handle, @KillerCop1984, which has since been deleted.
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The LA Times reported that Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an anti-police group, posted the information of the officers in an online database coined "Watch the Watchers."
"This website is intended as a tool to empower community members engaged in copwatch and other countersurveillance practices," the group wrote on its website. "You can use it to identify officers who are causing harm in your community. The website’s ease of use also makes it a political statement, flipping the direction of surveillance against the state’s agents."
"Police have vast information about all of us at their fingertips, yet they move in secrecy," it continued.
The website allows users to search for police by name or serial number. Users are then taken to a profile page on the searched officer, including their photo, serial number, ethnicity and year of hire.
It was later revealed, however, that the department accidentally released the information of the undercover officers, many of whom work with the Mexican Mafia and drug cartels, McBride noted.
Sources told the LA Times that there could be hundreds of undercover agents who have had their identities revealed.
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"People need to understand that law enforcement is a very unique profession. There's individuals out there that want to hurt or kill you strictly because of your profession," McBride said. "And now you have a website on Twitter that is putting bounties on officers' heads because these photos were released."
He also warned that the release will likely have a significant impact on recruitment - at a time when the department is already notably battling staffing shortages amid surging crime.
"This is going to have a big, big effect on recruitment because we're already understaffed by over a thousand officers, and it's hard for us to get anybody to take the test to come on this police department," McBride said.
"Now with this big blunder, who wants to come to this department? So, again, this is a very dangerous situation, and it's very reckless on police Administrator Liz Rhodes for doing this," he continued.
Sutcliffe, spoke out against the lawsuit on Friday, the LA Times reported, claiming he has acted under the realm of his First Amendment rights.
"It's malicious, it's retaliatory, it is vindictive and frivolous. Their motion is filed with lies," he said. "They are trying to silence my free speech. The truth cannot be retaliatory. It is First Amendment-protected speech."
However, McBride pushed back on his freedom of speech narrative, warning the bounties place officers and their families at risk, encouraging individuals "off center" to act on the "reward."
"That's not free speech. That's reckless behavior, and that's going to incite violence because you have people out there right now that are a little off-center, and they're going to look at this and say, 'hey, let's go kill a cop and make some money,'" McBride said.
"So it's not simple as free speech, so I think he's wrong," he continued.
Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.
