LOS ANGELES – At least eight Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies were involved in taking photographs at Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash site in Calabasas last month and are currently under investigation.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said five deputies were full-time employees and three were reservists, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported. He told the station that the deputies told Internal Affairs that the photos have been deleted, under his direction.
“I was horrified,” he told the station. “I just felt betrayed by my own deputies ’cause it’s such a hard thing to do as a first responder, go to a scene of such a horrific accident, talking to the families, three families that were there at the Lost Hills station, personally, and their concerns about privacy, and how we could make the day better for them if any way possible. And to have this happen, It was heartbreaking.”
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Only personnel from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coroner’s Office were authorized to take photos of the crash scene, according to Villanueva.
Villanueva admits their internal policy is somewhat lax on having first responders from the Sheriff’s Department take unwarranted pictures at incident scenes.
The Sheriff says his department will also be heading up to Sacramento to get the law changed so if this were to happen again, those law enforcement officials could be criminally investigated.
It’s unclear how widely disseminated the photos became or what the consequences would be.
“Every police department struggles with the same thing, where people take photos and they’re not evidence,” Villanueva said, reported the Los Angeles Times. “So that’s a practice we have to make sure that everyone walks away, and there is no evidence other than the official photos of evidence that are taken for criminal purposes.”
Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others were killed in the Jan. 26 crash. Vanessa Bryant, his wife, said she was “absolutely devastated” about the allegations.
