Vanessa Bryant can obtain names of officers who allegedly photographed theKobe Bryant crash site.- LASD attorneys said the officers' identities should be protected, citing fears of being hacked.
- The judge rejected that assertion, citing the officers' claims that the photos no longer exist.
Vanessa Bryant, the widow of NBA icon Kobe Bryant, can obtain the names of four officers who allegedly took pictures of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, their 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others, a federal judge ruled Monday.
US District Judge John F. Walter on Monday rejected a bid by attorneys for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and LA County to keep the names of the four LASD deputies under wraps, saying that "hackers may attempt to seek out and gain access to the individual deputies' devices to locate any photographs and publish them."
Walter rejected that in his ruling, saying the defendants' concern of hackers is "totally inconsistent with their position that such photographs no longer exist."
"Although the Court recognizes that this case has been the subject of public scrutiny and media attention and that the Deputy Defendants are legitimately concerned that they will encounter vitriol and social media attacks, such concerns, by themselves, are not sufficient to outweigh the public's strong interest in access," Walter said in the ruling, a copy of which was also posted on Vanessa Bryant's Instagram account.
On January 26, 2020, the helicopter carrying nine people, including Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, crashed in Calabasas, California, roughly 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles. In September of last year, Vanessa Bryant sued the LASD, accusing the deputies who allegedly shared the photos of "negligence" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of her right to privacy," the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
"In reality, however, no fewer than eight sheriff's deputies were at the scene snapping cell-phone photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches," the lawsuit stated. "As the department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site. Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes."
Last month, Bryant's lawyers filed an amended complaint to her civil-rights lawsuit to publicly name the deputies who they claim shared the "unauthorized" photos of the helicopter crash.
The amended complaint revealed more details about Bryant's claim, citing an LASD internal affairs report showing one officer "took 25 to 100 photos at the scene," which "spread quickly by text and phone-sharing technology over the next 48 hours among deputies who showed them to others," according to an LA Times report.