LAPD Officer Killed for Whistleblowing Fellow Officers Who Committed Rape, Says Attorney

The mother of a Los Angeles police officer who died during a training exercise is filing a claim against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Officer Houston Tipping allegedly died during a training exercise. His death was ruled accidental, according to the coroner, but the family’s attorney has suggested otherwise.

Tipping was investigating an assault case within his own department at the time of his death. The assault took place about 10 months before Tipping died.

“In July of 2021, four police officers were involved in the sexual assault of a woman in the Los Angeles area. The report was taken by officer Tipping,” said Brad Gage, the Tipping family’s attorney.

“That report indicates that there was a sexual attack, it indicates that an object was placed into the sexual organ of the female victim and the female victim claims that she was raped by four different people—all LAPD officers—she knew the name of some of those officers because they were in uniform and had their name tags on. And the name of one of those officers with the name tag seems to correlate with one of the officers in the [sic] training,” said Gage.

LAPD officer Houston Tipping died after a training exercise during which he was beaten & slammed to the ground by other cops. Now his lawyer says at the time he died he was investigating a gang rape by 4 cops, at least one of whom was part of the exercise. pic.twitter.com/hah4hztyx2

— Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) October 4, 2022

"LAPD claims in Public Records Act requests there was no incident report at all," said Gage.

Tipping, who was acting as a bike instructor at LAPD’s academy, died during a training exercise in May. During the exercise, he was allegedly grappling with another officer and fell, resulting in a spinal cord injury—says the department. A medical record wrote that Tipping was “possibly dropped” on his head, according to a report from Fox 11 Los Angeles.

Medical reports for the 32-year-old’s death are also inconsistent, says Gage, with one showing that he had broken ribs from a LUCAS device, which is an automatic CPR machine, and others showing that the LUCAS device was never used.

Medical examiners in the United States are also statistically known to underreport or mislabel killings by police. Roughly 55% of police killings between 1980 and 2018 were listed as another cause of death by medical examiners.

Gage has also questioned why, when other training exercises were recorded on video, the one in which Tipping was killed was allegedly not recorded.

"LAPD claims there was no video taken this day," Gage said. "We don't believe that's accurate.”