Activist groups sue L.A. schools seeking data on app used to report suspicious behavior

More than a year after the Los Angeles Unified School District rolled out an anonymous reporting app in an effort to make its campuses safer, advocacy groups are suing the district for creating “a culture of mass suspicion.” The Los Angeles Schools Anonymous Reporting app, also known as LASAR, was unveiled in March 2023 and allows anyone to anonymously report nonemergencies and suspicious activity to the Los Angeles School Police Department. Every LASAR report is sent to the Los Angeles School Police Department, where an officer will triage the incident and “determine the necessary resource to dispatch,” the report said. “Behavioral surveillance is always a proxy for racial profiling.” Joseph Williams, director of Students Deserve, said the school district needs a community-based approach to public safety, not behavioral surveillance and more police officers. “Someone could sound the alarm using this app and then you have the police involved.” Seventeen community organizations have signed a Stop LAPD Spying open letter condemning LASAR.