Ex-LASD homicide investigator accused of giving Nazi-like salute during training lecture

Mark Lillienfeld, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide investigator, has been deemed ineligible for rehire after a police officer who attended one of his training lectures last year accused him of making racist comments and repeatedly giving a Nazi-like salute during the class, according to an internal affairs report. At the beginning of the course, according to what the LAPD officer later told investigators, the sergeant who oversaw the training warned the class that some of the instructors were “old school” and were “a little rough around the collar.” “Throughout the entire lecture, Subject Lillienfeld was rude, condescending, unprofessional, and made inappropriate comments to several students in the class,” investigators wrote in their summary of the officer’s interview. The officer also told investigators Lillienfeld talked a lot of “crap” about the Los Angeles Police Department and how its investigations were “messed up.” During the lecture, the report says, “Lillienfeld also clicked his heels together and extended one of his arms out like Hitler,” while saying something that sounded like “hike” or “height.” The woman told investigators she wasn’t sure whether it was intended to be a Nazi salute because she’d seen Nazi salutes only on television. Another — a La Verne police officer whose name was also redacted — said Lillienfeld repeatedly did a “weird thing” during class in which he would click his heels together and throw up his arm in a way the officer described as a “Nazi salute.” Lillienfeld did the salute two or three times during his lecture and at one point said “Sieg Heil” as he did, according to what the officer told investigators.