By Rachel Treisman, National Public Radio
An appeals court in California has upheld the firing of two former Los Angeles Police Department officers for playing Pokémon Go rather than responding to a nearby robbery.
Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell, who were fired after the 2017 incident, had argued that the city violated the law by using their police car’s digital in-car video system recording as evidence and by denying them protections of the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act. A California appellate court denied their petition for reinstatement in a 32-page decision filed on Friday.
“A board of rights found petitioners guilty on multiple counts of misconduct, based in part on a digital in-car video system (DICVS) recording that captured petitioners willfully abdicating their duty to assist a commanding officer’s response to a robbery in progress and playing a Pokémon mobile phone game while on duty,” the document reads, before outlining the events of April 15, 2017, and the investigation that followed.
