The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department—the nation’s largest—will not rehire Mark Lillienfeld, a 43-year-veteran of the department, as a contractor after the latter performed Nazi salutes and made racist comments during a training lecture for law-enforcement officers.
Lillienfeld “clicked his heels together and extended one of his arms out like Hitler, more than once, and made a sound that sounded like ‘hike,’ ‘height’ or ‘yike,’” per a report recently released by the department.
A summary of the two-week investigation into the incident includes statements from nearly three dozen witnesses.
Lillienfeld’s lawyer told The Los Angeles Times that the accusations are “completely baseless” and added that “my client has already retired and has no standing to appeal or grieve the one-sided investigation.”
The California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training, which oversees statewide law-enforcement training standards, stated that it plans to “make changes so that, in the future, we do have the ability to remove instructors such as this,” according to the Times.
Lillienfeld retired from the department in January 2023. It rehired him as a contractor.
