Detective accused of giving Nazi-like salute resigns from South Pasadena Police Department

A veteran detective who once landed in hot water for disguising himself as a deputy and sneaking into Men’s Central Jail has resigned from the South Pasadena Police Department amid recent allegations that he repeatedly gave a Nazi-like salute last year during a training lecture hosted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to a news release and internal records.

City police officials announced Mark Lillienfeld’s decision to step down on Wednesday, hours after The Times first reported on the Sheriff’s Department’s probe into the 2023 allegations that ultimately saddled him with a “Do Not Rehire� designation.

As documented in a 40-page internal affairs report released by the Sheriff’s Department earlier this month, the probe found Lillienfeld had violated an equality policy while delivering a lecture at a May 2023 homicide investigator training session. The report said one of the officers who attended — a Black woman from the Los Angeles Police Department — accused Lillienfeld of making several inappropriate comments, once referring to Asian officers as “Chinamen� and later saying that she and another Black officer in the class would be the most likely suspects if anyone jumped him in the parking lot afterward.

At the time of the lecture, Lillienfeld had already retired from the Sheriff’s Department and was working as an outside vendor. State records show he began working as a detective for South Pasadena earlier this year.

“The City of South Pasadena and its Police Department takes this report seriously, and in no way does the department condone this type of behavior from any officer in its department,� the South Pasadena news release said last week. “The officer in question submitted his resignation, which Police Chief Brian Solinsky accepted.�

Also last week, the Sheriff’s Department said it would not hire Lillienfeld as an instructor for future classes. Meanwhile, the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training — which oversees law enforcement training standards statewide — said in a statement that it had only recently learned of the allegations and that it currently approves instructors based on information submitted by local agencies, but does not have a means to remove them.

“The Commission met last week and discussed this regulatory matter and are planning to make changes so that in the future we do have the ability to remove instructors such as this,� the statement said.

Though Lillienfeld did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday, his attorney, Tom Yu, said last week that the allegations were “completely baseless.� He said that because Lillienfeld had already retired, he had “no standing to appeal or grieve the one-sided investigation.�

In 2008, internal affairs records show Lillienfeld was reprimanded for referring to a woman as a “broad� and repeatedly using profanity during a different training lecture. Following his retirement in 2016, he began working as an investigator for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, where he was later caught on camera posing as a deputy in order to sneak contraband fast food to an inmate at Men’s Central Jail.

Afterward, he was temporarily banned from the county jails. In 2019, he returned to the Sheriff’s Department to join then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s controversial public corruption squad, a shadowy unit accused of targeting the sheriff’s critics — including oversight officials, county leaders and a former Times reporter who had received a leaked list of problem deputies.

Lillienfeld left the department again in January 2023 after Villanueva lost reelection and has since said the incident at Men’s Central Jail was part of a plan to overturn a wrongful conviction by winning the trust of the real killer.

The complaint that led to the “Do Not Rehire� designation stemmed from a two-week homicide investigator course that attracted about 30 officers and deputies from departments across Southern California. The Sheriff’s Department redacted all of their names in its 40-page report, as well as the name of the Los Angeles police officer whose concerns spurred the investigation.

“Throughout the entire lecture, Subject Lillienfeld was rude, condescending, unprofessional, and made inappropriate comments to several students in the class,� investigators wrote in a summary of their interview with the Los Angeles officer.

They said the officer told them she believed Lillienfeld targeted Asian and Black students with off-color jokes, once calling the only two Asian students “Chinamen� and repeatedly making fun of a woman’s name. 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 Los Angeles police officer said she thought Lillienfeld might have been doing it as a joke but that it seemed inappropriate because it “looked like something white supremacist groups do,� according to the report.

At the end of the class, she alleged, Lillienfeld apologized to her and the other Black woman — a Menifee Police Department officer — and thanked them for letting him make fun of them. Then, she told investigators, Lillienfeld allegedly told class participants that if they saw him outside in the parking lot with two bullets in the back of his head, they should look to the two Black women as the suspects.

The Menifee police officer told investigators that she remembered Lillienfeld was funny, but that she didn’t feel singled out by his jokes. Though she told investigators she remembered hearing Lillienfeld’s comments about the Black women “jumping him,� she said she wasn’t offended. She also said she didn’t remember seeing him give a Nazi salute.

When internal affairs investigators interviewed the other officers and deputies in the class, most said they didn’t recall seeing anything inappropriate. Some said Lillienfeld was funny or spoke highly of his lecture. One — 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.� At one point, Lillienfeld said “Sieg Heil� as he made the gesture, according to what the officer told investigators.

The officer said he thought Lillienfeld did the Nazi-like salute while trying to make a point regarding one of the investigations he taught, but he couldn’t remember the specifics.

After the class ended, the Los Angeles police officer detailed her concerns in her class evaluation, which sparked the internal investigation.

When investigators tried to interview Lillienfeld in April, the file says, he asked several questions about the case before refusing to do the interview. This year, after the internal affairs investigation concluded, the department confirmed that it placed a “Do Not Rehire� designation in Lillienfeld’s file.

Hours after The Times’ story published on Wednesday, Hans Johnson — a member of the county’s Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission — sent an email to South Pasadena officials expressing his concerns.

“Why is someone with such red flags of disqualifying misconduct now on staff with the South Pas. Police Department?� Johnson wrote, according to a copy of his email shared with The Times. “Is South Pasadena P.D. so strapped for staff that it fails to thoroughly review the background of detectives it hires, or worse, detects such red flags but ignores them?�

It’s not clear how many others reached out with similar concerns, but in its news release last week the South Pasadena Police Department said it had received “many calls and messages� about the matter.

“I want to make clear that our police department does not tolerate racism or unacceptable epithets of any kind from any member of our organization,� Solinsky wrote in the release. “Such acts are not in keeping with our values and the expectations that our City Council and our residents have from members of our police force.�