LAPD Officer Houston Tipping - attorney's press conference 10/4/22

A Los Angeles officer who died in what the department said was a training accident was actually killed for being a possible whistleblower — and was about to reveal information about a gang rape by police, his family claims. Houston Tipping, 32, died three days after an on-duty incident at the department’s Elysian Park Academy on May 26. His death has been ruled an accident. The five-year veteran was acting as a bike instructor in a scenario that involved grappling with another officer, LAPD said in a statement after his death. Tipping’s mother, Shirley Huffman, has filed a claim alleging wrongful death and civil rights violations, saying he was “repeatedly struck in the head severely enough that he bled,” and that he suffered multiple breaks in his neck, causing his death. On Monday, an attorney for Tipping’s family said the cop was targeted because he was investigating a gang rape by four other officers — at least one of whom who was at the deadly training session — and was about to reveal damning information, KTLA reported. “I’m certainly alleging that at least one officer engaged in an abuse of force in order to try and scare or harm Officer Tipping in order to prevent him from investigating a claim of rape,” attorney Bradley Gage told reporters, Fox News reported. Tipping had reportedly taken the incident report of the alleged sexual assault from July 2021. “The female victim claimed that she was raped by four different people — all LAPD officers,” Gage said at a press conference, adding that the identity of one of the cops appears to “correlate with one of the officers that was at the bicycle training.” #houstontipping #lapd #whistleblower