A veteran LAPD narcotics detective is suing the city of L.A., claiming he faced retaliation from supervisors and fellow officers after he refused to stop investigating a young woman’s suspicious death.
Alexander Tan alleged in his lawsuit, filed July 7 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, that his unwillingness to go along with a “coordinated cover-up” of the death of 18-year-old Amelia Salehpour led the department to derail a “distinguished” career that included numerous awards and commendations.
“The Department’s message through these actions is clear: officers who report misconduct, even when that misconduct leads to the death of an innocent person, will face career ruin. Officers who disclose violations of law, even if those violations involve criminal negligence, will be ostracized, harassed, and pushed out of the Department,” the suit said. “This is not just retaliation against one officer; it is a warning to all Department members that speaking truth to power will cost them their careers.”
In early 2024, Tan and his then-police partner, Det. Jose Verdin, had been conducting an investigation of what police described as a known “flop house” in Van Nuys when they learned of Salehpour’s death there.
Tan claimed in the lawsuit that Salehpour’s death was misclassified as an overdose. He alleged that he and his partner found evidence that she had instead been strangled. When the detectives reported their findings up their chain of command, Tan said in the lawsuit, the department retaliated by taking away resources from their investigation, “dismantling” their drug enforcement team, and ultimately separating the partners by transferring them to different units.
Tan’s suit claims the department “sought to weaken, silence, and break apart the very partnership that threatened to expose its wrongdoing.”
The motive, Tan alleged in the lawsuit, was fear by department officials that they would be sued by Salehpour’s family for mishandling the case.
“Plaintiff could not sit by and watch while the Department let a murder go unpunished, simply so to avoid liability for the negligence and indifference of” LAPD officials, the suit read.
Verdin has filed a retaliation lawsuit of his own, and the prosecutor that handled the case has filed a government claim, alleging she faced an “increasingly hostile work environment” as the LAPD sought to “silence” her.
The LAPD said it doesn’t discuss pending litigation and the city attorney’s office, which typically defends the city in civil matters, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Salehpour’s parents have said they believe that their daughter was murdered, while the LAPD and the L.A. County medical examiner’s office have maintained that she died of an overdose.
Last year, a deputy district attorney filed criminal charges — which have since been dropped — against seven people suspected of involvement in Salehpour’s death based on evidence gathered by Tan and his partner, along with the family’s private investigators.
The case began in July 2023, when Salehpour left an addiction treatment facility in Orange County and made her way to an area of Van Nuys that police say is a well-known sex-trafficking hub. She was found dead a few days later, according to her family and authorities.
The medical examiner’s office concluded that Salehpour died from a mix of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine.
But according to a lawsuit filed by her family against the city of L.A. and others, her death was ruled an overdose because she was found sprawled on the floor next to an open drawer with needles and a burned spoon with black tar heroin. The family has alleged in court filings that the scene was staged to cover up her killing.
The case was handled by detectives from the LAPD’s Valley homicide unit, but Tan said in his lawsuit that he and Verdin came to believe their colleagues had overlooked key evidence and began advocating — along with Salehpour’s parents — to have the death ruled a homicide.
Tan said in his legal claim that he and Verdin were ordered by their captain, Chris Zine, to cut off contact with the family. In another meeting with department brass, Tan alleges in the lawsuit, he was told to “leave it alone.”
The detectives were denied overtime pay for appearing in court and their schedule and days off were changed “punitively,” according to Tan’s lawsuit.
“The message was clear: pursue this investigation, and we will destroy your career,” the suit said. “We want you to sweep this under the rug and call it an overdose.”
The department sought to paint Salehpour as a “junkie,” seemingly to justify the decision not to pursue criminal charges against her suspected killers, according to the suit.
In the lawsuit, Tan described a Jan. 28, 2025, phone conversation in which a lieutenant allegedly told him: “Essentially, if I help you, I’m actually helping the family sue the Department.”
A Los Angeles County prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ranna Jahanshahi, took the side of Tan and his partner, according to the lawsuit, but the LAPD declined to turn over body-camera footage of the incident after Jahanshahi filed murder and other charges. Tan alleged in his civil complaint that the refusal was a highly unusual move given how closely police and prosecutors typically work together on criminal cases.
“The only possible reason for this refusal was to sabotage the criminal case in hopes that the murder charges would be dismissed,” Tan’s suit said, adding that the department later ignored a court order to turn over the camera footage. “This was not mere non-cooperation; it was criminal contempt of court in service of obstructing a murder investigation.”
Los Angeles authorities have insisted that their original classification of Salehpour’s death was correct — and accused her wealthy family of trying to twist the facts to serve their narrative of what happened.
The Salehpours have filed several lawsuits in connection with their daughter’s death; the city of Los Angeles is a defendant in one of the cases, which remains pending. Attorneys for the city have maintained there was no wrongdoing by investigators.
Salehpour’s father, Ali Salehpour, was an executive at Applied Materials Inc., a supplier of equipment used to make microchips. He and his wife, Sue, told The Times last year that they spent more than $1 million to hire a high-end investigative firm, which they say uncovered evidence that Amelia was being groomed for sex work, and that her death had been made to look like an overdose. They paid for a private autopsy, which found signs of strangulation, according to court filings in their civil claim against the city.
The family’s attorney, Alan Jackson, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, declined to comment when reached by phone on Thursday.
Verdin filed a retaliation lawsuit similar to Tan’s last month. Both detectives are represented by Matthew McNicholas, a longtime labor attorney who has built a career successfully suing the LAPD on behalf of aggrieved officers.
Jahanshahi, the prosecutor previously assigned to the case, alleged in her claim that she faced retaliation from within her own office after she found “negligence, misconduct and failures by LAPD officers,” and attempted to “shed light on the original attempted coverup orchestrated by the LAPD.”
The defendants who faced charges brought by Jahanshahi pleaded not guilty before the cases were dismissed. Through their lawyers, they accused Jahanshahi of colluding with the Salehpour family to prosecute them.
The post Overdose or homicide? LAPD detective claims he was ordered not to investigate girl’s death appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
