We Regret to Inform You
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bruce Praet is a well-known name in law enforcement, especially in California. He co-founded a company called Lexipol that contracts with more than 95 percent of police departments in the state and offers its clients trainings and ready-made policies.
In one of Praet’s online training webinars, he offers a piece of advice that policing experts have called inhumane. It’s aimed at protecting officers and their departments from lawsuits.
After police kill someone, they are supposed to notify the family. Instead of delivering the news immediately, Praet advises officers to first ask about the person who was killed to get as much unflattering information as possible.
Reporter Brian Howey started looking into this advice when he was with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. This week on Reveal, he delves into his finding that officers have been using this tactic across California. He also finds that the information families disclosed before they knew their relative was killed later affected their lawsuits against law enforcement departments.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in November 2023.
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| 1:16.1 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 1:17.2 | I'm Al Ledson. |
| 1:23.3 | I'm going to turn it over to Bruce today, and maybe, Bruce, you can give us a few more words about yourself and then get started. |
| 1:26.0 | Sure, asking you an attorney to talk about himself. |
| 1:27.0 | This could go on for hours. |
| 1:33.8 | Bruce Preyett is not a household name, but maybe it should be, especially in California, |
| 1:39.5 | where he's been one of the most influential architects of policing policies for the last two decades. |
| 1:45.7 | Yeah, I mean, I was a cop for 10 years, and I've been defending him for, what, 34 years now in federal court. |
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