An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department found out the hard way that you can’t take metal near an MRI machine. Owners of a Los Angeles medical imaging center allege that their business was wrongly targeted by the LAPD during a raid in October 2023. Officers raided NoHo Diagnostic Center and detained one employee while they searched the business for illegal drugs. At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room — past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside — with his rifle dangling in his right hand, with an unsecured strap. MRI machines are tube-shaped scanners that use incredibly strong magnetic fields to create images of the brain, bones, joints and other internal organs. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then sucked the officer's rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine. The officer quickly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut down the MRI machine, deactivating it and evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor. During the raid, the LAPD they didn’t find any illegal drugs and only saw a typical medical facility with rooms used for conducting x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans and MRIs. NoHo Diagnostic Center subsequently filed a lawsuit against the LAPD for violating the owner’s constitutional rights and for damaging their medical equipment. The owners claimed that the officers' behavior during the raid was "nothing short of a disorganized circus, with no apparent rules, procedures, or even a hint of coordination.”
