LAPD via AP

Police search for Elisa Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was visiting Los Angeles and last seen at a downtown hotel.

Homicide detectives are investigating the disappearance of Elisa Lam, a Canadian tourist who was last seen in downtown Los Angeles on Jan. 31.

Lam, 21, had been staying at the Cecil Hotel on Main Street. Surveillance video released by the Los Angeles Police Department showed her entering the hotel’s elevator and attempting to use it.

Police said Lam, who is from Vancouver, British Columbia, had been planning to go to Santa Cruz on her trip to the U.S. Police said they did not know why she had come to California, however.

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An LAPD release described Lam as 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing about 115 pounds. She is of Chinese descent, and speaks Cantonese as well as English.

Police said she tends to use public transportation, including buses and trains.

The LAPD has asked that anyone with information about the case call homicide detectives at (213) 486-6890.

Canadian Mounties canceled plans to send hundreds of officers to Arizona for training after finding out the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is accused of racial profiling, unlawful stops and other offenses against Latinos.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were to receive training on recognizing and testing drug-impaired drivers in the Phoenix area between April 2012 and March 2013, the Vancouver Sun reported. The Phoenix area was picked for the training for a relatively large and consistent number of drug-impaired people taken into custody, the paper said.

But a scathing U.S. Justice Department report about Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his department, charged with wide-ranging civil rights violations against Latinos, led to the RCMP scrapping the training, the Sun reported on Monday.

Arpaio calls himself "America's toughest sheriff" for his crackdown on illegal immigration.

"It was almost immediate after having read the report that this would not be a facility that we would associate ourselves with," RCMP Inspector Allan Lucier told the Sun. "That just didn't meet our test."

David Eby, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, told the Sun that the RCMP made the right decision and urged the Mounties to find a "Made-in Canada" solution to the training. 

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