The Gang of Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department – specifically Sheriff Alex Villanueva – is in a moment of crisis. Last week, the members of the Civilian Oversight Commission, a body tasked with overseeing the LASD, called for Villanueva to resign. Those voices included even the most pro-law enforcement members of the COC. Members of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors echoed the sentiment. Most normal politicians would see nowhere else to turn.
But Villanueva has a profound, Trump-like ability to double-down when he faces a political problem. In response to calls for his resignation, Villanueva not only issued a press statement declaring he had no intention of stepping down; he also held a press conference to talk about the death of Dijon Kizzee, a Black man killed by LASD deputies in Westmont. Westmont is one of the unincorporated parts of South Los Angeles where the LASD has complete jurisdiction; there are no local police there. According to the LA Times, Kizzee was riding his bike on the wrong side of the street when deputies in a patrol car stopped him. Video shows a short foot chase before the deputies shoot Kizzee 19 times.
The LASD has given conflicting accounts of this shooting, although their current story focuses on a new detail in which Kizzee allegedly reached for a shotgun before he is killed. (I watched the video the LASD showed and couldn’t see this because there’s a wall in the way.) But perhaps more grotesque were Villanueva’s opening remarks on the high rate of crime in Westmont, which he used as justification for why deputies stopped Kizzee in the first place. He said, in echoes of Trump, that the Westmont region was dubbed “Death Alley,” adding, “They’re surviving almost in a war zone, as you can see.” He then blamed the Board of Supervisors, defund movements, and violence as an explanation for why Kizzee was stopped in the first place.
Calls for Villanueva’s resignation seem justified. No county officials have confidence in him, and for good reason. I personally think the rehire of Caren Caryl Mandoyan – a deputy who was fired by the previous sheriff Jim McDonnell for his affiliation with a LASD clique called the Reapers and a violent attack on his then-girlfriend – produced enough evidence to suggest that Villanueva was being, at best, dishonest. (More than one long-time LASD employee quit over the incident, which included altering paperwork.)
But here’s the problem. Villanueva’s resignation won’t change a department plagued by scandals, violence, and cover-ups. In 1992, a team of attorneys released the Kolts Report, which documented “disturbing evidence of excessive force and lax discipline” within the LASD. Culling court documents and public records, without the cooperation of the LASD, the researchers documented multiple instances of excessive violence in the L.A. County Jail, mostly against Black inmates.
In 1998, Lee Baca was sworn in as sheriff and, for almost four full terms and despite campaign promises to reform the office, he reigned over a department infamous for rampant corruption, the cruel abuse of inmates, and the preferential treatment of the rich and famous, including a 2007 incident where Baca released Paris Hilton early from a jail stint a judge ordered for reckless driving and a short-lived program that gave wealthy donors sheriff guns and badges. A 2011 ACLU report on the L.A. County Jail conditions called the office a “seedbed for continued lax supervision, violence, and corruption.”
Eventually, the FBI investigated Baca for the abuse of inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail, leading to tens of millions of dollars in monetary settlements to former L.A. County inmates who had been severely beaten by deputies in the jail. There was also a county-wide investigation and 2012 report which attributed most of the problems to a “failure of leadership.” Baca was also under fire for hiring deputies with problematic pasts.
Baca retired in early 2014 -- the year he would have run for re-election for the fifth time -- and was later convicted of obstruction of justice and providing false statements in connection to the FBI investigation, a scheme involving multiple deputies and an undercover FBI agent. Baca was sentenced to three years in prison, got to keep his pension, and was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The Board of Supervisors, which appoints interim sheriffs, tapped John Scott (a man who had previously left the LASD and gone to Orange County) to lead the LASD after Baca retired, but Scott opted not to run for office, leaving the 2014 field open.
Into the void came Jim McDonnell, LAPD veteran, the former chief of police in Long Beach and one of the authors of the 2012 report that led to Baca’s resignation, who was the first outside candidate in a century to win the election for Los Angeles Sheriff. (His opponent was former undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who was later convicted of obstructing justice and is now serving a 5-year prison sentence, but had been widely considered Baca’s designated successor.) The election wasn’t even close; McDonnell won by a firm margin.
Most sheriffs in Los Angeles have been elected as incumbents originally appointed by the Board, which was a widely accepted way to ensure that handpicked successors have a leg-up in elections. In fact, the tendency to elect incumbents is so pronounced that a dead incumbent, Sheriff Sherman Block, received almost 40% of the vote in Lee Baca’s first election in 1998, which helped propel Baca to victory his first term. McDonnell’s election was the first where there was no incumbent on the ballot, living or dead.
McDonnell, who had been second in command under the infamous Bill Bratton, promised to professionalize the department by firing misbehaving deputies and cracking down on deputy gangs. No liberal by any stretch, McDonnell wasn’t ready to give up the traditional tough-on-crime approach. But, once in office, McDonnell did make some reforms, eliminating steel-toed boots and the heavy metal flashlights deputies used to beat inmates and imposing stricter penalties for lying deputies.
At the same time, McDonnell’s policies also created enemies within the department. An avowed Republican, McDonnell was also supportive of ICE cooperation and did little to assuage the concerns of immigrant communities after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. He was also accused by some within the department of firing too many deputies for minor violations. As a result, when McDonnell’s re-election came around, Democrats and deputies were looking for another candidate that might better represent their needs. (There was also the additional wrinkle that McDonnell didn’t seem eager to campaign for re-election, failing to appear at candidate forums.)
In 2017, Villanueva launched his campaign for sheriff promising to “clean house.” A major plank of his election platform was support for LASD deputies who, he said, had been unfairly fired by the previous administration. For him, the issue was personal—Villanueva was formerly a commander in the Pico Rivera station, but he retired in February of 2018, claiming that he had been unfairly blocked by higher-ups from promotion.
We know the rest. Villanueva swept up Democratic endorsements and won in 2018 with the support of the deputies’ union. But he was actually more of the same, this time with populist backing from deputies who were aggravated by McDonnell, the professionalizing outsider. Villanueva has been compared to Donald Trump in style and substance, which has made it easier for the Board of Supervisors to accept reforms to reduce the size, power, and budget of the LASD. But Villanueva is like Trump in another aspect that will make it more difficult to get rid of him – he rides on a tide of deputy support, a form of “thin blue line” populism that is hard to quash, especially if it’s not being acknowledged for what it is.
Other Reading
Maurice Chammah wrote a great piece about the Brevard County sheriff race and why these elections matter.
The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram finally calls for Sheriff Bill Waybourn to show his receipts. A little tepid, but progress.
This piece was as good as everyone says it is, though I think the LASD gets by without enough scrutiny.