Sheriff Alex Villanueva Won the Mayoral Debate
Newsletter for March 29, 2022
This week, the Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Commission announced that it would open an official investigation into gang activity within the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. This move came a year after Cerise Castle’s series on LASD gangs for Knock LA and after reports by both the RAND Corporation and Loyola Law School, all of which confirmed that gangs of deputies still operate within the LASD. These gangs, which have a long history in the department, basically operate as criminal gangs, encouraging violence amongst members and using identifying tattoos and symbols to signify members’ allegiance. California law already prohibits law enforcement gangs, which are also a problem in other departments across the country.
Per Sean Kennedy, a Loyola law professor and COC chair:
Deputy gangs have fostered and promoted excessive force against citizens, discriminated against other deputies based on race and gender, and undermined the chain of command and discipline. Despite years of documented history of this issue, the Department has failed to eliminate the gangs.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva responded with his usual insouciance in a deranged Facebook post calling the investigation a “fishing expedition,” and setting up his argument that this is about the forthcoming election. “We’re not hiding anything from anybody,” he said even as he avoids saying anything to anybody.
This month, Villanueva officially launched his re-election campaign where he, oddly and at the behest of no one, claimed to have “won the mayoral debate” (see above). His coffers full, Villanueva seems poised to enter the campaign headlining his bad temper and imperious attitude as a good thing. The Trump of Los Angeles, as people say? The comparison is not just getting old, but it also seems – to me at least – to minimize some of the specifics about Villanueva’s identify politics that are so essential to his success with some voters.
In an interview (with commentary) published in the L.A. Times, Gustavo Arellano broke down Villanueva’s appeal to voters and how he uses his Latino heritage to drive a wedge between racial and ethnic factions, using his affiliation with the Latino community to argue, somewhat paradoxically, that he is more genuinely concerned with equity and fairness, that his critics are racist, and that his own racism is somewhat speaking truth to power. Arellano offers an insightful critique into Villanueva’s strategy in addition to fair commentary on how Villanueva is both changing the racial/ ethnic composition of the LASD (54% of employees are Latinos, a big change) while also using what some (me) might call “identity politics” in a way that is generally baffling to elite leftists (also, me, if I am honest), who like to imagine that all people of color will come together to agree on progressive values, like a reduction in police and policing budgets.
Not only does Arellano point out that, according to polling, Latinos in Los Angeles prefer to see police funding stay the same or increase, he also links this to Villanueva’s political position as a “curt Latino populist,” which includes stoking racial animus. (Arellano compares Villanueva to Nixon because of this.) In other words, Villanueva sees himself as “pushing back” against Black Lives Matter (whatever that means), which explains his affinity with far-right sheriffs and pundits, despite his avowed Democratic party affiliation. In my interview with Sheriff Mark Lamb, for example, the sheriff expressed a great deal of admiration for Villanueva (even though they have never met), largely on this shared notion of anti-Black racism and linking demands of racial equality with noxious “wokeism.”
Villanueva’s campaign strategist Javier Gonzalez is one of the architects of this strategy. After the interview was published, he wrote multiple tweets calling Arellano “taco boy” to imply that he was somehow a pawn for “white elites.”
I have also been the subject of Gonzalez’s critique. Unlike Arellano, I am a white outsider, which makes the critique feel more valid. My quick gloss — there IS something obnoxious about “white people woke” that patronizes and fetishizes the experiences of non-white people, something that Villanueva taps into. And that same sense of “white wokeism” also has a tendency to minimize or ignore socio-political differences in and among racial and ethnic groups, if I may borrow a bit from Jay Caspian Kang. I appreciate writers like Arellano who intelligently examine it with their own first-hand knowledge.
Gonzalez, who has been a grassroots organizer and campaign manager for decades, identified once as a left-leaning liberal (even running a local Bernie Sanders campaign) but, after Villanueva’s 2016 win, seem to have cast his lot with a candidate who seems determined to drive a wedge in the county’s Democratic party and take advantage of the growing backlash to criminal system reform in California by linking it to racial animus and vague fears of “wokeism.”
And another thing: Last week, the L.A. Times reported that the LASD covered up an incident where a deputy killed a man by kneeling on his head for three minutes while handcuffing him. The basic contours of the incident (as reported publicly) are as follows: On March 10, 2021 (just as the Derek Chauvin trial started), Deputy Douglas Johnson told Enzo Escalante to face the wall as a response to Escalante and another man joking around while they waited for their court appearance. Escalante punched Johnson, and, in response, Johnson tackled Escalante to the ground, kneeling on his head much longer than necessary to handcuff him (according to the L.A. Times, Johnson continued to hold his knee on Escalante’s head three minutes after handcuffing.)
Johnson was one of the deputies involved in the illegal sharing of pictures from the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash. Multiple LASD command officers reviewed Johnson’s attack on Escalante and found it violated policy, recommending disciplinary action. But it appears that no one disciplined Johnson and it’s unclear what the status is at this point. (Criminal charges were pursued against Escalante for resisting.)
Notable in this horrific incident is the knowledge that some sworn personnel within the LASD are aware that Villanueva (and his supporters among the top brass, I assume) are pulling strings and burying investigations … as well as who knows what else? Wokeism, identity politics, or …just plain bad policing?