This week at a town hall, Los Angeles County Sheriff and Zen master Alex Villanueva compared this moment in the history of the LASD to 1850, the date the office was allegedly founded. He said:
Now here’s the weird thing. 1850, we were the very first county office. The very first one was the sheriff…But there was something in common in those days and today. A lack of law enforcement resources. Yes, scary to think that we share something in common with 1850 but today we do that with the defunding of law enforcement.
Villanueva did not mention that one reason why funding might be different than it was in 1850 (aside from the fact that the office of sheriff was unpaid in that era) is the result of the many lawsuits settled since Villanueva took office – the vast majority the result of poor management, misbehavior, a lack of ethics, and excessive violence. The LA Times Editorial Board explained this in reference to the $30 million award to Vanessa Bryant and Chris Chester. Not only do law enforcement agencies benefit from qualified immunity – a court-created doctrine that prevents many lawsuits against officers – but the structure of counties and police means that the departments responsible are not the ones paying the tab. Per the LA Times:
Boards of supervisors and city councils rarely cut police agency budgets in response to costly misconduct, because that appears to the public to mean less protection against crime. That’s the racket: The public has to suck it up one way or another, paying either the bill for police misconduct or the presumed public safety cost of diminished policing.
That LA Times editorial suggests one way to approach this problem: tying the sheriff’s compensation and job security to liabilities incurred by lawsuits. There is some logic in treating a sheriff like a CEO – after all, when a corporation fails, the CEO often (though certainly not always) – takes the fall and suffers the consequences in terms of reputation (if not always compensation, thanks to golden parachutes and the enduring viability of being a rich, white guy).
What the editorial board leaves out is that the forced election of sheriffs means that there can never be this type of direct accountability. In the first instance, the voting public receives incomplete information, often not in time for the election, such that they cannot arm themselves at the voting booth with the knowledge that a sheriff has cost them billions of dollars in payouts. County officials, like the Board of Supervisors, better understand the budget and what the sheriff costs them.
Second, an election is not the proper mechanism to hold sheriffs accountable. Communities cannot wait four years for policing to be fixed when people are dying now. Sheriff elections are tainted with low voter turn-out and a lack of competition, especially in California where candidates for sheriff must be “trained” “law enforcement” “officers.” Deliberative democracy is good, for sure, but it’s not good enough when it comes to violent state overreach now.
The solution? Well, if you ask me, the solution is to eliminate the position of sheriff. In California, this would be relatively easy. Yes, the office of sheriff is written into the state constitution – but that is easy to change. And there’s no need to be precious about it; what Villanueva didn’t mention was that in 1850, the sheriff had only two part-time deputies. The drafters of the California constitution never imagined the current police state or that the LASD would become the largest sheriff’s office in the country.
And for those who feel squeamish about eliminating the sheriff’s office entirely? Well, the California Constitution could be changed to allow counties to vote on whether to have a sheriff or not. Then, perhaps, democracy would actually be meaningful in Los Angeles County.
ICYMI
What I’m Reading
The AP published a story about how police agencies – large and small – are using “an obscure cellphone tracking tool” to surveil communities.
More proof that Sheriff Dar Leaf was trying to unsuccessfully subpoena voting machines.
Misdemeanor arrests are climbing in NYC.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is creating a “police aristocracy” (and making Amy Coney Barrett smile) by giving them money to adopt children from the welfare system.