The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Robert Luna, claiming the department violated county gunowners’ 2nd Amendment rights by delaying thousands of concealed carry permit application decisions for “unreasonable” periods of time.
In a statement, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff’s Department “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”
The complaint, filed in the Central District of California, the federal court in Los Angeles, cites data provided by the Sheriff’s Department about the more than 8,000 concealed carry permit applications and renewal applications it received between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31.
During that period, the DOJ wrote, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the Sheriff’s Department to schedule interviews to approve the applications or “otherwise” advance them.
As a result, of the nearly 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses it received during those 15 months, “LASD issued only two licenses.” Two others were denied, the DOJ said, while the rest remained pending or were withdrawn.
The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment Monday. In March, when the Trump administration announced its 2nd Amendment investigation, the department said it was “committed to processing all Concealed Carry Weapons [CCW] applications in compliance with state and local laws.”
The department’s statement said it had approved 15,000 applications for concealed carry licenses but that because of “a significant staffing crisis in our CCW Unit” it was “diligenty working through approximately 4,000 active cases.”
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Monday that the DOJ was working to safeguard the 2nd Amendment, which “protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.”
“Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it,” Bondi said. “This Department of Justice will continue to fight for the Second Amendment.”
The federal agency’s complaint alleged that the practice of delaying the applications effectively forced gun permit applicants “to abandon their constitutional rights through administrative exhaustion.”
In December 2023, the California Rifle and Pistol Assn. sued the Sheriff’s Department over what it alleged were improper delays and rejections of applications for concealed carry licenses. In January, U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn P. Garnett ordered the department to reduce delays.
In the new complaint, the DOJ called on the court to issue a permanent injunction.
Gun rights groups heralded the move by the Trump administration.
“This is a landmark lawsuit in that it’s the first time the Department of Justice has ever filed a case in support of gun owners,” Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to see the federal government step up and defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens and hope this pattern continues around the country.”
The race for Los Angeles County sheriff is already heating up — even with the primary not scheduled until next June. Six candidates have officially entered the field to unseat Robert Luna, with the early challengers slinging barbs, probing the incumbent’s political weaknesses and setting the stage for a heated campaign in the coming months.
Most vocal and well-known among the contenders is former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who lost to Luna in 2022 and is now vying for a rematch. He is among a field of current and former lawmen who have criticized Luna’s time in office as ineffective, uninspiring and opaque.
Luna told The Times he deserves to keep his job through 2030, arguing voters should choose stability as Southern California prepares to host major events in the coming years.
“The last thing we need is more inconsistency in leadership as we start working toward the World Cup and the Olympics,” Luna said.
Villanueva registered a campaign committee in July and has since leveraged his ability to draw attention like few others in L.A. politics.
But the political dynamics have changed since 2022, when Joe Biden was president and Villanueva was still in charge of California’s largest law enforcement agency. Now, President Trump has ratcheted up political pressure on L.A., and last year, Janice Hahn defeated Villanueva in the primary for her county supervisor seat by a nearly 30-point margin.
Through it all, Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, said it seems as though “Luna is generally liked, perhaps because he has brought a steady hand to the department” after what she termed “upheaval” under Villanueva.
The former sheriff has been heavily criticized for his combative personal style, pursuit of political vendettas and his handling of investigations into so-called deputy gangs deputies and other alleged misconduct.
“Does Villanueva have a lane to come back? I don’t think so,” said Sadhwani.
Luna launched jabs at his opponents, with the sharpest reserved for his predecessor.
“Not one of those individuals that is running comes close to the experience that I have and the accomplishments that I’ve had so far,” Luna said. “There were a lot of controversies and scandals with the previous sheriff that, again, eroded public trust.”
And yet, there’s no conversation about the sheriff’s race that won’t mention Villanueva, whose name recognition runs deep across L.A. County.
Villanueva told The Times he’s “eager to get back in the saddle,” especially now, when “there are prosecutors ready to prosecute,” a nod to the tough-on-crime stances of Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva talks with reporters at an election night gathering in Boyle Heights on June 7, 2022, when he was defeated by Robert Luna.
(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
Villanueva had strong words for his 2022 opponent.
“The status quo is failing miserably the people of L.A. County,” he said. “I just can’t believe what Luna’s done to the organization I’ve spent my entire adult life in.”
Others jockeying for contention are pitching themselves as offering a breath of fresh air.
Lt. Eric Strong, who has served over 30 years in law enforcement and was seen as the most progressive of the 2022 candidates, is throwing his hat back in the ring after coming in third in that year.
“What really got me interested in running is seeing the continued failed leadership within the department,” Strong said in a recent interview. “Nothing’s changed. … Honestly Luna’s just a quieter version of Alex Villanueva.”
Then there’s Oscar Martinez, a proud immigrant and U.S. Marine Corps. veteran who made a career at the sheriff’s department after multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Andre White, 34, is the youngest candidate. A Compton-raised detective with 11 years at the department, he promises to take a “community-oriented approach” if he’s elected sheriff.
Brendan Corbett served as the assistant sheriff for custody operations under Villanueva.
Lastly, there’s Capt. Mike Bornman, who has decades of experience in the department and lists a “comprehensive forensic audit” of its books as the top priority on his campaign website.
In a recent phone interview, Bornman said he considered Luna a “vulnerable” incumbent.
The sheriff has faced criticism from opponents and advocates who say he has done too little to improve jail conditions, leading to a surge in inmate deaths this year. Like Villanueva, he has also faced pressure to do more to root out deputy gangs and boost recruitment.
“The morale is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” Bornman said. “Something has to change,” he added. “I don’t think the department can take another four more years with the guy.”
Political analysts cautioned that the race is sill wide open, with one expert declining to speculate during the “embryonic” stages as the field takes shape.
Anything can happen in the eight months remaining before the primary, but Sadhwani said one thing is clear: Unseating the current sheriff won’t be easy.
“I will say in general that an incumbent such as Luna typically has the upper hand and challengers need not only cause but the campaign fundraising ability to get their message out — no small feat in a county as large as L.A.”
So far, fundraising has been mostly anemic, at least according to the county’s most recent comprehensive campaign finance data available for the sheriff’s race, which covers only Jan. 1 through June 30.
Over those six months, Luna raised about $393,000; Bornman brought in nearly $23,000 of contributions; Martinez brought in about $6,700; and White raised less than $3,000. The other three candidates had not even declared their candidacies by June 30.
In the push to expand as quickly as possible, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aggressively wooing recruits with experience slapping handcuffs on suspects: sheriff’s deputies, state troopers and local cops.
The agency even shelled out for airtime during an NFL game with an ad explicitly targeting officers.
“In sanctuary cities, dangerous illegals walk free as police are forced to stand down,” the August recruitment ad warned over a sunset panorama of the Los Angeles skyline. “Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst.”
To meet its hiring goal, the Trump administration is offering hefty signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness and six-figure salaries to would-be deportation officers.
ICE has also broadened its pool of potential applicants by dropping age requirements, eliminating Spanish-language proficiency requirements and cutting back on training for new hires with law enforcement experience.
Along the way, the agency has walked a delicate line, seeking to maintain cordial relations with local department leaders while also trying to poach their officers.
“We’re not trying to pillage a bunch of officers from other agencies,” said Tim Oberle, an ICE spokesman. “If you see opportunities to move up, make more money to take care of your family, of course you’re going to want it.”
But despite the generous new compensation packages, experts said ICE is still coming up short in some of the places it needs agents the most.
“The pay in California is incredible,” said Jason Litchney of All-Star Talent, a recruiting firm. “Some of these Bay Area agencies are $200,000 a year without overtime.”
Even entry level base pay for a Los Angeles Police Department officer is more than $90,000 year. In San Francisco, it’s close to $120,000. While ICE pays far more in California than in most other states, cash alone is less likely to induce many local cops to swap their dress blues for fatigues and a neck gaiter.
“If you were a state police officer who’s harbored a desire to become a federal agent, I don’t know if you want to join ICE at this time,” said John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Obama.
Police agencies nationwide have struggled for years to recruit and retain qualified officers. The LAPD has only graduated an average of 31 recruits in its past 10 academy classes, about half the number needed to keep pace with the city’s plan to grow the force to 9,500 officers.
“That is a tremendous issue for us,” said Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, a professional advocacy organization.
A person walks near the stage during a hiring fair by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 26 in Arlington, Texas.
(Julio Cortez / Associated Press)
ICE, too, has long failed to meet its staffing targets. As of a year ago, the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations — it’s dedicated deportation force — had 6,050 officers, barely more than in 2021.
As of Sep. 16, the Department of Homeland Security said it has sent out more than 18,000 tentative job offers after a summer recruitment campaign that drew more than 150,000 applications.
It did not specify how many applicants were working cops.
At an ICE career expo in Texas last month, the agency at times turned away anyone who didn’t already have authorization to carry a badge or an honorable discharge from the military.
“We have so many people who are current police officers who are trying to get on the job right now and that’s who we’ve been prioritizing,” one ICE official at the event said.
But the spirited pursuit of rank-and-file officers has sparked anger and resentment among top cops around the country.
“Agencies are short-staffed,” said David J. Bier, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute. “They are complaining constantly about recruitment and retention and looking every which way to maintain their workforce — and here comes along ICE — trying to pull those officers away.”
Law enforcement experts say that outside of California, especially in lower income states, many young officers take home about as much as public school teachers, making the opportunity for newer hires to jump ship for a federal gig even more enticing.
Some fear the ICE hiring spree will attract problematic candidates.
“The scariest part keeping me up at night is you hear agencies say we’re lowering standards because we can’t hire,” said Justin Biedinger, head of Guardian Alliance Technologies, which streamlines background checks, applicant testing and other qualifications for law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, the Trump administration is finding ways to deputize local cops without actually hiring them.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at the Wilshire Federal Building in June in Los Angeles.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
As of early September, according to the program website, 474 agencies in 32 states were participating, up from 141 agencies in March.
Some states such as Georgia and Florida require their agencies to apply for the program. Others, including California, forbid it.
But that, too, could soon change.
The administration is exploring ways to force holdouts to comply, including by conditioning millions of dollars of funding for domestic violence shelters, rape crisis hotlines and child abuse centers on compliance with its immigration directives. In response, California and several other states have sued.
Even in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions such as Los Angeles, where local laws prohibit cops from participating in civil immigration enforcement, police officers have found themselves tangled up in federal operations. The LAPD has drawn criticism for officers responding to the scenes of ICE arrests where confrontations have erupted.
“We get called a lot to come out and assist in providing security or making sure that it doesn’t turn violent,” said Marvel, the police advocacy organization president.
“The vast majority of peace officers do not want to do immigration enforcement because that’s not the job they signed up for,” Marvel said. “We want to protect the community.”
Among the agency’s most vocal critics, the push to beef up ICE is viewed as both dangerous and counterproductive.
“Punishing violent criminals is the work of local and state law enforcement,” said Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute. “If we were to abolish ICE and devote the money to those things, we’d have lower violence and crime.”
The cash and perks ICE is dangling will inevitably draw more people, experts said, but some warned that newly minted deportation officers should be careful about mortgaging their future.
The potential $50,000 hiring bonus is paid out in installments over several years — and the role may lack job security.
At the same time Trump is doubling ICE’s headcount, he’s also rewriting the rules to make it far easier to ax federal workers, said Sandweg, the former Obama official.
That could come back to haunt many agency recruits four years from now, he said: “I think there’s a very good chance a future Democratic administration is going to eliminate a lot of these positions.”
Zurie Pope, a Times fellow with the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, contributed to this report.
An oversight body that has documented and exposed substandard jail conditions for decades would cease to exist if the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moves forward with a cost-cutting plan.
L.A. County could save about $40,000 a year by eliminating the Sybil Brand Commission, according to an August report prepared for the supervisors by the board’s Executive Office.
The Sybil Brand Commission’s 10 members serve a key oversight role, regularly conducting unannounced inspections of county jails and lockups.
Named for a philanthropist and activist who worked to improve jail conditions for women in L.A. starting in the 1940s, the commission’s findings were recently cited in a state lawsuit over what Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called a “humanitarian crisis” inside the county jails.
“In June 2024, the Sybil Brand Commission reported that multiple dorms at Men’s Central were overcrowded with broken toilets … and ceilings that had been painted over to cover mold,” Bonta’s office wrote in its complaint, which seeks to compel reforms by the county and sheriff’s department.
The recommendation to “sunset” the commission comes amid a spike in in-custody deaths with 38 so far this year, which puts the county on track for what Bonta’s office said would mark at least a 20-year high.
The Executive Office for the Board of Supervisors responded to questions from The Times with a statement Friday that said its report’s “purpose was not to eliminate oversight or input,” but to demonstrate “where responsibilities overlap and where efficiencies could strengthen oversight and support.”
The unattributed statement said the report found issues with “commissioner availability” that led to meeting cancellations and put “limits on their ability to conduct inspections.”
The Sybil Brand Commission took up the possibility of elimination at its meeting earlier this month, when commissioners and advocates railed against the proposal as a shortsighted way to cut costs that will leave county inmates more vulnerable to mistreatment and neglect.
In a separate move, the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors is reassigning or eliminating a third of Inspector General Max Huntsman’s staff, slashing funding to the watchdog that investigates misconduct by county employees and the sheriff’s department, according to Huntsman.
“At the back of all this is the fundamental question of whether the board wants oversight at all,” Eric Miller, a Sybil Brand commissioner, said in an interview.
Miller added that the “sunsetting of Sybil Brand seems to be part of a persistent attempt to control and limit oversight of the sheriff’s department.”
The report from the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors said its recommendation to do away with the jail oversight body came after a review of “225 commissions, committees, boards, authorities, and task forces” funded by the county. The proposal would “sunset” six commissions, including Sybil Brand, and “potentially merge” 40 others.
The report noted that “jail and detention inspection duties are also monitored by the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission.”
But that commission, which was established less than a decade ago, takes on a broader range of issues within the sheriff’s department, from deputy misconduct to so-called deputy gangs. Unlike Sybil Brand, its members do not go on frequent tours of jails and publish detailed reports documenting the conditions.
The Executive Office’s statement said “unannounced jail inspections would continue, either through a COC subcommittee or coordinated oversight structure.”
Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the proposal to get rid of the commission is the latest in a recent succession of blows to law enforcement accountability.
That list includes the ousting of former Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission chair Robert Bonner earlier this year, and the introduction last week of a county policy requiring oversight bodies to submit many of their communications to the county for approval.
Eliasberg said losing the Sybil Brand Commission would be a major setback.
“Sybil Brand has been incredibly effective in shining a really harsh spotlight on some terrible things going on in the jails,” he said. “Sybil Brand, I think, has done some really important work.”
Huntsman, the inspector general, said during a Probation Oversight Commission meeting Monday that his office expects to lose a third of its staff. The “current plan proposes to eliminate 14 positions including vacancies,” according to the Executive Office statement.
Huntsman told the commission that the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors informed him on Sept. 11 that “a number of positions in my office will be taken away from me and moved to the Executive Office and will no longer be available for independent oversight.”
The inspector general added that “there’s a group of staff that have been specifically identified by the Executive Office and taken away, and then there are positions that are curtailed. So the end result is we have a third fewer people, which will impact our operations.”
The Executive Office’s statement said the changes would “save more than $3.95 million” and avoid “deeper cuts” elsewhere.
“We remain confident that the OIG’s remaining staffing levels will allow the OIG to fulfill its essential duties and carry out its mandate,” the statement said.
Late Friday afternoon, Edward Yen, executive officer for the Board of Supervisors, sent out an email “retracting” the new county policy that required many communications by oversight bodies to undergo prior approval.
“While the intent of the policy was to provide long-requested structure and support for commissions and oversight bodies,” Yen wrote, “we recognize that its rollout created confusion and unintended consequences.”
LA QUINTA — Briana Ortega had been home for all of three minutes when she heard a fist pounding against her door.
She opened it to find a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy “claiming a black man with dreadlocks had jumped over her backyard fence” and was trying to break into her La Quinta home, according to court records.
Almost immediately, Ortega, 29, suspected Deputy Eric Piscatella was there for other reasons. The encounter last summer wasn’t the first time they’d met. It wasn’t even the first time he’d shown up at her home unannounced, according to an arrest affidavit and claims in a civil lawsuit.
“You look pretty without makeup … sorry I don’t mean to be rude or unprofessional,” Piscatella said, after spending a scant few seconds looking out a window for the purported suspect, according to a recording of the incident.
It was the fourth time in less than a year that Piscatella had either shown up at Ortega’s home or contacted her without a legitimate law enforcement purpose, according to the affidavit and lawsuit. Ortega shared text messages showing the deputy tried to flirt with her and ask her out on dates, but she rebuffed him at every turn.
A former Riverside County sheriff’s deputy is accused in a lawsuit of using law enforcement resources to pursue a woman he met at a public event.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Riverside County prosecutors charged Piscatella, 30, with seven counts of illegally using law enforcement databases to look up information about Ortega.
But instead of resolving the situation, Ortega says, the way Piscatella’s case played out in criminal court has only prolonged her ordeal.
Ortega said she remains “terrified” of Piscatella and declined to testify against him. In July, a Riverside County judge downgraded all charges against Piscatella to misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty and received probation, avoiding jail time.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco kicks off his campaign to run for governor at Avila’s Historic 1929 center on Feb. 17 in Riverside.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“I feel like with him getting the misdemeanor, nothing is ever going to change… If it takes me having to [file this lawsuit], I will, if it helps,” she said.
Piscatella declined to comment through his defense attorney.
A spokesperson for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said Piscatella resigned last October after roughly five years on the job. His ability to work as a police officer in California is suspended, accreditation records show, but without a felony conviction it could be restored.
Ortega recalled her first run-in with Piscatella as innocent enough.
She was attending what she described as a “family fair,” with her two sons in Coachella in September 2023, enjoying amusement rides and carnival games when she said her oldest son ran up to a group of sheriff’s deputies who were giving out stickers. Piscatella was among them, according to Ortega, who said they had a polite but forgettable conversation.
They did not exchange contact information, but a few months later, in January of 2024, Ortega said, she got a text from an unknown number.
The texter claimed to be her “personal officer.” A fitness influencer with more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, Ortega gets random flirtatious messages from men. So she shrugged it off.
That same month, Piscatella searched Ortega’s name and the city of La Quinta in both the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and other sheriff’s databases shortly before the texts were sent, according to court records. In Ortega’s civil suit, she alleged this was how Piscatella tracked her down.
One month later, Piscatella showed up at Ortega’s La Quinta home while she was at work, according to her lawsuit. Her mother answered the door, and was “alarmed” when the deputy questioned where her daughter was. Still, Ortega wasn’t bothered.
“I’m like, he’s a cop, he can’t be that crazy. He’s on the force for a reason … of course he knows where I live,” she said.
Echoing claims in her lawsuit, she added: “I’m not thinking he’s going to continue to look for me or stalk me. If I would have known, I would have complained.”
Ortega was so unfazed that she actually went to Piscatella for help a month later. Her younger sister had been the victim of an assault and was struggling to get attention from the Sheriff’s Department. So Ortega contacted the man who claimed to be her “personal officer.”
But when Ortega began describing the purported crime, Piscatella responded by asking her to send a “selfie” and insisting they should go to the gym together. Annoyed, Ortega eventually changed her number when instead of help, all she got was a picture of Piscatella wearing Sheriff’s Department clothes, according to text messages.
Court records show Piscatella continued to use law enforcement databases to keep tabs on Ortega in the months that followed. In May 2024, he searched her name and ran her license plate, according to court records. He did the same in July, right before showing up at Ortega’s house, claiming he saw the man with dreadlocks break in.
At that point, Piscatella’s interest in Ortega had turned into an “obsession,” according to her lawsuit. Since he arrived just minutes after she’d returned from a trip to San Diego, Ortega said it felt like Piscatella was “waiting for me.” She alleges in her lawsuit that the deputy “used law enforcement resources and databases … to stalk her.”
After letting him in, she surreptitiously recorded the deputy standing in her living room, talking to her children. In the lawsuit, Ortega said she was “confused, scared and uncomfortable,” especially after Piscatella asked for her new number, which she gave him out of “fear.”
Piscatella texted her a short time later, according to messages reviewed by The Times, describing her kids as “so cool.”
“I don’t feel comfortable with everything that just happened. Please do not contact me again,” Ortega wrote back.
Briana Ortega filed a lawsuit alleging that she has been living in fear of a former Riverside County sheriff’s deputy.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
She made a complaint to the Sheriff’s Department the same day. Court records show the department launched an internal investigation and quickly determined Piscatella had used law enforcement databases to look up information on Ortega several times, according to an affidavit seeking a warrant for his arrest.
The affidavit shows there was “no corresponding call for service” related to the day Piscatella showed up at Ortega’s home and claimed someone was breaking in.
Riverside County prosecutors filed seven felony charges against Piscatella.
Ortega said she refused to testify because, even though the Sheriff’s Department had presented a case against one of their own, she feared Piscatella or a fellow deputy might seek retribution against her.
At a July court hearing in Indio, Piscatella made an open plea to the court seeking to downgrade each charge to a misdemeanor and avoid jail time, according to a transcript of the proceeding.
Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Natasha Sorace pleaded with Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez not to accept the lesser charges.
“The defendant was a police officer — a sheriff’s deputy, who used his position of power and the information he had access to as a result of that position to put someone in the community in significant fear for their safety,” Sorace said.
“He searched information — conducted a search about a particular individual and used that information to come up with an excuse to get into that woman’s house, where he proceeded to hit on her and make her feel uncomfortable in her own on home.”
But Hernandez rebuffed her attempts to argue the point further. In his view, “nothing actually happened.”
“He never, like, broke into the house or threatened her,” Hernandez said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Hernandez sentenced Piscatella to probation and community service and ordered him to stay away from Ortega. Records show prosecutors have appealed the decision.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office would not say if Ortega’s refusal to testify affected their ability to bring other charges, including the stalking allegation she made in the civil suit.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The entire ordeal left Ortega feeling like law enforcement failed her at every level. She noted that Piscatella still knows where she lives.
While she previously did not hold a negative view of police, now she says she turns the other direction and grows anxious anytime she sees a Sheriff’s Department cruiser.
“It’s a betrayal of trust from law enforcement … who do you call when it’s the police who are the problem?” asked her attorney, Jamal Tooson. “When can you ever feel safe? You almost feel trapped, in your own house.”
L.A. County’s watchdogs suddenly need to ask permission before barking to the press and public.
County oversight officials and civil rights advocates are raising concerns about a new policy they say improperly limits their rights to communicate — including with other members of local government.
The policy, enacted Sept. 11, requires oversight officials to send many types of communications to the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors for approval.
The policy says “press releases, advisories, public statements, social media content, and any direct outreach to the BOS or their staff” must be “reviewed, approved and coordinated” before being released publicly or sent to other county officials.
The policy says the change “ensures that messaging aligns with County priorities, protects sensitive relationships, and maintains a unified public voice.”
Eric Miller, a member of the Sybil Brand Commission, which conducts inspections and oversight of L.A. County jails, said the policy is the latest example of the county “attempting to limit the oversight of the Sheriff’s Department.” He said he made the remarks as a private citizen because he was concerned the new communications policy barred him from speaking to the media in his role as an oversight official.
Michael Kapp, communications manager for the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors, said in an email that he personally drafted the policy shortly after he started in his position in July and discovered there “was no existing communications guidance whatsoever for commissions and oversight bodies.”
“Without clear guidance,” he said, “commissions and oversight bodies – most of which do not have any communications staff – were developing their own ad hoc practices, which led to inconsistent messaging, risks of misinformation, and deeply uneven engagement with the Board, the media, and the public.”
Although it is increasingly common for government agencies to tightly restrict how employees communicate with the press and public, L.A. County oversight officials had enjoyed broad latitude to speak their minds. The watchdogs have been vocal about a range of issues, including so-called deputy gangs in the Sheriff’s Department and grim jail conditions.
Some questioned the timing of the policy, which comes after a recent run of negative headlines, scandals and hefty legal payouts to victims of violence and discrimination by law enforcement.
Long-time Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission Chair Robert C. Bonner presides over the commission‘s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in Los Angeles on June 26, 2025. Bonner says he has since been forced out of his position as chair.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission chair Robert Bonner said he was ousted this summer as he and his commission made a forceful push for more transparency.
In February, former commission Chair Sean Kennedy resigned after a dispute with county lawyers, stating at the time that it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced this month that his office is suing L.A. County and the Sheriff’s Department over a “humanitarian crisis” that has contributed to a surge in jail deaths.
Kapp said the policy came about solely “to ensure stronger, more effective communication between oversight bodies, the public, and the Board of Supervisors.”
Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, called the policy “troubling” and said it appears to allow the county to tell “Sybil Brand you’ve got to tone it down, or telling COC this isn’t the message the board wants to put out.”
“I learn about this policy right around the same time the state attorney general sues the county over horrific conditions in the jails,” Eliasberg said.
“There’s a ton of stuff in that lawsuit about Sybil Brand and Sybil Brand reports,” he added, citing commission findings that exposed poor conditions and treatment inside county jails, including vermin and roach infestations, spoiled food and insufficient mental health treatment for inmates.
Some current and former oversight officials said the new policy leaves a number of unanswered questions — including what happens if they ignore it and continue to speak out.
Kapp, the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors official who drafted the policy, said in his statement that “adherence is mandatory. That said, the goal is not punishment – it’s alignment and support.”
During the Civilian Oversight Commission’s meeting on Thursday, Hans Johnson, the commission’s chair, made fiery comments about the policy, calling it “reckless,” “ridiculous and ludicrous.”
The policy “represents one of the most caustic, corrosive and chilling efforts to squelch the voice of this commission, the office of inspector general and the Sybil Brand Commission,” Johnson said. “We will not be gagged.”
Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
Los Angeles County is moving to add more checks on how federal immigration officials can access data collected by the Sheriff’s Department that can be used to track where people drive on any given day.
County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a motion, introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, to beef up oversight of data gathered by law enforcement devices known as automated license plate readers.
It’s already illegal in California for local law enforcement agencies to share information gleaned from license plate readers with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant.
But after a summer of ramped-up deportations, the county supervisors decided to impose more transparency on who’s requesting license plate data from the Sheriff’s Department — and when the agency provides it.
The change will create a clear policy that the data cannot be “disclosed, transferred, or otherwise made available” to immigration officials except when “expressly required” by law or if they have a warrant.
“In a place like Los Angeles County, where residents depend on cars for nearly every aspect of daily life, people must feel safe traveling from place to place without fear that their movements are being tracked, stored, and shared in ways that violate their privacy,” the motion states.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole no vote. Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said the supervisor voted against the motion because it calls for the county to support a bill that would limit the amount of time law enforcement can keep most license plate data to 60 days. Law enforcement has opposed that bill, she said.
Across the country, law enforcement agencies use cameras to collect data on millions of vehicles, poring over the records for clues to help find stolen vehicles, crime suspects or missing persons.
A sheriff deputy’s patrol car is equipped with a license plate scanner. The plate numbers are instantaneously processed and if the registered vehicle owners are wanted for felonies or certain types of misdemeanors, if they are registered sex or arson offenders or if an Amber Alert has been issued, an alarm will sound to alert the officer.
(Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement it has roughly 366 fixed licensed plate readers from Motorola Vigilant and 476 from Flock Safety in contract cities and unincorporated areas. An additional 89 mobile systems from Motorola are mounted on vehicles that patrol these areas.
The department said its policy already prohibits it from sharing data from plate readers, known as ALPR, with any entity that “does not have a lawful purpose for receiving it.”
“LASD shares ALPR data with other law enforcement agencies only under an executed inter-agency agreement, which requires all parties to collect, access, use, and disclose the data in compliance with applicable law,” the statement read. “LASD has no current agreements for ALPR data sharing with any federal agency.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the agency has multiple resources at its “fingertips to ensure federal law is enforced in Los Angeles, and throughout the entire country.”
“These sanctuary politicians’ efforts to stop the Sheriff’s Department from cooperating with ICE are reckless and will not deter ICE from enforcing the law,” McLaughlin said.
Southern California law enforcement departments — including LAPD and authorities in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties — have been accused of routinely flouting state law by sharing license plate data with federal agents. A recent report from CalMatters cited records obtained by the anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy that showed more than 100 instances in a single month when local police queried databases for federal agencies.
“When you collect this data, it’s really hard to control,” said Catherine Crump, director of UC Berkeley’s Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “It’s no different from once you share your data with Meta or Google, they’re going to repackage your data and sell it to advertisers and you don’t have any idea which of the advertising companies have your data.”
Even with the board cracking down on data sharing, advocates say it’s nearly impossible to ensure federal agents are barred from license plate data in L.A. County.
Dave Maass, the director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said private companies that operate in California still collect and sell data that ICE can use.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has its own license plate readers around Southern California, he said.
Maass said even if a county bars its local sheriff’s department from sharing data with ICE, it’s difficult to guarantee the rule is followed by the rank-and-file. Immigration officers could informally pass on a plate number to a deputy with access to the system.
An L.A. County Sheriff’s Department patrol car equipped with a license plate reader can scan somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 plates a day.
(Los Angeles Times)
“Maybe they run the plate,” Maass says. “Unless there’s some public records release from the Los Angeles side of things, we just really don’t know who accessed the system.”
Under the motion passed Tuesday, the sheriff department would need to regularly report what agencies asked for license plate data to two county watchdogs groups — the Office of Inspector General and the Civilian Oversight Commission.
“Having somebody who is somewhat independent and whose role is more aggressively overseeing reviewing these searches is actually quite a big deal,” Maass said.
A late Tennessee sheriff who inspired “Walking Tall,” a Hollywood movie about a law enforcement officer who took on organized crime, killed his wife in 1967 and led people to believe she was murdered by his enemies, authorities said last week.
Authorities acknowledged that the finding will probably shock many who grew up as Buford Pusser fans after watching “Walking Tall,” which immortalized him as a tough but fair sheriff with zero tolerance for crime. The 1973 movie was remade in 2004, and many officers joined law enforcement because of his story, according to Mark Davidson, the district attorney for Tennessee’s 25th Judicial District.
There is enough evidence that if Pusser, a McNairy County sheriff who died in a car crash seven years after his wife’s death, were alive today, prosecutors would present an indictment to a grand jury for the killing of Pauline Mullins Pusser, Davidson said. Investigators also uncovered signs that she suffered from domestic violence, he said.
Prosecutors worked with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which began reexamining decades-old files on Pauline’s death in 2022 as part of its regular review of cold cases, agency director David Rausch said. Agents found inconsistencies between Buford Pusser’s version of events and the physical evidence, received a tip about a potential murder weapon and exhumed Pauline’s body for an autopsy.
“This case is not about tearing down a legend. It is about giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time,” Davidson said in a news conference streamed online. “The truth matters. Justice matters. Even 58 years later. Pauline deserves both.”
Evidence does not back up sheriff’s story
The case dates to Aug. 12, 1967. Buford Pusser got a call in the early-morning hours about a disturbance. He reported that his wife volunteered to ride along with him as he responded. The sheriff said that shortly after they passed New Hope Methodist Church, a car pulled up and fired several times into the vehicle, killing Pauline and injuring him. He spent 18 days in the hospital and required several surgeries to recover. The case was built largely on his own statement and closed quickly, Rausch said.
During the reexamination of the case, Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine physical and medical examiner, studied postmortem photographs, crime scene photographs, notes made by the medical examiner at the time and Buford Pusser’s statements. He concluded that Pauline was more likely than not shot outside the car and then placed inside it.
He found that cranial trauma suffered by Pauline didn’t match crime scene photographs of the car’s interior. Blood spatter on the hood outside the car contradicted Buford Pusser’s statements. The gunshot wound on his cheek was in fact a close-contact wound and not one fired from long range, as she sheriff had described, and was probably self-inflicted, Revelle concluded.
Pauline’s autopsy revealed she had a broken nose that had healed before her death. Davidson said statements from people who were around at the time she died support the conclusion that she was a victim of domestic violence.
Brother says investigation gave him closure
Pauline’s younger brother, Griffon Mullins, said the investigation gave him closure. He said in a recorded video played at the news conference that their other sister died without knowing what happened to Pauline, and he is grateful he will die knowing.
“You would fall in love with her because she was a people person. And of course, my family would always go to Pauline if they had an issue or they needed some advice, and she was always there for them,” he said. “She was just a sweet person. I loved her with all my heart.”
Mullins said he knew there was some trouble in Pauline’s marriage, but she wasn’t one to talk about her problems. For that reason, Mullins said, he was “not totally shocked” to learn of the investigators’ findings.
Asked about the murder weapon and whether it matched autopsy findings, Rausch recommended reading the case file for specifics.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation plans to make the entire file, which exceeds 1,000 pages, available to the public by handing it over to the University of Tennessee at Martin once it finishes with redactions. The school will create an online, searchable database for the case. Until then, members of the public can make appointments to review it in person or can purchase a copy, said university Chancellor Yancy Freeman Sr.
A popular YouTube streamer posted on social media that he “almost [died] today” after Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies drew their weapons on him and briefly detained him Sunday afternoon in what he said appears to be a swatting incident.
Rapper DDG posted on a YouTube video that he was at a paintball tournament in Castaic when police surrounded him and other participants.
“I turned around and there’s like six police cars and I’m like, ‘OK, what’s going to happen?’” he said in the post.
DDG said he expected law enforcement would inform him of what was happening. Instead, he said, he was detained without an explanation.
Video on social media shows DDG being searched and being walked to and placed inside a sheriff’s vehicle just before 6 p.m.
“Bro, he pulled up. Ain’t no ‘what’s up,’ ain’t no nothing, ain’t no, ‘dude, we got a call.’ Nothing,” DDG said.
He then mimicked the pointing of a gun and said police yelled at him, “Hands in the air!”
DDG said that he had “just got done smoking … so, you’ve got to think what’s going through my mental, bro.”
He didn’t elaborate on what he was smoking but added, “I’m thinking to myself the whole time, ‘is this real?”
Multiple calls to the Sheriff’s Department’s Santa Clarita station went unanswered. The department’s main media relations office said it had no information about the incident.
As he sat in the back of the sheriff’s vehicle, DDG said, he told deputies he believed he was being swatted, which occurs when a false report of a crime or emergency is made to provoke an aggressive law enforcement response.
The most extreme examples of swatting have involved responses from Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, teams.
While sitting in the sheriff’s vehicle, DDG said, he read information about the potential swatting call on an open sheriff’s laptop. He believed someone provided the Sheriff’s Department with a description of the exact type of car he drove. He added that whoever called in the complaint said that the rapper was armed and was going to hurt himself and others.
When an explosion killed three L.A. County sheriff’s deputies last month, Mike Fratantoni thought about 1857.
A horse thief named Juan Flores broke out of San Quentin State Prison, joined a posse that called itself Las Manillas — the handcuffs — and headed south toward Southern California. They robbed stores along the way and murdered a German shopkeeper in San Juan Capistrano. Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton was warned about them but ignored the danger. He and his men were ambushed. Four were killed — Barton, Deputy Charles Daly and constables Charles Baker and William Little. The spot, near the interchange where State Route 133 and the 405 Freeway meet in Irvine, is now called Barton Mound.
Orange County was still a part of L.A. County then, the population was just over 11,000, California was a newly minted state, and the Mexican period was giving way to the Wild West.
“They all died alone with no help coming,” said Fratantoni, the Sheriff’s Department’s staff historian. “Today, you know your partner is coming to help you. People say the job’s dangerous now — it’s never not been dangerous.”
So as Sheriff Robert Luna prepared to hold a news conference hours after the accident at a department training facility in East L.A. took the lives of Dets. Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn, Fratantoni sent over notes about what happened to Barton and his men. That’s how Luna was able to tell the public that the latest line-of-duty deaths to befall the department happened on its deadliest day in more than 160 years, a line quickly repeated by media across the country.
Fratantoni describes himself as the “default button” whenever someone has a question about the Sheriff’s Department’s past, whether it’s a colleague or the public, whether it’s about the positive or the scandalous. He can tell you why female deputies stopped wearing caps (blame the popularity of beehive hairdos in the 1960s) and reveal why longtime Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz was a pioneer in trying to rehabilitate addicts (his father was an alcoholic).
It’s a job the Long Island native has officially held for a decade. He assumed the position with the blessing of then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell to tap into a passion Fratantoni had dabbled in on his own almost from the moment he joined the department in 1999.
“You can’t talk about L.A. County history without us,” Fratantoni said when we met at the Hall of Justice. Outside, the flags remained at half-staff in honor of the dead detectives. He was taking me on a tour of the building’s basement museum, which showcased the histories of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office and coroner. “We’ve been there from Day 1. We were here before the Board of Supervisors. We were here before LAPD. We’ve never closed. We’ve survived it all.”
“We check with Mike on everything,” Luna told me in a phone interview. Last year, the sheriff joined Fratantoni and other current and retired Sheriff’s Department members for the dedication of a plaque to commemorate the 1857 Barton Mound massacre. “You get 10 minutes with him, and wow.”
I was able to get two hours.
Fratantoni is burly but soft-spoken, a trace of a New York accent lingering in his by-the-books cadence. All around us were books, poster boards and newspaper headlines of criminals that Angelenos still remember and those long forgotten, people such as Winnie Ruth Judd, who murdered two friends in Phoenix in 1931 then traveled to Los Angeles by train with their bodies in trunks.
We passed through a row of original L.A. County jail cells that were brought down piece by piece from their original location on the 10th floor of the Hall of Justice. He pointed out a display case of makeshift weapons, tattoo needles and fake IDs created by inmates over the department’s 175 years. I stared too long at a black jacket and AC/DC hat worn by the Night Stalker — serial killer Richard Ramirez.
Fratantoni shows off vintage items used for illegal gambling.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The museum receives free rent from L.A. County but is otherwise funded and maintained by the Sheriffs’ Relief Foundation and the dollar a month pulled from the paychecks of Sheriff’s Department employees who sign up to support — “We don’t want to be a burden,” Fratantoni explained. It’s not open to the general public, but he frequently hosts deputies, prosecutors, law students and even school field trips.
“The kids come and love this one for some reason,” he said with a chuckle as we passed a narcotics display. “Not my favorite one.”
Fratantoni never rushed me and turned every question I had into a short story that never felt like a lecture. He frequently apologized for random artifacts strewn around — plaques, movie posters, a biography of mobster Mickey Cohen — or displays not lit to his liking. “Am I putting you to sleep yet?” he joked at one point.
The 45-year-old is more than a curator or nerdy archivist. Luna, like his predecessors Alex Villanueva and McDonnell, has entrusted Fratantoni to not just help preserve the department’s history but also imprint its importance on the men and women who are its present and future.
“I have always been a fan of history,” said Luna, who has organized lunchtime lectures about the department and civil rights. For Black History Month in February, Fratantoni spoke about the troubles faced by deputies William Abbott and John Brady, who in 1954 became the department’s first integrated patrol unit.
The recriminations against Abbott, who was Black, and Brady didn’t come from within but rather the residents in West Hollywood they served. “I believe it’s important to teach our deputies where we’ve been and some of the challenges we’ve faced. You can’t help but to want to listen to his stories,” Luna said of Fratantoni.
“Mike is just phenomenal,” said Deputy Graciela Medrano, a 25-year-veteran who was also at the museum the day I visited. A black ribbon stretched across her badge — a sign of mourning, law enforcement style. “I’ll ask him about cases that happened when I was just starting, and he immediately knows what I’m talking about. He makes us all appreciate our department more.”
Every year, Fratantoni speaks to the latest class of recruits about the department’s history. “They know it’s been around but nothing else. So I share photos, I tell stories. And I tell them, ‘You’re getting a torch passed to you, and you’re going to run the next leg.’ You can see their reactions — our history gives them a sense of purpose.”
He’ll also attend community events with other deputies in vintage uniforms or old department cars. “Someone will see it and say, ‘That’s my granddad’s car’ and smile. We can have conversations with the public we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”
Fratantoni was supposed to focus this year on the department’s 175th anniversary. Another goal was to seek out an interview with Shirley MacLaine, one of the last surviving queens of the Sheriff’s Championship Rodeo, an annual event that used to fill up the Memorial Coliseum and attract Hollywood A-listers.
But 2025 got in the way. We spoke a week before the burials of Osborn and Kelley-Eklund (the services for Lemus have yet to be announced). Fratantoni also sits on the committee charged with putting names on the Los Angeles County Peace Officers’ Memorial.
“I don’t like doing it, and I hope I don’t have to fill out paperwork for it ever again, but if that’s what I have to do, I’m honored to be a part of it,” he said. “I hold it close to my heart.”
Fratantoni in front of a section of the museum that highlights the history of the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
Even the work commemorating what happened during the Barton Mound massacre remains unfinished. The victims were buried at the old City Cemetery downtown but were moved to Rosedale Cemetery in Mid-City in 1914. No one bothered to mark their new graves, which were lost until researchers discovered them a few years ago. Fratantoni and others are fundraising for new tombstones for their slain predecessors.
He mentioned Daly’s story: Born in Ireland. Came to California for the Gold Rush. Became a blacksmith — he put the shoes on the horses that Barton and his constables were going to use to pursue Las Manillas. A strong, able man whom Barton deputized so he could join them on the day they would all die.
“It’s sad to see people who lost their life be forgotten,” Fratantoni said. “That’s just…”
The historian tasked with talking shook his head in silence.
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who shot a man in the back in 2021 will not face criminal charges, according to records made public by the district attorney’s office late last month.
Los Angeles County prosecutors found there was “insufficient evidence” to prove Deputy Yen Liu was not acting in lawful self-defense when he shot Adrian Abelar at a Rosemead auto body shop four years ago, firing a round that fractured several vertebrae and nearly paralyzed him, according to court records and Abelar’s attorney.
Abelar, 29, had just thrown a gun from the car and was face down on the pavement when Liu opened fire at point blank range, according to body-worn-camera footage. Deputies were responding to reports that Abelar — a convicted felon who could not legally possess a firearm — had threatened to shoot several people at the auto body shop.
But when Liu and two other deputies arrived at the scene, they found Abelar sitting calmly in his car. The deputies approached Abelar, who lied about the fact that he was on probation. Abelar said he decided to flee because he feared if deputies found him with a gun, they would arrest him or kill him.
Abelar said he tossed the weapon as soon as he got out of the car. In video from the incident, deputies can be heard shouting, “Gun!” right before Liu closes in on Abelar, whose right arm is clearly outstretched and empty at the time Liu opens fire.
Ultimately, prosecutors decided the reported threats made by Abelar and the fact that he was in possession of a gun precluded them from charging the deputy.
“Since one reasonable interpretation of the evidence leads to the conclusion that Liu acted in response to an apparent danger, insufficient evidence exists to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Liu did not act in self-defense when he shot Abelar in the back,” prosecutors wrote in a 10-page declination memo made public in late July.
“The D.A.’s office bent over backward to claim they can’t prove a criminal violation … they clearly can and don’t want to,” said Abelar’s civil attorney, Thomas Beck. He claimed the investigation was “purposefully stalled for more than two years.”
Liu has returned to active duty and is assigned to the Temple Station, where he worked when the shooting occurred, according to Nicole Nishida, a sheriff’s department spokeswoman. An internal review to determine whether or not Liu violated department policy has been launched, Nishida said.
Use-of-force experts who reviewed footage in the case previously told The Times that Liu’s decision to shoot was problematic.
“The guy clearly does not have a weapon in his hand and the deputy who is on top of him draws his firearm, jams it in the guy’s back and fires it immediately upon contact,” said Ed Obayashi, a lawyer and former Plumas County sheriff’s deputy who advises police departments throughout California about use-of-force incidents.
Abelar’s lawyer disputed claims made by Richard Doktor, the auto body shop owner, who summoned deputies to the scene by claiming Abelar had made threats and brandished a gun.
According to recordings made public by law enforcement, Doktor said Abelar arrived at his shop that day demanding car repairs because he was fleeing from the cops due to an active murder warrant. Doktor separately alleged to The Times in an interview that Abelar was threatening his employees with a gun.
While there was a warrant out for Abelar’s arrest on a probation violation at the time of the shooting, he was not wanted for any violent crime, according to the sheriff’s department. Abelar has not been charged with a crime in relation to the incident at Doktor’s shop.
Beck said statements given to the sheriff’s department by other auto shop employees do not corroborate Doktor’s claims. Neither the sheriff’s department nor the district attorney’s office responded to questions about the veracity of Doktor’s allegations. Doktor has also criticized the sheriff’s department’s response, contending Abelar was “no threat” when Liu fired his gun.
Doktor did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment this week.
Abelar’s civil suit was settled last year for $700,000, according to Beck. But his client has not been paid yet and will not be able to claim that money for a while.
Abelar fell into homelessness after his “only living relative” died last year, Beck said. While living on the street, Abelar was arrested last May on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, resisting arrest and having a forged driver’s license, records show.
In February, he pleaded no contest to the weapons charge and a sentencing enhancement for having a prior violent felony conviction and was sentenced to four years in state prison, records show. Even with jail credits, Abelar likely won’t get out of prison until 2028.
It was just past 12:30 a.m. on June 9 when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a burglary in progress at a home in Lynwood.
Upon arrival, according to the department’s incident summary, they saw Federico Rodriguez, 45, through a window, holding what appeared to be a pair of scissors.
Hearing screams inside, deputies forced a door open and entered the home, where they found Rodriguez repeatedly stabbing a woman. Sgt. Marcos Esquivel immediately drew his handgun, footage from his body-worn camera showed, and fired multiple shots that killed Rodriguez.
The incident was the fifth of six fatal shootings by deputies that the sheriff’s department has reported so far this year.
The woman Rodriguez was stabbing survived. But despite the apparently life-saving actions of the deputies, two days later the case became a point of controversy in a broader dispute between the department and L.A. County’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates misconduct and the use of deadly force by law enforcement.
The inspector general’s office sent a letter on June 11 to the County Board of Supervisors raising concerns that officials have been blocked from scenes of shootings by deputies and deaths in county jails.
Inspector General Max Huntsman said his office interprets the state law that led to its creation over a decade ago as giving him and his staff the authority to conduct meaningful on-site investigations, with state legislation approved in 2020 strengthening that power.
Inspector General Max Huntsman listens to testimony in the Robinson Courtroom at Loyola Law School in 2024.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Huntsman said allowing his staff to tour scenes of shootings and receive information directly from homicide detectives and other sheriff’s department personnel while the dead bodies have yet to be removed is essential for proper oversight.
But the sheriff’s department has repeatedly denied or limited access, Huntsman said. The June 11 letter announced the “indefinite suspension of Office of Inspector General regular rollouts to deputy-involved shootings and in-custody deaths.”
Huntsman said the decision to halt the rollouts was a response to a persistent lack of transparency by the sheriff’s department.
“The purpose of going there is to conduct an independent investigation. If all we’re doing is standing around being fed what they want us to know, that is not an independent investigation,” he told The Times. “We’re not going to pretend to be doing it when we only get to peek under the curtain.”
At the Civilian Oversight Commission meeting on July 17, Sheriff Robert Luna said his department “will now have a process in place” to allow officials responding to shooting scenes to contact an assistant sheriff to ensure “a little more oversight” over the process.
An interior view of the Altadena Sheriff Station in January.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Luna called Huntsman’s June 11 letter “alarming,” but disputed how many times officials had been turned away, saying he was only aware of it happening “once — at least in the last five years.”
Commissioner Jamon Hicks inquired further, asking whether the department could be incorrect about the number of times access has been restricted or denied, given that the inspector general’s office alleges it has been a recurring issue.
“It could be, and I’d love to see the information,” Luna said. “I’ve been provided none of that to date.”
Huntsman told The Times that officials from his office were “prohibited from entering” Rodriguez’s home on July 9, as were members of the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department’s Internal Affairs Bureau. It was at least the seventh time the sheriff’s department had improperly limited access since 2020, he said.
In a statement, the sheriff’s department said the “claim that the OIG was denied access on June 9 at a [deputy-involved shooting] scene in Lynwood is inaccurate.”
“An OIG representative was on scene and was given the same briefing, along with the concerned Division Chief, Internal Affairs Bureau, Civil Litigation Bureau, Training Bureau, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office,” the statement said.
An exterior view of the hiring banner outside the Altadena Sheriff Station in January.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The statement went on to say that the department is “only aware of one incident on February 27, 2025,” in which the OIG was denied access to a deputy-involved shooting scene.
“The Sheriff’s Department remains firmly committed to transparency in law enforcement and continues to work closely and cooperatively with all oversight bodies,” the statement said.
During the July 17 meeting, Dara Williams, chief deputy of the Office of Inspector General, said the office’s personnel often arrive at shooting scenes hours after deputies have pulled the trigger because of the logistical challenges of traveling across the county. Sheriff’s department homicide detectives typically present preliminary findings and offer tours of the scenes.
But on several occasions, the watchdogs have been denied access entirely, leaving them to rely solely on whatever information the sheriff’s department chooses to release, Williams said.
Hans Johnson, the Civil Oversight Commission’s newly elected chair, said investigators can’t do their jobs properly without being able to scrutinize homicide scenes.
“We count on you, in part, as eyes and ears in the community and in these high-value and very troubling cases of fatalities and deaths,” he said at the July 17 meeting.
Williams said the the sheriff’s department has also been “painfully slow” responding to requests for additional information and records following homicides by deputies. She said that in one particularly egregious example, “we served a subpoena in October of last year and we are still waiting for documents and answers.”
Responding to Huntsman’s letter on June 16, Luna wrote to the Board of Supervisors that the department’s Office of Constitutional Policing “has assisted the OIG by providing Department information to 49 of 53 instances” since January. “Suffice it to say,” he added later in the letter, “robust communications take place between the OIG and the Department. Any assertion to the contrary is false.”
Luna said sometimes access could be restricted to preserve evidence, but Williams said she does not “think it’s fair to say that we were excluded” for that reason.
Williams told the commission she was not allowed to tour a scene earlier this year that Huntsman later told The Times was a Feb. 27 incident in Rosemead.
The sheriff’s department’s incident summary stated that Deputy Gregory Chico shot Susan Lu, 56, after she refused commands to drop a meat cleaver and raised the blade “toward deputies.” Lu was taken to a hospital and declared dead later that day.
In his June 16 letter, Luna wrote that “the OIG, Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB), other Department units, and executives were denied access … due to concerns regarding evidence preservation, given the confined area and complexity of the scene layout.”
Williams told the commission “there was a narrow hallway but the actual incident took place in a bedroom, so I don’t know why we couldn’t have walked down that narrow hallway to just view into the bedroom” where the homicide took place.
“The bottom line,” she added later, “is we don’t want to mislead the public to give them the idea that this is actually effective oversight because, once again, we’re just getting the information from the department.”
DENVER — Colorado’s Democratic attorney general on Tuesday sued a sheriff’s deputy for allegedly helping federal immigration agents find and arrest a college student who had an expired visa.
Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser also disclosed that his office is investigating whether other law enforcement officers on a regional drug task force the deputy worked on have been sharing information to help federal agents make immigration arrests in violation of state law limiting cooperation in immigration enforcement. The federal government has sued Colorado over such laws.
On June 5, Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck allegedly shared the driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance information of the 19-year-old nursing student in a Signal chat used by task force members, according to the lawsuit. The task force includes officers who work for federal Homeland Security Investigations, which can enforce immigration laws, the lawsuit said.
After federal immigration officers told him in the chat that the student did not have a criminal history but had an expired visa, Zwinck allegedly provided them with their location and told her to wait with him in his patrol car for about five minutes, asking about her accent and where she was born. He let her go with a warning and gave federal agents a description of her vehicle and told which direction she was headed so they could arrest her, the lawsuit said.
When Zwinck was told of the arrest, the lawsuit said he congratulated the federal agents, saying “rgr, nice work.” The following day, one federal immigration agent praised Zwinck’s work in the chat, saying he should be named ”interdictor of the year” for the removal division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Zwinck is also accused of violating the law again on June 10 by providing immigration officers with the photo of the license of another driver who had overstayed his visa, information about the person’s vehicle and directions to help them arrest the driver. After being told that immigration officers “would want him,” Zwinck replied that “We better get some bitchin (sic) Christmas baskets from you guys,” the lawsuit said.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Spokesperson Molly Casey said the office is about a week away from finishing its internal investigation into the student’s traffic stop and plans to issue a statement after it is finished.
A working telephone number could not be found for Zwinck, who was placed on paid leave during the sheriff’s office’s investigation. Casey declined to provide the name of an attorney who might be able to speak on his behalf.
The sheriff’s office previously announced that all its employees have been removed from the Signal group chat.
Weiser said he was acting under a new state law that bars employees of local governments from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials, a recent expansion of state laws limiting cooperation in immigration cases. Previously, the ban on sharing personal identifying information only applied to state agencies, but state lawmakers voted to expand that to local government agencies earlier this year.
“One of our goals in enforcing this law is to make clear that this law is not optional. This is a requirement and it’s one that we take seriously,” he said.
The law allows violators to be fined but Weiser’s lawsuit only seeks a judge’s order declaring that Zwinck’s actions violated the law and barring him from such actions in the future.
Mississippi freshman defensive lineman Corey Adams was shot and killed Saturday night near Memphis, Tenn. He was 18.
Adams was a three-star recruit out of Edna Karr High School in New Orleans. His alma mater posted a tribute Sunday morning on Facebook.
“This is a post we never want to have to make and words can’t describe this type of pain. We are heartbroken and tormented to pieces,” the Karr Cougar Football account posted.
“Corey Adams was more than a football player! He was a friend, brother, son, student, and all around great young man. We never question God but this is one we just don’t understand. This wasn’t supposed to be the end of his story but we will #DoIt4Co.”
The Shelby County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it is investigating a shooting that took place at around 10:14 p.m. Saturday night outside a residence in Cordova.
“When deputies arrived at the intersection of Forest Hill-Irene and Walnut Grove, they stopped a vehicle, finding an adult male gunshot victim,” the sheriff’s office stated. “They provided life-saving measures until Shelby County Fire arrived. Shelby County Fire personnel later pronounced the victim deceased on the scene.”
A second statement, issued hours later early Sunday morning, identified the victim as Adams.
The sheriff’s department also noted that “four adult males arrived by personal vehicles to area hospitals with gunshot wounds. All four victims are listed in non-critical condition.”
The shooting is an active homicide investigation, the department stated.
According to his Mississippi bio, Adams was a two-time all-state selection who had 19 sacks, 62 tackles (21 for loss), one fumble recovery and four batted passes his senior year. 247 Sports reports that he received offers from 17 schools — including USC, LSU, Oregon, Texas A&M and Mississippi State — before signing with the Rebels.
He enrolled at Mississippi in January. Months later, Adams posted pictures on Instagram of himself taking part in spring practice.
Mississippi football said in an X (formerly Twitter) post that it was “devastated” to learn of Adams’ passing.
“While our program is trying to cope with this tragic loss, our thoughts are with his loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” the Rebels wrote. “Out of respect for his family, we will not be commenting further at this time. We ask the Ole Miss community to keep Corey in their thoughts and respect the privacy of everyone involved.”
Officials have not said what caused the explosion, which took place at the Biscailuz Center Training Academy in East Los Angeles at about 7:30 a.m. PDT Friday, the LA Times reported, citing law enforcement sources.
Other injuries have been reported but authorities have not elaborated on their nature or extent.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s office said he had been briefed on the situation and “has offered full state assistance.”
The Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad responded to the scene following the explosion.
Federal officials are also involved in the investigation.
“Our federal agents are at the scene and we are working to learn more. Please pray for the families of the sheriff’s deputies killed,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondisaid on X.
Bondi said she had been in contact with Central District of California U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli’s office.
“We are closely monitoring the tragic incident that took the lives of three sheriff’s deputies at a training facility in Los Angeles,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on X.
“Our federal partners are on the ground, and we are working to support the ongoing response.”
“I am heartbroken to hear of the terrible tragedy that has unfolded today at an LA County Sheriff’s Department facility. I am closely tracking the situation as we learn more about what occurred and the condition of those affected,” LASD Supervisor Kathryn Barger told KNBC-TV.
“My heart is heavy, and my thoughts are with the brave men and women of the Sheriff’s Department during this difficult time. I stand with them and their families as they navigate the hours and days ahead,”
Los Angeles County leaders are scrambling to restore a sweeping racial justice initiative that voters accidentally repealed, a mistake that could threaten hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to reducing the number of people in jail.
County supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to ask their lawyers to find a way to bring back the ballot measure known as Measure J, which required the county to put a significant portion of its budget toward anti-incarceration services.
Voters learned last week that they had unwittingly repealed the landmark criminal justice reform, passed in 2020 in the heat of the Black Lives Matter movement, when they voted for a completely unrelated measure to overhaul the county government last November.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the county overhaul — known as Measure G — along with Supervisor Janice Hahn, called it a “colossal fiasco.”
“This situation that has unfolded is enraging and unacceptable at every level. What has transpired is sloppy,” Horvath said Tuesday. “It’s a bureaucratic disaster with real consequences.”
The county says it’s looking at multiple options to try to get Measure J permanently back in the charter — which dictates how the county is governed — including a change in state law, a court judgment or a ballot measure for 2026.
“We cannot and we won’t let this mistake invalidate the will of the voters,” Hahn said.
County lawyers say the mistake stems from a recently discovered “administrative error.”
Last November, voters approved Measure G, which expands the five-person Board of Supervisors to nine members and brings on an elected chief executive, among other overhauls.
What no one seemed to realize — including the county lawyers who write the ballot measures — is that one measure would wipe out the other.
Measure G rewrote a chunk of the charter with no mention of anti-incarceration funding, effectively wiping out the county’s promise to put hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail and support them when they leave.
The repeal will take effect in 2028, giving the county three years to fix it.
“I do agree that there’s all kinds of reasons to be outraged, but the sky is not falling. Even if you think the sky is falling, it won’t fall until December 2028,” said Rob Quan, who leads a transparency-focused good-government advocacy group. “We’ve got multiple opportunities to fix this.”
The mistake was first spotted last month by former Duarte City Councilmember John Fasana, who sits on a task force in charge of implementing the county government overhaul. The county confirmed the mistake to The Times last week, a day after Fasana publicly raised the issue to his unsuspecting fellow task force members.
The measure’s critics say the mistake adds credence to their arguments that the county overhaul was put together too hastily.
“It seems to be that if one has to go back on the ballot, it ought to be [Measure] G,” said Fasana, noting it passed by a narrower margin.
Otherwise, he says, the county has set an unnerving precedent.
“It’s almost like setting a blueprint to steal an election,” said Fasana, who opposed both the anti-incarceration funding and the government overhaul measures. “You’ve got this way to basically nullify something that was passed by voters.”
Some worry that putting either measure back on the ballot runs the risk of voters rejecting it this time around.
Measure G faced significant opposition — including from two sitting supervisors — who argued an elected chief executive would be too powerful and the measure left too much of this new government ill-defined. It narrowly passed with just over 51% of the vote.
The anti-incarceration measure also faced heavy opposition in 2020, particularly from the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, which spent more than $3.5 million on advertising on TV and social media. The measure passed with 57% of the vote.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled it unconstitutional after a group of labor unions — including the sheriff’s deputies union — argued it hampered politicians’ ability to manage taxpayer money as they see fit. An appellate court later reversed the decision.
Measure J requires that 10% of locally generated, unrestricted L.A. County money be spent on social services such as housing, mental health treatment and other jail diversion programs. That’s equivalent to roughly $288 million this fiscal year. The county is prohibited from spending the money on the carceral system — prisons, jails or law enforcement agencies.
Derek Hsieh, the head of the sheriff’s deputies union and a member of the governance reform task force, said the union had consulted with lawyers and believed the county would be successful if it tried to resolve the issue through a court judgment.
“A change in state law or running another ballot measure — it’s kind of like swimming upstream,” he said. “Those are the most expensive difficult things.”
Megan Castillo, a coordinator with the Reimagine LA coalition, which pushed for the anti-incarceration measure, said if the group has to go back to the ballot, it will try to slash the language that it feels gives the county too much wiggle room on how funding is allocated. The coalition has clashed repeatedly with county leadership over just how much money is actually meant to be set aside under Measure J.
“If we do have to go to the ballot box, we’re going to be asking for more,” she said.
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who helped get the anti-incarceration measure on the ballot, said she felt suspicious of the error by county lawyers, some of whom she believed were never fully on board with the measure in the first place.
“I just feel like they’re too good at their jobs for this error to occur,” said Hernandez, who said the news landed like a “slap in the face.”
County leaders have emphasized that the error was purely accidental and brushed aside concerns that the repeal would have any tangible difference on what gets funded.
When Measure J was temporarily overturned by the court, the board promised to carry on with both the “spirit and letter” of the measure, reserving a chunk of the budget for services that keep people out of jail and support those returning. That will still apply, they say, even if Measure J is not reinstated.
The motion passed Tuesday directs the county to work on an ordinance to ensure “the continued implementation of measure J” beyond 2028.
Five years after her son was beaten so badly by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that he needed more than 30 stitches and staples to his face and head, Vanessa Perez is still looking for answers. So are county officials tasked with holding the department accountable for misconduct.
Despite a subpoena and an ongoing legal battle, obtaining a complete account of what happened to Vanessa’s son Joseph Perez has proved impossible — at least so far.
The sheriff’s department has released a heavily redacted report outlining its version of what transpired in the San Gabriel Valley community of East Valinda on July 27, 2020.
According to the report, deputies from the Industry Station stopped Joseph, 27, on suspicion of breaking into a car. He punched and kicked them multiple times, the document states. Three deputies injured their hands and a fourth broke his leg falling off a curb. Six deputies punched Joseph and deployed various holds and takedowns before he was arrested and charged with five counts of resisting an executive officer, court records show.
But entire pages of the department’s “use of force” report are blacked out, leaving Vanessa and members of the Civilian Oversight Commission wondering what details are being kept secret.
County oversight officials issued three subpoenas in February for cases under scrutiny, including one seeking an unredacted copy of the Perez file. The County Counsel’s Office has resisted, arguing the files should remain confidential, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has declined to hand them over.
Amid the subpoena standoff, Vanessa, 43, shows up to speak at nearly every monthly meeting of the oversight commission in a black T-shirt with a picture of her son’s bloodied face.
“Surviving an arrest shouldn’t look like Joseph. And it shouldn’t look like 121 punches either. That’s what they admitted to,“ she told The Times, referring to an unofficial tally she made based on the deputies’ statements in the redacted document.
Vanessa Perez holds a photograph of her son, Joseph Perez, taken after he was beaten by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The beating was so severe, she said, it left her son struggling to carry on a conversation.
“He’s not able to do that anymore,” she said. “It’s just hard for him to socialize, period, with the constant fear.”
A month after the oversight commission‘s subpoena, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna responded by filing a lawsuit, asking a court to determine whether his department must comply. Luna said at the time that the County Counsel’s Office had advised the department that releasing the documents “violates the law.”
In a statement to The Times, the sheriff’s department said it is “taking deliberate steps to resolve the dispute and ensure its actions align with both the law and the principles of transparency.”
Last month, the County Counsel’s Office said in a statement that it “has fully supported” the commission “in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens. This includes assisting with a declaratory relief action that will hopefully bring judicial clarity to the commission’s ability to obtain the information it seeks.”
Joseph maintains he was not the aggressor in the July 2020 incident. His mother said he was in the middle of a “mental health episode.”
Court records show Joseph has been jailed multiple times since on a range of charges, including methamphetamine possession and damaging a vehicle. In August 2022, he pleaded no contest to one of the five charges from the beating incident and was sentenced to 32 months in state prison.
He is currently incarcerated at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic after violating his probation from a separate case in which he was convicted of resisting two West Covina police officers.
He has struggled with addiction and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and psychosis, according to his mother.
Anne Golden, Joseph’s public defender, said in a recent court hearing that he suffers from impaired executive functioning due to a traumatic brain injury inflicted by the deputies.
In a brief phone call last month from jail, Joseph told The Times he believes the full report about what happened to him should be released to “show that I was in the right.”
Vanessa Perez holds a photo of her and her son, Joseph Perez.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“They’re lying about a lot of stuff with my case,” he said. “They lied about how it went down; they’re saying I’m the aggressor when I wasn’t. The reality is they beat me up — they left me for dead.”
The sheriff’s department said the deputies involved in the incident declined to comment.
The department said in a statement that every use of force “incident is thoroughly reviewed to evaluate if policies and procedures were followed,” adding that in “this incident, the use of force … was determined to be within policy.”
Oversight officials seeking records related to Joseph’s case and others have been stymied at every turn, according to Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy. Kennedy resigned from the commission in February following a dispute with county lawyers over another matter.
“To have effective and meaningful civilian oversight, it’s necessary for the commission to be able to review confidential documents about police misconduct and use of force,” Kennedy said. “Without that, this is all just oversight theater.”
Last month, Robert Bonner, the oversight commission’s chair, revealed that L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger intended to replace him despite his desire to stay on and finish ongoing work.
Barger said in an email last month that the move “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”
During the commission’s June 26 meeting, Bonner, 84, alleged that powerful people in county government do not want meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department. A former federal judge who once served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and led the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bonner was fiery in his remarks.
He said he believed the County Counsel’s Office was advising the sheriff to withhold documents as a means of “telling this commission what it can and can’t do, and that goes over the line.”
“Surviving an arrest shouldn’t look like Joseph. And it shouldn’t look like 121 punches either. That’s what they admitted to.“
— Vanessa Perez on the arrest and beating of her son, Joseph Perez
“They treat our subpoenas like public record requests,” Bonner said.
The Civilian Oversight Commission has said it is willing to go into closed session to review the full reports, but the county’s lawyers argue that’s not legal.
On Tuesday, the state Senate’s public safety committee approved a bill previously approved by the state Assembly that would allow oversight commissions across California to conduct closed sessions to review personnel records and other confidential materials.
But the proposal, AB 847, still requires approval from the full state Senate and governor. And even if it does become law, the county counsel’s office argues that the L.A. County code explicitly bars the commission from reviewing sensitive documents in closed session.
Robert Bonner, chair of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Civilian Oversight Commission, speaks during the commission’s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in L.A. on June 26.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bonner has pushed for the county code to be changed, saying he and other members of the oversight body “vigorously disagree with County Counsel’s interpretation” of it.
“This commission needs subpoena power to be effective, and it needs to have effective subpoena power, which means it needs to be able to go into closed session,” Bonner said during the commission’s June meeting.
The sheriff’s department said it “will abide by the ultimate judicial determination as to whether those records can be lawfully disclosed.”
Whether the oversight body can issue subpoenas is not in dispute. In March 2020 — four months before Joseph was beaten — L.A. County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure R, a ballot initiative that granted the commission subpoena power.
But the county is thwarting the legal orders, according to Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the Civilian Oversight Commission. That intransigence, he said, contributes to a culture of impunity in the sheriff’s department.
“More momentum will be built in the wrong direction, the county will continue to get sued, the county continues to have more and more financial challenges, and it’s a race to the bottom,” he said.
On June 3, Vanessa Perez drove in from her home in West Covina to attend a hearing for her son at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A.
After waiting several hours for him to emerge, she became emotional as Joseph finally walked into the courtroom through a side door. His hands were cuffed in front of his wrinkled yellow jail T-shirt and his ear lobes were stretched with white paper plugs over his tattooed neck.
Vanessa Perez stands at the location in East Valinda where her son, Joseph Perez, was beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
But despite his lawyer’s pleas for the court to allow Joseph to enter a job training program and immediately begin receiving treatment for his mental health problems, Judge James Bianco ordered him to remain behind bars pending a mental health diversion reinstatement hearing.
“Mr. Perez has been given all the chances that I’m inclined to give him,” Bianco said.
Joseph looked back at his mother once before being escorted back out of the courtroom.
While her son remains locked up for now, Vanessa is demanding the unredacted version of the beating report be made public. She wants to understand why his beating didn’t warrant an internal affairs investigation or discipline for the deputies involved.
“We know Joseph wasn’t the first and won’t be the last,” she said. “With Joseph’s story exposed we … will know how they lied, how they covered their asses, from the deputies to the sergeant to the captain.”
When a top official responsible for oversight of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced recently that he is being forced out of his position, it brought to a fever pitch tensions that had been building for months.
On one side are watchdogs who say efforts to bring reforms and transparency to the Sheriff’s Department are being stymied. On the other are county officials who claim fresh perspectives are needed on the Civilian Oversight Commission.
The showdown is playing out as the commission continues fighting the county for access to internal sheriff’s department records on deputy misconduct, including investigations into gang-like cliques said to rule over certain stations and promote a culture of violence.
Robert Bonner, the oversight commission chair, wrote in a letter last month that he was “involuntarily leaving” the body he has been a member of since its founding in 2016. Bonner, 83, said in an interview that he was chairing the commission’s May meeting at the L.A. County Hall of Records when he unexpectedly received a letter from County Supervisor Kathryn Barger stating that she would be appointing someone to replace him.
On Thursday, Bonner gave his first address to the commission since revealing his time as chair will end this month.
Bonner said he was “still surprised” that he had been “dismissed without so much as a phone call from Supervisor Barger.”
And he had choice words for other county operators that he described as thorns in the commission’s side.
“It can be treacherous. The county bureaucrats — and this includes, by the way, the county counsel’s office — they guard their turf and see an independent commission as a threat to that turf,” Bonner said.
“There are forces within the county,” he added later, “that do not want to see real, effective and meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department.”
Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said in an email that Bonner’s claims that the supervisor summarily dismissed him were made “for dramatic effect” and “are not only inaccurate but also mischaracterize the circumstances of his departure” from the commission.
“His assertion that his presence alone was essential to achieving reforms is both self-serving and dismissive of the dedicated Commissioners and staff who are collectively advancing the Civilian Oversight Commission’s mission,” the statement said. “These reforms are bigger than any one individual, and they will continue without interruption.”
Barger, who chairs the county‘s Board of Supervisors, told The Times in a statement last month that she is “committed to broadening the diversity of voices and expertise represented on the Commission.”
Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger attends a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting in 2023.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
She said her decision to replace Bonner “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”
On Thursday, Patti Giggans, an ally of Bonner’s on the commission, stood up for the departing chairman during what he said would likely be the last of the body’s monthly meetings he’d attend as a commissioner.
“I have a feeling all of us here, all the commissioners, appreciate your leadership, your tenacity, your brilliance and courage to go up against forces that are not necessarily yet in agreement with what effective oversight means,” she said.
The County Counsel’s office said in an email that it “has fully supported the COC, as an advisory body to the Board, in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens.”
But some observers note that the county counsel is in an awkward position, since the office represents multiple parties involved. That includes the Civilian Oversight Commission, which has been trying to enforce subpoenas, as well as Barger’s office and the sheriff’s department.
Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said it seems to him that nearly every time such a dispute comes up, the county’s lawyers side with the sheriff’s department.
“It’s either intentional or it’s incredibly short-sighted for Commissioner Bonner to be pushed out at this point, at a time when he’s been spearheading incredibly important reforms,” Eliasberg said. “It feels to me like this is an effort once again to hamstring this commission.”
Bonner, who previously served as a federal judge and was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, isn’t the only commissioner to acrimoniously leave the oversight body this year.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, right, talks with former oversight official Sean Kennedy during the annual Baker to Vegas law enforcement relay on April 5 in Baker, Calif.
(William Liang / For The Times)
In February, Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy resigned after county lawyers sought to stop him from filing a brief in court in support of Diana Teran, an advisor to former L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón who faced felony charges from the state. Teran was accused of improperly accessing records about sheriff’s deputies, but a state appellate court recently moved to dismiss the case.
Kennedy said in February that he quit because he believed it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”
Last month, Kennedy received notification that a law firm had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel” to investigate him for allegedly retaliating against a sergeant in the sheriff’s department who had faced oversight scrutiny. Kennedy has denied any wrongdoing, claiming the probe against him is politically motivated.
In an email this week, Kennedy described Bonner’s removal as “the death-knell for meaningful civilian oversight of the LASD.” He claimed that the Board of Supervisors “supports the sheriff in preventing the commissioners from accessing confidential documents to do their job.”
Barger’s office pushed back against the criticism, pointing to correspondence from Bonner earlier this year that the supervisor’s office said suggested he was willing to step down.
In an April 18 email to Barger, Bonner wrote that “if you decide not to reappoint me, please be assured that I am fine with that.”
Chavez, Barger’s spokesperson, questioned the “stark contrast” between “his posture and tone” then compared with Bonner’s recent public remarks.
Bonner told The Times he followed up his April 18 email to express that he “wanted to be extended” to achieve his goals as chair.
“I never wanted to her to think I lusted for the job,” Bonner said in a text message.
The abrupt departures of Bonner and Kennedy have raised concerns about who will fill the void they leave behind.
The Civilian Oversight Commission voted on Thursday for the body’s co-vice chair, Hans Johnson, to fill Bonner’s shoes when his time in the role concludes on July 17.
“The loss of Rob and Sean, who were deeply committed to getting to the bottom of problems in the sheriff’s department, is a blow to the county,” said Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the oversight commission. “These were two special guys who knew what they were talking about. Long, long history.”
Deixler attributed the turmoil to “political machinations” within the county and decried the move to replace Bonner.
“I just can’t understand it,” he said. “There couldn’t be a merits-based reason for making that decision.”
At the commission’s meeting Thursday, Bonner listed several goals he had hoped to accomplish before his time as chair ends. His priorities included bolstering the board’s ability to conduct effective oversight and compelling a commitment by Sheriff Robert Luna to enact a ban on deputy gangs and cliques.
It’s not yet clear how Bonner’s dismissal will affect those plans.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “You guys have got to pick up the ball here after July 17.”
The top official on the watchdog commission that oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is being terminated from his position, according to correspondence reviewed by The Times.
Robert Bonner, chair of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, wrote in a Wednesday letter to L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger that he received a letter from her on May 13 that said he was being replaced.
Bonner wrote in the Wednesday letter that he had contacted Barger’s office to request “an opportunity to meet with you and to express ‘my personal wish to be able to finish out the year.’” Barger’s office said on May 15 that a scheduler would reach out to set up a meeting, but that never happened, according to Bonner’s Wednesday letter. He added that he is “involuntarily leaving the Commission” and that he would prefer to stay on to finish work that is underway.
“Given the length of time that I have been on the Commission, and that I am the current Chair of the Commission with another possible year as Chair, I expected as a matter of courtesy that you would want to speak with me and hear me out,” Bonner, 83, wrote.
Bonner and Barger, who chairs the County Board of Supervisors, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning. Bonner’s Wednesday letter did not say when he will serve his final day as a member of the commission.
A former federal judge, Bonner began his second stint as chair of the commission in July. He previously served as its first chair for two years between 2016 and 2018. Chairs and officers of the oversight commission are elected to one-year terms each July and can only serve two consecutive years in those roles.
Bonner’s letter stated that he has been working on several important issues that he was hoping to see through.
The initiatives included revisions to the Los Angeles County Code to help ensure the commission can serve as an independent oversight body; legal action to ensure the commission can review confidential documents in closed session; the shepherding of AB 847, a bill passed by the state Assembly on June 2 that would ensure civilian oversight commissions can review confidential documents in closed session; and efforts to eliminate deputy gangs and cliques.
“Hopefully,” Bonner wrote in his Wednesday letter, his colleagues on the commission “will be able to implement these goals while I am attempting to improve my tennis game.”
The former chairman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission is under investigation for alleged retaliation against a Sheriff’s Department sergeant who faced scrutiny for his role in a unit accused of pursuing politically motivated cases.
Sean Kennedy, a Loyola Law School professor who resigned from the commission this year, received notification from a law firm that said it had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel to conduct a neutral investigation into an allegation that you retaliated against Sergeant Max Fernandez,” according to an email reviewed by The Times.
Kennedy and other members of the commission questioned Fernandez last year about his connections to the Sheriff’s Department’s now-disbanded Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, a controversial unit that operated under then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
Kennedy said the commission’s inquiry into Fernandez appears to be what landed him in the crosshairs of the investigation he now faces. Kennedy denied any wrongdoing in a text message Thursday.
“I was just doing my job as an oversight official tasked by the commission to conduct the questioning at an official public hearing,” he wrote.
Last week, Kennedy received an email from Matthias H. Wagener, co-partner of Wagener Law, stating that the county had launched an investigation.
“The main allegation is that you attempted to discredit Sergeant Fernandez in various ways because of his role in investigating Commissioner Patti Giggans during his tenure on the former Civil Rights & Public Corruption Detail Unit,” Wagener wrote. “It has been alleged that you retaliated for personal reasons relating to your relationship with Commissioner Giggans, as her friend and her attorney.”
The Office of the County Counsel confirmed in an emailed statement that “a confidential workplace investigation into recent allegations of retaliation” is underway, but declined to identify whom it is investigating or who alleged retaliation, citing a need to “ensure the integrity of the investigation and to protect the privacy of” the parties.
“In accordance with its anti-retaliation policies and procedures, LA County investigates complaints made by employees who allege they have been subjected to retaliation for engaging in protected activities in the workplace,” the statement said.
The Sheriff’s Department said in an email that it “has no investigation into Mr. Kennedy.”
Reached by phone Thursday, Fernandez said that he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation and that he has not “talked to anybody at county counsel.”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” he said. “Who started this investigation? They haven’t contacted me. I don’t know how that got into their hands.”
In a phone interview, Kennedy described the inquiry as “extraordinary.”
“I think that this is just the latest in a long line of Sheriff’s Department employees doing really anything they can to thwart meaningful oversight,” Kennedy said. “So now we’re at the point where they’re filing bogus retaliation complaints against commissioners for doing their jobs.”
Kennedy resigned from the Civilian Oversight Commission in February after county lawyers attempted to thwart the body from filing an amicus brief in the criminal case against Diana Teran, who served as an advisor to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
The public corruption unit led several high-profile investigations during Villanueva’s term as sheriff, including inquiries into Giggans, the Civilian Oversight Commission, then-L.A. County Supervisor Shelia Kuehl and former Times reporter Maya Lau.
One of the unit’s investigations involved a whistleblower who alleged that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority unfairly awarded more than $800,000 worth of contracts to a nonprofit run by Giggans, a friend of Kuehl’s and vocal critic of Villanueva. The investigation made headlines when sheriff’s deputies with guns and battering rams raided Kuehl’s Santa Monica home one early morning in 2022.
The investigation ended without any criminal charges last summer, when the California Department of Justice concluded that there was a “lack of evidence of wrongdoing.”
Asked Thursday about the claim that Kennedy — who served as a lawyer for her while she was being investigated by the public corruption unit — interrogated Fernandez as a form of retaliation, Giggans called it “bogus” and said Fernandez “was subpoenaed because of his actions as a rogue sheriff’s deputy.”
Lau filed a lawsuit last month alleging the criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ultimately declined to prosecute the case against Lau.
Critics have repeatedly alleged that Villanueva used the unit to target his political enemies, a charge the former sheriff has disputed.
In October, Kennedy and other members of the Civilian Oversight Commission spent five hours interrogating Fernandez and former homicide Det. Mark Lillienfeld about the public corruption unit, of which they were members.
Kennedy questioned Fernandez’s credibility during the exchange, asking about People vs. Aquino, a ruling by an appellate court in the mid-2000s that found he had provided false testimony during a criminal trial that was “deliberate and no slip of the tongue.”
Fernandez argued that he had “never lied on the stand,” adding that “that’s ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”
Fernandez also fielded questions about whether he was a member of a deputy gang. Critics have accused deputy cliques of engaging in brawls and other misconduct.
Fernandez said he was not in a deputy gang or problematic subgroup. But he acknowledged that he drew a picture of a warrior in the early 2000s that he got tattooed on his body.
A lieutenant tattooed with that image previously testified that it is associated with the Gladiators deputy subgroup, of which Fernandez has denied being a member.
Kennedy also asked Fernandez about a 2003 incident in which he shot and killed a 27-year-old man in Compton. Fernandez alleged the man pointed a gun at him, but sheriff’s investigators later found he was unarmed.
In a 2021 memo to oversight officials, Kennedy called for a state or federal investigation into the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail and its “pattern of targeting” critics of the Sheriff’s Department.
Then-Undersheriff Tim Murakami responded in a letter, writing that the memo contained “wild accusations.”
On May 30, Wagener questioned Kennedy about “why I examined Max Fernandez about his fatal shooting of a community member, his Gladiators tattoo, his perjury in People v. Aquino, and why he put references to people’s sexual orientation in a search warrant application,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Thursday. “I told him I was just asking questions that relate to oversight.”
Robert Bonner, chair of the Civilian Oversight Commission, provided an emailed statement that called the investigation into Kennedy “extremely troubling and terribly ironic.”
“The allegation itself is rich,” Bonner wrote. “But that [it is being] given any credence by County Counsel can only serve to intimidate other Commissioners from asking hard questions.”
