After years of flouting subpoenas and decrying requires his testimony as a “political circus designed for political injury,” former Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva lastly testified to the county’s Civilian Oversight Committee about the issue of deputy gangs within the power on Friday.
As Rolling Stone has reported, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division is riven with violent deputy gangs who menace the general public and threaten the cohesion of the nation’s third largest policing power. Regardless of scandals involving deputy gangs repeatedly marring his tenure, Villanueva testified that he by no means launched a systemic investigation of the difficulty, insisting his focus was on punishing particular person “misconduct.”
The previous sheriff even justified having elevated recognized members of deputy gangs to management posts in his administration. Villanueva declared he had no real interest in “a witch hunt” about “what sort of ink they’ve on their our bodies.” And he insisted: “I by no means examined anybody’s tattoo.”
Villanueva, now a candidate for an LA County Supervisor seat, was characteristically bombastic all through his testimony — regularly in search of to show the tables on the committee. He known as one query about his dealing with of gangs “concerning the dumbest factor I’ve ever heard.” He minimized the specter of deputy gangs, evaluating them to different benign deputy “subgroups,” together with “softball groups.” In a revealing alternate, Villanueva declared that if LASD rooted out all deputies based mostly on their deputy gang tattoo affiliations, it could spark a “gargantuan public security disaster.”
The LASD is a large power — it has almost 10,000 sworn deputies — and in addition operates the most important jail system in the US. In early 2023, a scathing COC report demanded that LASD brass take decisive motion in opposition to deputy gangs: “It’s time to eradicate this 50-year plague upon the county of Los Angeles.”
That report recognized a minimum of “a half dozen” deputy gangs run out of the division’s precinct stations, with names just like the Banditos (based mostly at East L.A. station) and the Executioners (Compton). LASD gangs, the report described, function “very like the Mafia,” with “made” members receiving a gang tattoo. The Executioners’ mark, it detailed, is “a skeleton holding an computerized rifle.” The Banditos’ tattoo is a skeleton in a sombrero with a thick mustache and a smoking revolver. The deputies are normally inked on their decrease legs or ankles.
These deputy gangs are harmful to county residents, to fellow deputies, and to the functioning of LASD. Within the stations the place they’re lively, the report detailed, the gangs have “shot callers” who make legislation enforcement selections exterior the official chain of command, as an alternative of “the sergeants, lieutenants and the captain who’re charged with the obligation.”
Removed from being cabined off within the decrease ranks, the report revealed that “tattooed deputy gang members” had reached “the very best ranges” inside LASD’s command construction. It known as out Villanueva for having “at minimal tolerated, if not rewarded deputy gangs.” To wit, Villanueva’s chief of workers testified underneath oath in 2022 to the COC that he’d previously been a tattooed member of a deputy group known as the Grim Reapers. The COC additionally heard testimony that now-retired Undersheriff Tim Murakami had a tattoo for a “clique” known as the Cavemen.
Murakami has steadfastly refused to seem earlier than the COC to reply questions on deputy gangs. Beneath questioning Friday, Villanueva denied that he was, himself, a member of the Cavemen. Requested when he knew that Murakami was a member of a gang, Villanueva dodged, insisting the question was loaded, “just like the query of, ‘When did you cease beating your spouse?’”
The previous sheriff was requested whether or not it furthers “good neighborhood relations” to have the general public interacting with deputies bearing gang tattoos — for instance the Executioners’ tattoo of a “skeleton with a helmet holding a rifle.” Villanueva responded: “Effectively, in the event that they’re on the market working round in shorts, with all these tattoos, possibly. But when they’re carrying pants — ehhh?”
Elements of Villanueva’s testimony known as for suspension of disbelief. He claimed he didn’t know if deputy gangs have been exclusionary or discriminatory in how they provide membership. And regardless of being confronted with a present Los Angeles Occasions story exposing the existence of a brand new deputy gang, Villanueva argued that “the issue is definitely disappearing.”
However, Villanueva additionally appeared to argue that the issue of deputy gang membership is so pervasive that it may possibly’t be tackled instantly. “What precisely are you gonna do whenever you decide that, possibly, 20 % of your workforce has tattoos?” he requested throughout one alternate with the COC counsel. “Are you going to in some way set them on a shelf? Or hearth all 20 % of the division as a result of they’ve a tattoo?”
Including to a circus-like ambiance, Villanueva additionally rebuked COC insinuations that he’d obstructed an investigation into gang violence as “disgusting” and “appalling.” Villanueva even alleged, throughout a break, that some members of the viewers on the proceedings have been flipping off his spouse.
The exercise of LASD’s deputy gangs has routinely led to abuses. Deputies who want to earn a spot in a gang are described within the 2023 COC report as “chasing ink” — or in search of to show their mettle by abusing members of the general public. This has led to “unconstitutional” acts of “extreme power,” the report revealed, together with deputies who’ve sought to “get into shootings” with suspects believed to be armed.
Moreover, the report describes how some deputy gangs have held “taking pictures events” to fete members who hearth their weapons at suspects. Such deputies are then allowed to “add elaborations” to their gang tattoos — for instance, a puff of “smoke” to a barrel of a gun.
Inside LASD, the gangs are a menace to non-member deputies. The report describes gangs as discriminating by race and gender in choosing members. And non-members have allegedly been topic to a variety of abuses — starting from assault by gang members to being denied backup at harmful crime scenes. The report additionally detailed how the gangs “function in secrecy,” with members allegedly prepared to “lie in experiences to guard one another.”
A separate 2021 report, commissioned by the county, revealed that judgments stemming from the malfeasance of deputy gangs had compelled county taxpayers to shell out greater than $50 million in settlements and judgments.
Villanueva, maybe the Trumpiest politician in California, misplaced his re-election bid in late 2022. New sheriff Robert Luna ran as a reformer and has been on the job now for a 12 months. He shortly instituted a brand new Workplace of Constitutional Policing, vowing it could assist “eradicate” deputy gangs.
Whereas the soft-spoken Luna has been the stylistic antithesis of Villanueva, he has achieved little of substance on the gang entrance — together with not implementing a ban on deputy gang tattoos. This week, the existence of a brand new alleged deputy gang — the “Indians,” based mostly out of the Metropolis of Trade station — turned public, as a part of a report about 4 LASD deputies who have been fired from the power following a drunken 2022 brawl with youngsters exterior a bowling alley.
In a year-end interview with the Los Angeles Occasions, Luna blamed purple tape for his lack of motion. “I’m admitting there’s a difficulty,” he advised the paper, including that “any time we’re coping with workers’ hours, working circumstances or issues that affect folks’s each day lives, we’ve got to undergo a meet-and-confer course of.”
Requested whether or not LASD would unveil a brand new anti-gang coverage in 2024, Luna replied: “That’s my absolute expectation.”
