Los Angeles May Be A Blue Bastion, But It Elected A Runaway Fascist Sheriff

A few days ago I mentioned that the L.A. County sheriff’s department is the biggest sheriff’s department in America and the 4th largest local police agency in the whole country. It is also one of America's most violent, corrupt, gang-infested (The Banditos) and unaccountable law enforcement agencies. Having an organization like that led by a fascist thug is a very, very big problem. And the current head is a fascist thug who is upon for reelection in November. His opponent, former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, isn’t someone I would normally vote for. But I will hold my nose this time and do just that.

The sheriff’s election isn’t getting as much coverage as it should, particularly when you consider what kind of a danger Villanueva has shown himself to be. In L.A., he’s the closest thing we have to MAGA-world. The L.A. Times covered the race as a fight between Villanueva and California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Anita Chabria wrote yesterday that “At this point in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s descent into ignominy, it’s clear to even the casual observer that Sheriff Alex Villanueva isn’t just willing to play in the mud, he seems to enjoy it like a hog in a heat wave. But with the upcoming election and the numerous headlines our sheriff generates, the significance of one of Villanueva’s recent stunts has largely sunk in the mire. Let me pull it back to the top, because it has big implications not just for the Los Angeles County sheriff but for sheriffs across the state and those who care about criminal justice reform.”

As my colleague Alene Tchekmedyian reported, Villanueva recently wrote to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, asking him to investigate whether county Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and others were tipped off prior to the Sheriff’s Department serving them with search warrants.

Continuing a long-running hissy fit against any type of oversight, Villanueva accused L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman of contacting Kuehl and others the night before to warn them.

Depending on whom you ask, that search was either part of an investigation about exposing public corruption or the sheriff abusing his power to go after political rivals.

But it was Bonta’s unexpected response that should be garnering more attention.

Sure, the state’s top cop wrote back in a public letter to Villanueva, I’ll look into the leak. And while I’m at it, I’ll take over the investigation— because I have authority over sheriffs.

Bonta ordered Villanueva to turn over what he had and take a seat.

That is a thunderclap of a statement, because sheriffs routinely assert that they are answerable only to voters, and previous attorneys general have rarely argued otherwise. And despite years of trying, legislators have failed to pass meaningful reforms to rein in the power of sheriffs.

In fact, some so-called constitutional sheriffs, of which there are a handful in California, say they are the de facto law in their territories, above even federal authorities. They embrace far-right ideologies that extremists hope will encourage sheriffs to intervene in coming elections.

But Bonta— a criminal justice reformer who grew up living in a trailer at the United Farm Workers compound in La Paz in the Central Valley, just a stone’s throw from Cesar Chavez’s house— sees it differently.

He doesn’t think sheriffs are above the law or arbiters of it, and he told me Wednesday that oversight and accountability are crucial to rebuilding the trust that law enforcement everywhere sorely lacks. In his letter, he asserted that the California Constitution gives him the authority to step into any investigation, even over a sheriff.

“We don’t shy away from it when we feel it’s appropriate to get involved,” Bonta said.

Though he declined to talk about the Los Angeles fiasco directly, Bonta said this case contains a “very unique set of circumstances,” and it “made sense for us to take the entire case.”

Part of that logic was that Villanueva had previously recused himself from the investigation, meaning he “recognizes that he should be recused from any related matters,” Bonta wrote.

I’m pretty sure Villanueva didn’t see that one coming— and the fact that he threw open the door and invited Bonta in, only to find himself pushed out to the porch, has more than one legal expert laughing.

The state attorney general rarely takes over individual investigations from local law enforcement. It’s not uncommon to see “pattern and practice” investigations that look at entire departments largely from a civil rights perspective. But cherry-picking a single probe— that’s treading on another cop’s territory, and it’s not something to be done lightly.

It’s so rare that the only example of it previously happening that experts could cite to me occurred in 1981, when then-Los Angeles Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp tried to drop murder charges against Angelo Buono, one of two men accused of raping, torturing and murdering 10 women in the Hillside Strangler case.

…While the move to hijack the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s investigation is singular, it’s not surprising.

If Villanueva had been able to see past his own ego, he might have predicted this. Bonta has been one of the most active attorneys general in recent times when it comes to oversight.

When he was in the Assembly, prior to Gov. Gavin Newsom appointing him to his role in 2021, Bonta helped author a bill that gave the attorney general greater power to intervene in officer-involved shootings by requiring independent investigations every time a law enforcement officer kills an unarmed person.

…Bonta isn’t afraid to go after law enforcement if he thinks it’s warranted. I asked him what other sheriffs should make of him taking over this investigation from Villanueva, the most powerful one in California and, arguably, the country.

He said they can “draw whatever conclusions they wish. I think our actions speak for themselves.”

I hope that’s the warning it seems like.

Because Villanueva isn’t the only cowboy-hat-wearing Wild West sheriff running loose in California— and the truth is their Doc Holliday act has never been as charming as they think.

And though Villanueva has run his campaign as the toughest Latino in town, it turns out that a Filipino kid from the Central Valley may have the bigger badge.

More important, he has the guts to wield it.

During the debate this week, Villanueva boasted that he's a Democrat. He is-- the worst kind of Democrat you'll ever find. In June, reporting for the New Yorker, Dana Goodyear wrote that "Villanueva’s time in office has been marked by a string of scandals and lawsuits implicating him— and his wife, Vivian, a retired deputy— in abuses of power. He has responded by attacking whistle-blowers and refusing to submit to oversight. The state attorney general opened a review of Villanueva’s pattern of investigating critics and rivals. The Los Angeles County Democratic Party and the local chapter of the A.C.L.U. have called on him to resign. Andrés Dae Keun Kwon, a human-rights attorney with the A.C.L.U., told me that Villanueva, who campaigned as a reformer, “really pulled a bait and switch. As a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, railing against 'the woke left,' Villanueva has been called the Donald Trump of L.A." Trump's not on the ballot this year and there are no crackpot MAGAts with any chance of winning any statewide offices in California. Instead, L.A. has an Alex Villanueva problem. And this guy, the protector of the sheriff department's gang culture, has got to be defeated.

Goodyear wrote that "At this point, Villanueva’s critics say, he is no longer an outsider to gang culture. 'His conduct protects the gang, and in that sense he now has a gang affiliation,' [L.A. County Inspector General Max]Huntsman told me. 'Anybody who believes in democracy or the rule of law should be very scared. Having a shadow government that actually controls what happens on the street can cause all the laws you write to have no impact on whether you get shot dead.'"