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California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday announced a civil rights investigation into the perpetually troubled Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department state after allegations of excessive force.
The state will investigate a possible unconstitutional law enforcement model, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
“The California Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation follows allegations of excessive force, retaliation and other misconduct, as well as a number of recently reported incidents involving the management and staff of LASD, ”the office said.
Becerra, President Joe Biden’s candidate for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, tweeted, “There are serious concerns and reports that accountability and respect for legitimate policing practices have lapsed at LASD.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a statement that he has repeatedly asked the attorney general’s office to monitor him.
“I look forward to this non-criminal ‘models and practices’ investigation,” he said. “Our department can finally have an impartial and objective assessment of our operations.”
Villaneuva and its department have been the target of recurrent protests against fatal shootings. The ministry has often responded to criticism and outside polls with defiance. In 2019, he opened an investigation into the county inspector general, alleging that the office obtained documents illegally.
Among the sheriff’s department’s most controversial murders was the shooting of 18-year-old Andres Guardado in June 2020. An independent autopsy released by his family in July said he had been shot five times in the back.
Sheriff’s detectives had put safety on the county coroner’s findings, and Villanueva defended the blackout as necessary to preserve the integrity of the investigation. But the coroner’s office launched a rare inquest which concluded Guardado’s death was a homicide. The deputy who shot him declined to testify as part of the investigation.
The department has also been criticized for its longtime “assistant gangs”, which a Loyola Law School report counted at 18 last week.
“These assistant gangs foster a culture of violence and intensify the use of force against community members, including fatal shootings,” said author Sean Kennedy, executive director of the Center for Juvenile Law & Policy at school, in a press release. “The institutional inability to meaningfully tackle these gang gangs has deprived the community of equal justice before the law.
Last year, leaders of the US House Oversight and Reform Committee called on the Justice Department to investigate the sheriff’s department, alleging that the deputy cliques “adhere to white supremacist ideologies, belong to ‘criminal gangs’ and engage in an ‘racially motivated’ aggressive style of policing.
In November, lawmakers who staged a protest in downtown Los Angeles were accused of withholding credentials on their badges in violation of state law. The department defended the action as necessary because activists allegedly leaked MPs’ personal information online.
In September, a number of MPs arrested a Los Angeles radio reporter covering a protest outside a hospital treating MPs injured in a shooting. The department claimed the journalist did not identify herself as a member of the media, and Villanueva accused her of being engaged in “activism”.
But subsequent video of the arrest appeared to show those claims to be false, and a charge of obstructing police was never filed. County Civil Inspector General Max Huntsman agreed the ministry’s claims “may be false.”
The following month, the Los Angeles County Supervisory Board’s Civil Oversight Commission called on Villanueva to resign and considered the possibility of removing him. Villanueva refused to resign, calling criticism of him “downright anti-American”.
Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said the group had called on the California attorney general to investigate the department since the fall.
“We hope we get some semblance of justice on behalf of the people who were killed by the sheriff’s department,” she said.
Noting the department’s history of wrongdoing – former Sheriff Lee Baca was jailed last year after being convicted of obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI – Abdullah said: “It is very difficult to be considered as one of the worst sheriffs considering who Villanueva is. the predecessors were. “
The Southern California ACLU also called on the state to investigate the department.
“We commend the Attorney General for responding to the call by grassroots groups and families of those killed by sheriff’s deputies to initiate an investigation into unconstitutional police practices by Sheriff Villanueva and the LASD,” said Andrés Kwon, political advisor of the organization. in a report.
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