California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced on Friday a state civil rights investigation of the perpetually troubled Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after allegations of excessive use of force.
The state will investigate a possible unconstitutional law enforcement pattern, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
“The California Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation comes in the wake of allegations of excessive use of force, retaliation and other misconduct, as well as a series of recently reported incidents involving LASD management and personnel,” said the office. .
Becerra, appointed by President Joe Biden as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, tweeted, “There are serious concerns and reports that responsibility and adherence to legitimate policing practices have been eliminated in LASD.”
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a statement that he repeatedly asked the attorney general’s office to oversee.
“I look forward to this ‘standard and practice’ non-criminal investigation,” he said. “Our department can finally have an impartial and objective assessment of our operations.”
Villaneuva and his department have been the target of recurring protests over fatal shootings. The department has always responded to external criticisms and polls in a challenging way. In 2019, he opened an investigation against the county inspector general, claiming that the office had obtained documents illegally.
One of the most controversial killings in the sheriff’s department was the murder of 18-year-old Andres Guardado in June 2020. An independent autopsy released by his family in July said he was shot five times in the back.
The sheriff’s detectives placed a security order on the county coroner’s findings and Villanueva defended the blackout as necessary to preserve the integrity of the investigation. But the coroner launched a rare investigation that concluded that Guardado’s death was a homicide. The deputy who shot him refused to testify in the inquiry.
The department has also been criticized for its former “gangs of deputies,” that a report last week from Loyola Law School reached 18.
“These gangs of deputies foster a culture of violence and increase the use of force against members of the community, including fatal shootings,” said author Sean Kennedy, executive director of the school’s Youth Policy and Legislation Center, in a statement. “The institutional failure to approach these gangs of deputies in any significant way has deprived the community of equal justice under the law.”
Last year, leaders of the United States House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee asked the Justice Department to investigate the sheriff’s department, claiming that deputies’ cliques “adhere to white supremacist ideologies, belong to ‘criminal gangs’. and engage in an ‘aggressive style of policing “motivated by racism”.
In November, deputies working at a protest in downtown Los Angeles were accused of covering up identifying information on their badges, in violation of state law. The department defended the action as necessary because activists allegedly divulge members’ personal information online.
In September, several deputies arrested a Los Angeles radio reporter who was covering a protest in front of a hospital where deputies injured in a shootout were being treated. The department claimed that the reporter did not identify herself as a member of the media and Villanueva accused her of being engaged in “activism”.
But the subsequent video of the arrest appeared to show that these allegations were wrong and a charge of obstruction by the police was never recorded. County civil inspector general Max Huntsman agreed that the department’s allegations “may have been false”.
The following month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ civilian oversight committee asked for Villanueva’s resignation and considered the possibility of impeaching him. Villanueva refused to resign, calling the council’s criticisms “totally anti-American”.
Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said the group had summoned California’s attorney general to investigate the department since the fall.
“We hope to get some appearance of justice on behalf of the people who were killed by the sheriff’s department,” she said.
Looking at the department’s record of wrongdoing – ex-sheriff Lee Baca reported to prison last year after being convicted on federal charges of obstructing justice and lying to the FBI – Abdullah said: “It is very difficult to be considered one of the worst sheriffs , considering who Villanueva’s predecessors were. “
The Southern California ACLU also asked the state to investigate the department.
“We applaud the attorney general for responding to calls from grassroots groups and the families of people killed by sheriff’s deputies to launch an investigation into the unconstitutional policing pattern of Sheriff Villanueva and LASD,” said Andrés Kwon, political adviser to the organization . in a statement.
