For almost 5 hours Friday, the Civilian Oversight Fee grilled two former members of a secretive unit inside the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division accused of focusing on former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s foes.
The controversial — and now disbanded — Civil Rights and Public Integrity Element was behind a number of of the high-profile investigations that dominated the headlines all through Villanueva’s tenure, together with these into the county watchdog, a county supervisor, a member of the oversight fee and a Los Angeles Instances reporter.
Practically two years after voters ousted Villanueva and elected Robert Luna as sheriff, questions have lingered about what the unit did and why it was created within the first place. This week’s particular listening to sought solutions from two of the unit’s central figures, Sgt. Max Fernandez and former murder Det. Mark Lillienfeld.
Their testimony confirmed the unit had thought-about extra instances than beforehand identified, although officers apparently publicized solely these referring to Villanueva’s sharpest critics. And in some cases, oversight officers mentioned, the unit’s personal members seemed to be above the legislation.
By the point the testimony wrapped up midafternoon, the fee’s sometimes reserved chair, Robert Bonner, had come to a stark conclusion concerning the “McCarthy-esque” unit: “It was set as much as intimidate Alex Villanueva’s critics,” he mentioned. “We have to be positive this may by no means occur once more.”
Villanueva has beforehand defended the unit, calling it a vital software for preventing corruption, and saying he recused himself from all decision-making that might create a battle of curiosity. On Friday afternoon, he didn’t reply to an emailed request for remark.
The concept for the secretive squad on the middle of Friday’s listening to stemmed from Villanueva’s 2018 marketing campaign for sheriff, when he ran as a progressive reformer promising to handle corruption within the division’s higher ranks. In response to Lillienfeld, the unit fashioned about six months after Villanueva took workplace, although he mentioned Villanueva first floated the concept to him two weeks earlier than successful the election.
When The Instances investigated the unit three years in the past, there have been 9 identified members. This week, Lillienfeld mentioned the quantity fluctuated from two to 10. On paper, the unit’s detectives had been scattered across the division on different assignments. One was purported to be working patrol in Lancaster, and one other was assigned to a gang crime unit.
In 2021, a memo by oversight fee member Sean Kennedy recommended asking state or federal officers to analyze the Villanueva administration’s “extremely uncommon bulletins” about investigations that appeared to “recommend a sample of focusing on” those that criticized the division.
On Friday, Kennedy and different commissioners reiterated that sentiment — particularly after Lillienfeld revealed the unit had examined “55 or 60” complaints.
“It’s fascinating there have been 55 or 60 instances,” Bonner mentioned, “however the one ones that anyone’s ever heard of are the investigations of commissioner Patti Giggans, Supervisor [Sheila] Kuehl, Sachi Hamai the previous [L.A. County] CEO, Inspector Basic Max Huntsman and Maya Lau, the Instances reporter. These are the one ones you’ve ever heard of — and there’s a purpose for that.”
The Villanueva administration rehired Lillienfeld to affix the unit in 2019, after he’d already retired from the division as soon as and frolicked working for the district lawyer’s workplace.
Whereas working for the D.A. in 2018, he was briefly banned from all county lockups when he was caught on digital camera dressing as a deputy and sneaking into Males’s Central Jail to ship a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin and a cup of espresso to an inmate.
On Friday, Lillienfeld supplied a extra detailed account of the bizarre incident, saying it was all a part of an investigation aimed toward releasing a wrongfully convicted prisoner by discovering proof that might level to the true killer. As a part of the inquiry, he started leaving meals for an inmate informant to provide to the suspected killer as a way to win his belief. Finally, Lillienfeld mentioned, he deliberate to sneak in a tapped cellphone in hopes the true killer would confess.
However the operation, which Lillienfeld alleged was approved by a courtroom order, went south when one other inmate found the meals and jail officers caught on. Afterward, a commander who Lillienfeld mentioned had it out for him determined to open an administrative inquiry and publish fliers in all county jails warning deputies to not let him in.
“I’m the f— good man right here who acquired an harmless man out of jail,” Lillienfeld mentioned Friday, including that he was “very comfortable” together with his wage on the Sheriff’s Division and didn’t have to smuggle contraband into jails on the facet.
When Fernandez, the sergeant who additionally served within the unit, took the stand, he confronted questions on his tattoos and whether or not they signified membership in any of the deputy gangs or subgroups which have bedeviled the Sheriff’s Division for half a century.
Fernandez mentioned he wasn’t in any of the teams however testified that within the early 2000s he drew a brand for the Compton station’s Baker-to-Vegas relay race crew. The intricate hand-drawn picture featured a kneeling samurai-style warrior holding a double-headed ax and a defend emblazoned with a cranium and the letters CPT.
After he left Compton station, Fernandez mentioned, he heard a number of the different deputies had made his artwork right into a tattoo. One of many deputies with that tattoo is Lt. Larry Waldie, who has beforehand testified the picture was related to the Gladiators, a deputy group he mentioned butted heads with the Compton station’s extra infamous inked group referred to as the Executioners.
Although Fernandez mentioned that he too had a tattoo of the warrior picture, he mentioned his was not numbered — as some deputy clique tattoos are — and that he doesn’t take into account himself a member of the Gladiators.
At one level, Kennedy extra immediately raised questions on Fernandez’s credibility and whether or not it might have an effect on his suitability for a corruption squad. He introduced up a legal case from the mid-2000s through which an appellate courtroom mentioned Fernandez had given false testimony throughout a felony trial and that the error was “deliberate and no slip of the tongue.”
When requested about it, Fernandez pushed again.
“I’ve by no means lied on the stand,” he mentioned. “That’s ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”
One of many anti-corruption investigations he dealt with was the case in opposition to Kuehl and Giggans, each vocal critics of the Villanueva administration. The investigation centered on greater than $800,000 price of contracts Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded to Peace Over Violence, a nonprofit run by Giggans. The group’s hotline for reporting sexual harassment on the transit system got here below scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged Giggans was unfairly awarded the hotline contract as a quid professional quo for supporting Kuehl.
This 12 months, state prosecutors formally rejected the case, saying they’d accomplished a “thorough and unbiased investigation.” However on Friday, Fernandez alleged state investigators beforehand instructed him prosecutors had by no means truly allow them to study the proof.
“The entire thing was lined up,” he mentioned.
The Peace Over Violence investigation had additionally led to different allegations, together with the declare — repeated regularly by Villanueva — that Huntsman was concerned in tipping off Kuehl earlier than the Sheriff’s Division searched her residence.
In an announcement Friday, Villanueva known as Fernandez’s testimony “a damning indictment of the integrity of [state Atty. Gen. Rob] Bonta’s place on the Peace Over Violence investigation.”
“Fernandez confirmed what we knew, that Bonta assumed management of the general public corruption investigation for the only real objective of burying it, to not examine it as he claimed,” he mentioned. “This requires a federal-level evaluation of Bonta’s actions and public statements, which don’t seem to reconcile with the details.”
Throughout Friday’s listening to, Kennedy grilled Lillienfeld about why he didn’t examine after studying Fernandez could have accomplished one thing related, allegedly telling the whistleblower’s husband a couple of search warrant within the case. Lillienfeld mentioned he didn’t assume Fernandez had leaked any info maliciously and identified that Fernandez didn’t inform the targets of any warrants.
Some commissioners balked at that reasoning.
“That makes it appear to be now we have two programs of justice,” Commissioner Irma Cooper mentioned. “Anybody else you’ll have had charged.”
One line of questioning for which Lillienfeld supplied few solutions centered on the Villanueva administration’s investigations into journalists, together with a former Instances reporter who wrote a narrative in 2017 a couple of leaked listing of downside deputies. After a prolonged and secret legal inquiry, in 2021 the Sheriff’s Division urged the state lawyer basic to prosecute a number of oversight officers in addition to Lau, then a reporter for The Instances, alleging she knowingly obtained “stolen property.” This 12 months, the state turned down the case.
Although Lillienfeld mentioned the corruption squad didn’t routinely examine Instances reporters, he didn’t supply further particulars concerning the investigation into Lau, citing a associated ongoing investigation.
The oversight fee initially launched into a string of particular hearings in early 2022 as a part of an long-term effort to analyze deputy gangs. After listening to sworn testimony from whistleblowers and different division members over the course of a number of months, in early 2023 the particular counsel for the fee issued a report condemning the “most cancers” of deputy gangs and urging the sheriff to ban the teams.
This 12 months, the hearings resumed, that includes testimony from Villanueva and his former undersheriff. There are not any further hearings scheduled, however as Kennedy wrapped up Friday’s questioning, he floated the likelihood.
“I feel that this listening to raises startling questions on how the Sheriff’s Division has focused this fee and different oversight officers,” he mentioned. “Sadly, due to the repeated claims of confidentiality, it’s very tough to unravel the matter, though I feel we got here shut.”