Los Angeles County’s Civilian Oversight Commission, frustrated by Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s refusal to comply with its subpoenas and by his alleged intimidation of its members, is now asking county counsel and state attorney general to review whether Villanueva broke the law by launching criminal investigations into his most vocal critics.
Though the commission subpoenaed Villanueva’s appearance nearly a month in advance, the sheriff said he was too busy to attend Thursday’s meeting. The commissioners, in response to the sheriff’s defiance, unanimously voted to pursue “all legal remedies,” including potentially asking a judge to find Villanueva in contempt.
The oversight group’s request for legal reviews came after Commissioner Sean Kennedy, a Loyola Law professor, penned a 10-page memorandum outlining a pattern of highly publicized Sheriff’s Department investigations into Villanueva’s enemies that “never resulted in charges being filed.”
“The likelihood is high that such investigations have chilled meaningful civilian oversight of the LASD,” Kennedy wrote. “To date, the COC has remained silent in the face of substantial evidence that the sheriff is engaging in extortion or some other abuse of power.”
At the meeting, Kennedy added that he was later contacted by Undersheriff Tim Murakami about the release of the memo. Murakami, according to Kennedy, informed him that “various sheriff personnel” would be suing the commissioner over the memo and that he had “committed some kind of misconduct that should subject me to being disciplined by the state bar.”
“I felt it was more effort to intimidate people from bringing to light the misconduct of the special unit that investigates oversight officials,” Kennedy said.
‘Secret police’
The Los Angeles Times detailed the nine-member unit led by Murakami in an article Thursday morning, noting that some in the department referred to the team formed by Villanueva as the sheriff’s “secret police.” The unit, the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, has launched investigations into Inspector General Max Huntsman, oversight Commissioner Patti Giggans’ nonprofit Peace Over Violence, and other critics of the sheriff.
Reportedly, Villanueva warned Huntsman in 2019 that there would be “consequences” if he released a report critical of reinstated Deputy Carl Mandoyan. When Huntsman moved forward, Murakami announced the inspector general was under investigation for allegedly accessing confidential personnel files. The case is still pending two years later.
Kennedy’s memo detailed other examples of the sheriff or his department threatening officials, including former County CEO Sachi Hamai, who went on to receive a $1.5 million settlement from the county as a result of Villanueva’s alleged harassment.
One of the central figures in the sheriff’s secretive unit is a formerly retired homicide investigator who once posed as a deputy to a sneak an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee to an inmate in Men’s Central Jail, according to The Times.
According to LAist, the District Attorney’s Office declined a request by the Sheriff’s Department to form a joint task force to investigate public corruption, because the D.A.’s Office felt it would compromise its independence. Typically, public corruption investigations are carried out by the district attorney’s Public Integrity Division.
Court records showed the District Attorney’s Office is not involved in the Peace Over Violence investigation. Villanueva reportedly backed the recall of District Attorney George Gascón shortly after Gascon rejected the joint task force idea, according to Kennedy.
Compared to Joseph McCarthy
During the meeting, Commissioner Rob Bonner — a former prosecutor, DEA administrator and federal judge — compared Villanueva to Joseph McCarthy, the U.S. senator known for his accusations that communists had invaded the federal government, academia and the film industry in the 1950s.
“The sheriff is doing this to intimidate those with oversight, to get them to back off and back down,” Bonner said. “We need to have these intimidation tactics cease. It’s really mind-boggling that the sheriff himself has not come before us to give his side. If his motivations are somehow pure, then he’s totally wrong and he’s doing things that are unethical, and he needs to know that.”
In a statement meant to pre-empt the Times’ story, Villanueva said that public corruption investigations have been conducted “for decades under every single sheriff, but it has not been formalized until recently.”
“The sole responsibility of the Sheriff’s Department is to investigate allegations of criminal conduct as they are discovered, regardless of how inconvenient it may be to the subject of the investigation,” Villanueva stated. “The unit is supervised by the Undersheriff, and I have recused myself from all decision making to avoid any potential conflict of interest.”
A spokesperson for the sheriff referred to the statement when asked to comment about Thursday’s votes.
Subpoena for undersheriff?
The oversight commission now plans to subpoena Murakami to testify about the sheriff’s public integrity detail at its next meeting. Measure R, approved by voters in March 2020, granted subpoena power to the oversight commission, but so far, the sheriff has defied all attempts to use it.
Giggans said the sheriff’s investigation into Peace Over Violence is intimidating and has created challenges for the nonprofit’s donations. Peace Over Violence is an advocacy group working on sexual and domestic violence intervention, prevention and education. The Sheriff’s Department served search warrants at the nonprofit’s offices and the headquarters of L.A. Metro in February and then again in March as part of an investigation into alleged corruption, according to an affidavit attached to the warrants.
Giggans, appointed to the commission by Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, chaired the oversight group when Villanueva defied the first subpoena last year. The commission, Kuehl and then-Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas called for Villanueva’s resignation in September 2020. The Board of Supervisors then discussed possible legal strategies for removing Villanueva from office roughly a month before the Sheriff’s Department first obtained the warrants to search Metro and Peace Over Violence.
The warrant asked for six years of communications involving Metro employees, Giggans, Kuehl, and other officials.
‘This has to stop’
“This would not be happening if I did not have this oversight position, I know that, you know that,” Giggans said at the meeting Thursday. “This has to stop.”
Court records appeared to indicate that the investigation into Metro and Peace Over Violence, headed by Detective Max Fernandez, was presented much differently behind closed doors. Fernandez reportedly expressed doubts about the probe in emails and conversations with attorneys, records showed.
In one email, Fernandez stated he does not believe Giggans did anything wrong.
“So officially I would like to say (in writing) that my opinion is that Ms. Giggans does not seem to have any fault in this matter,” Fernandez wrote in an email to Austin Dove, an attorney representing Peace Over Violence. “She is not a Politian (sic) and might have been tossed in the group hastily.”
In a separate sworn affidavit, Harvinder Anand, the attorney for the Office of the Inspector General, wrote that Fernandez told him he “personally does not see it” in regards to the allegations against Peace Over Violence.
‘A tool to harass’
In court filings, Metro attorney Robert Dugdale argued that Fernandez’s admissions “undercut the notion that there is probable cause to believe MTA possesses any evidence showing a criminally corrupt relationship between anyone affiliated with the MTA and Peace Over Violence.”
Dugdale alleges the search warrants are “a tool to target and harass politicians who sit on the MTA board and who have been critical of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s job performance, rather than a tool being used by the LASD to conduct a legitimate criminal investigation.”
Metro, attempting to have the search warrants thrown out, won an appeal earlier this month that will remove from the case the Superior Court judge who signed off on the warrants.