Inspector general blasts LA County sheriff’s new policy on deputy gangs

The primary watchdog of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sharply criticized a new policy that bans deputy gangs, saying it's unlikely to pierce the agency’s code of silence around the groups.

Independent research and department leader say the groups, whose members wear matching tattoos and have engaged in misconduct ranging from excessive use of force to intimidation of fellow deputies, have been around for decades.

“The real problem in the Sheriff’s Department is this 50-year code of silence,” Inspector General Max Huntsman told LAist. “These groups are secretive. It's not written down on paper anywhere. Nobody ever admits it under oath.”

Others, including some members of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, had mixed opinions about the policy.

Commission Vice Chair Hans Johnson said it “represents significant progress,” but he added that the department still has a long way to go to root out members of deputy gangs.

The policy

Sheriff Robert Luna released the new policy last week. It prohibits deputies from being in a gang or hate group and requires them to cooperate with investigations into such groups. Violation of the policy could result in termination.

The policy also requires that any allegations of deputy gang membership be referred to the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, which is responsible for certifying peace officers in California. POST also has the power to revoke certification if someone is found to have been involved in a deputy gang.

The policy comes three years after California enacted a law requiring police agencies to have such bans. The delay was largely the result of protracted negotiations with the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, or ALADS, the labor union that represents deputy sheriffs.

Huntsman said another reason he was pessimistic about the new policy is that the department has a poor record of investigating deputy gangs, in part because members of deputy gangs and people sympathetic to them hold high ranks.

“The Sheriff’s Department as a whole, at the top level, has adjusted its discipline system to make sure it doesn’t run afoul of these groups,” Huntsman said. “That is corruption at the deepest level.”

Luna denied this, saying he already had disciplined two deputies for deputy gang involvement. The sheriff, who was elected in 2022 on a promise to eradicate the department of deputy gangs, hailed his new policy as “a big step forward” to changing the culture of the department.

In an interview with LAist, he also said another investigation is underway, but would not disclose what station it involved.

“I do not turn a blind eye to any misbehavior,” he said. “Obviously, it needs to be investigated.”

As for a code of silence, Luna said “bring me the facts and evidence — because I am not going to tolerate that.”

In an email to its members, ALADS said the new policy “will ensure that deputies are afforded their rights under the law and will require the Department to show that an employee knowingly engaged in misconduct with members of an established law enforcement gang.”

The union also said its willingness to negotiate over the issue “should not in any way be misconstrued as an acknowledgement that any group on the Sheriff’s Department meets the definition of any type of 'gang.'”

The gangs

A 2021 Loyola Law School report found 18 known deputy gangs that have existed at the department over the years. L.A. County has paid out about $55 million in settlements in cases in which sheriff’s deputies have been alleged to belong to a deputy gang, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Johnson, the civilian commission vice chair, said the new policy can only go so far.

“This policy, while laudable and long overdue, is not sufficient to extricate deputy gangs from the ranks of sheriff’s deputies,” he said.

Johnson pointed to a 2023 commission report on deputy gangs that made 24 recommendations. He said only six of them had been implemented, including one to assign two captains to increase supervision and mentoring of deputies at high activity stations where deputy cliques tend to be prevalent.

Commission member Patti Giggans sounded a more positive note on the new policy, saying she hoped it would lead to less excessive force and intimidation against residents in areas where the gangs exist.

“I am very pleased with the policy,” said Giggans, adding the panel had been urging such a move for eight years.

Giggans noted that Luna has only been in the top job for two years, and that he walked into a department in crisis where his predecessor Alex Villanueva downplayed the problem of deputy gangs. She said change will take time.

“You want to change an organization, you have to engage your workforce and you have to go by the rules of the system,” she said.

Vincent Miller represents a group of deputies who say they suffered physical assaults and intimidation by members of the Banditos gang at the East L.A. Station. The group has sued L.A. County and the Sheriff’s Department.

Miller echoed Huntsman’s concerns about the new policy.

“On the surface, it looks good. But will it get enforced?” Miller said.

He also represents deputies who alleged they have suffered from retaliation from the department for reporting on deputy gangs.

“As long as the department is aggressively retaliating against whistleblowers and anybody who reports misconduct within the department, it's impossible for that policy to have any effectiveness,” Miller said.

The department has denied the allegations in Miller’s lawsuit.

Huntsman, who lamented that he’d been excluded from the process of developing the new policy, said the department has “never had the will to fix itself.”

“There has to be external influence in order to actually change its behavior,” he said.

In a statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it had provided a draft copy of the policy “in recent months.”

The ongoing investigation

That kind of outside influence may be coming soon. For three years, the California Department of Justice has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into an alleged pattern and practice of excessive use of force and civil rights violations at the Sheriff’s Department.

According to multiple sources, the state DOJ is currently negotiating a consent decree that would legally mandate reform at the department.