New Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna launches office to eradicate deputy gangs
Tori Richards
Video Embed
Los Angeles County’s new sheriff has created an Office of Constitutional Policing to help eradicate lawbreaking deputy gangs and excessive use of force.
“I want to make sure everybody understands that this is a challenge that this department has faced for decades,” Sheriff Robert Luna said Thursday. “It’s not going to be solved overnight. It’s going to take a lot of work.”
LA DEPUTY CHARGED WITH MURDER OF 12-YEAR-OLD BOY
Luna said the new office will have at least two district attorneys dedicated to making sure policies and procedures are followed within the department.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker has been tapped to head the office. She led a corruption prosecution of former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, and 20 deputies in 2014. Baca was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
Deputy gang allegations have existed for about 50 years with dozens of members involved from numerous stations, a 2021 Loyola Marymount University report said.
“I’m telling you what 99% of the employees I’m running into, they don’t like this department talked about in that gang fashion,” Luna said, as reported by NBC News. “They’re embarrassed by it, and they should be.”
Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Luna’s Office of Constitutional Policing is nothing new. He also said similar roles have been used to target many innocent deputies who were fired before they ultimately won lawsuits against the department.
Villanueva said he rehired six of these deputies who won their cases and were each paid more than $3 million in damages.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“They were fired because they had matching tattoos, and that was unconstitutional,” Villanueva told the Washington Examiner. “Luna is playing to the Board of Supervisors and all the activists who are anti-law enforcement. He has to keep up the false narrative.”
Law enforcement gangs are described as “peace officers within a law enforcement agency who may identify themselves by a name and may be associated with an identifying symbol, including, but not limited to, matching tattoos, and who engage in a pattern of on-duty behavior that intentionally violates the law or fundamental principles of professional policing.”