November 9, 2022 • 55 mins
Today in Los Angeles County, ballots are being counted in one of the most watched races for sheriff in the United States. Former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna makes the case for why he should replace Alex Villanueva.
A Tradition of Violence is hosted and executive produced by Cerise Castle. She's an award winning journalist who wrote the first ever history of deputy gangs for Knock LA, available at lasdgangs.com
Music by Yelohill and Steelz.
For breaking news and updates on deputy gangs, follow @lasdgangs on social media.
To support Cerise’s reporting, and for exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the patreon.com/lasdgangs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. This podcast contains explicit language in details acts of violence.
Listener discretion is advised. Today in Los Angeles, it's the
day after election day. Ballots across the county are being
tallied up in one of the most watched police races
in the United States, the campaign for Sheriff of Los
(00:20):
Angeles County. Incumbent Sheriff alex Via Nueva's administration has spent
the last four years caught up in scandal after scandal.
He's faced calls from his own party to step down.
We'll know soon what his fate is. He's being challenged
by Robert Luna, the former chief of the Long Beach
(00:41):
Police Department. Luna has the backing of the Los Angeles
County Democratic Party, the support of local officials Mineueva has
openly clashed with and even investigated, and the endorsement of
the Los Angeles Times. Many people think he won the
race months ago. This is a tradition of violence, a
(01:04):
history of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
This week, we're bringing you a special episode about the
man who wants to be Sheriff, Robert Luna. Luna grew
(01:28):
up in East Los Angeles and says that his first
memories of the police were watching sheriff's deputies rough up
people in his neighborhood. Despite his own hostile encounters with
police officers, Luna went on to join the Long Beach
Police Department in as a reserve police officer. He entered
the police academy in April of n and went on
(01:50):
to be promoted through every rank in the department. Luna
became a member of executive staff under Chief Tom Bishop
and went on to succeed Chief Jim McDonald as head
of the Long Beach Police Department when McDonald won the
race for sheriff in Luna was the first Latino chief
in the department's history and was celebrated by local officials,
(02:13):
but other officers of color were wary of Luna. Mark
McGuire joined the Long Beach Police Department in and became
a detective two years later. I was there for twenty
four and a half years, and I've worked either for
or around Robert Luna. He was my sergeant and gangs.
He was my lieutenant at one time, he wasn't my commander.
(02:35):
As he rose through the ranks, he was assigned to
wherever I was assigned, and then he became my deputy chief,
and then he became the chief. So we talked because
there weren't a lot of minorities there. He had an
open door policy, which is a good thing. And I
would vent to him about the racism that I was experiencing,
(02:55):
and he would do nothing about it. And I was
really hurt when he ignored some of the things that
I told him because he knew the truth. One incident
changed Mark's relationship with Luna completely. There was one poster
that I told Robert Luna about and it kind of
set my career back. It was a poster of the tree,
(03:17):
and on this tree were murder suspects that had been
convicted of murder and they were either looking at life
or death. And out of all of the pictures on
the tree, there was one black man hanging by a
noose from around his neck, and that was posted up
in the homicide office. Mark says he reported the poster
to Robert Luna. He told Luna he wanted to remain anonymous.
(03:41):
The poster was placed in a way that when you
walk down the hall, anybody could see it. I didn't
want to be involved because I didn't want that stigma,
being called a snitch or a rat or whatever. And
he assured me that he wasn't going to involve me
in it, but he did as soon as he saw
it whenever he saw it. Later on, I think it
(04:03):
was either that afternoon or the next day. I was
called in to tell my story and then I was labeled.
I was labeled, like I said, a rat, a snitch,
a malcontent, and a troublemaker. When he outed me on
the poster, I never really confided in him as often.
Mark says receiving a negative label for calling out racism
had a huge effect on his career inside of the department.
(04:27):
I couldn't get jobs. I had to stay where I was.
There was only a certain group of people that would
work with or around me. But people knew that I
would report discrimination or shenanigans. If you will, I will
report it because that's what you're supposed to do. You're
supposed to be ethical as an officer, and that's what
I did. Other black officers inside of the LBPD say
(04:49):
they've had their own issues with Luna to Darren Neely
has been a Long Beach Police officer for thirty seven years.
Recently he had to go on light duty. I had
a foot surgery and I had all intensive purposes of
just retiring out. Well, they kept calling the doctor, and
the doctor said, okay, I'm not releasing to go back
(05:10):
and work like duty. And a little birdie had already
told me, hey, listen, when you come in, you work
like duty. Don't do like everybody else does. And when
they just kind of come in, they sit there, they
don't get involved. Darren began rotating from unit to unit
every ninety days. He later had to have eye surgery,
which limited the amount of time he could spend on
(05:32):
the computer. I told him, I said, you know what,
I can do some computer work, but I can't sit
at the computer for long periods of time. Everywhere I went,
the command staff said, hey, can we keep him here?
And it came from Luna's office. No, he hasked to
rotate out. My last assignment. They said, Chief Luna is
(05:54):
going to assign you to the redaction detail. But remember
I can't do the computer work all day long. Well,
where they send me. They put me at a desk
They had two big screens in it, and they said, well,
we want you to do redactions on officer involved shootings,
three thousand pages, four hundred pictures, and I'm doing three
(06:18):
or forties and I'm I'm just I'm putting in work right,
and I wanted to get these cases solved. I wanted
to get these cases redacted so that they could go out.
So I came in early one morning and I'm sitting
there and I'm doing these redactions and my head turning.
Something was wrong, but Darren kept pushing. As he did,
(06:39):
his symptoms got worse. I'm on my way home, going
down the freeway, and I noticed that I was kind
of fighting the steering. I put my hand up over
my left eye. My right eye is black. I can't
see out of my right eye. I go to my
doctor and the doctor goes, yeah, you strained it. You
you spent too much time at the computer. And I went, okay,
(07:00):
I food my workman's comp case. They go, okay, Well,
the doctor says he can come back to work with
no more computer work. Well, Luna's office came out and
said if he can't do computer work, we don't have
a position for a Quincy Miles went through the academy
and for the Long Beach Police department for the first
time in two thousand five. He says he immediately started
(07:23):
encountering racism. Black recruits were always seeing as bad as writing,
regardless of their skill set. So this thing is like generational.
One thing I kind of learned in podcast. Most of
us had college degrees, most of the whites had high
school diplomas. It's almost like we had to come in
almost above the expectations. You're gonna get labeled in Long
(07:47):
Beach if you're black, either you're gonna be confrontational, militant,
or you can't read or write. One of my classmates
had a degree in journalism. You can't tell me you
can't write a police report at Long Beach. Most of
the racists had the stronger personality. They had the alphameric personality.
(08:07):
So that's who dominated the meetings, the hiring, the process.
If the strongest personality is a bigot, that's what you're
gonna get. When Quincy became a police officer and went
out on patrol, he says, the displays of racism became
even more blatant. Just tell you how openly racist you
know the department could be. And I heard this from
(08:30):
a dispatcher and senior officers. They used to clear calls
over the radio anytime, like altercations with black people, T
and D typical new deals over the radio. Openly. Besides
the systemic racism, Mark and Darren alleged that the Long
Beach Police Department had its own issues with a white
(08:52):
supremacist gang inside its ranks, the North Town Rangers. I
am familiar with them, white supremacists, police officers who brutalized
people of color in the community. In North Long Beach.
There were group officers who predominantly worked together and they
were not people of color, and they were accused of
(09:14):
doing some ethical things and it became this Northtown Rangers,
things like a gang type deal. Robert Luna said at
a recent debate that the gang was eradicated and as
a sergeant, there's only so much he could do. But
Mark believes Luna should have done more to get rid
of the gang. He was a sergeant at the time.
During the debate he said they were eradicated. They were not.
(09:38):
They were transferred to other parts of the city. None
of them were fired, and some of them promoted. The
Luna for Share of campaign sent us a statement about
these criticisms, which I'll read. In terms of these comments,
Chief Luna addressed many of them in his interview on
this podcast. We might as well point out that, besides
(10:01):
the incumbent sheriff, the most vocal lunar critics during the
campaign are three disgruntled former Long Beach police officers. Over
the last two months, these former officers have become Alex
Viennuevas quote running mates, going everywhere with the sheriff, who
does not seem to mind that these former officers are
not telling the truth. Former officer Quincy Miles was terminated
(10:24):
by the Long Beach Police Department for numerous violations, including
but not limited to inexcusable neglect of duty for sleeping
in his police vehicle while on duty while a police
officer was shot, dishonesty and subordination, failing to file reports
in a timely manner, and a domestic violence dispute. Miles
(10:45):
also lost his lawsuit claiming discrimination, with the jury returning
a verdict in favor of the City of Long Beach
and requiring the former officer to pay attorney's cost to
the city. Former officer Mark McGuire had a decor aided
career as a homicide detective. In his deposition, he stated
under oath that the despicable Wren family tree poster was
(11:08):
the only racially offensive material he ever saw at the
Long Beach Police Department. He also stated in his deposition
testimony under oath that when he complained to Robert Luna,
who was a sergeant back in, about the poster, Luna
said he would take care of it and did. In
the deposition, McGuire was asked, quote, what did Luna say.
(11:32):
McGuire answered, quote, he told me he would take care
of it. The lawyer asked, quote and did he? And
McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote okay.
And so by the next day when you came to work,
it was gone. McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote,
there was an i A investigation on it. McGuire answered
(11:55):
quote yes. Under oath, wire has a different story than
he has today, and it should be noted that this
happened more than years ago, when Luna had no leadership
position in the department. He was only a sergeant. He
had no authority over i A investigations or discipline. He
was not responsible for what happened in the investigation or
(12:17):
the aftermath. But he reported it as he said he
would and started the investigation of this clearly racist and
disgusting poster. Local media doesn't do a great job of
(12:42):
covering police agencies here in l A County, but luckily
there are several small nonprofit news rooms that are doing
the work. My name is Kevin Fluds. I am the
co founder of fourth dot org, where a not for profit,
worker owned media outlet and Long Beach we published investigative
(13:03):
reporting and community media as well as we're also a
platform for local artists. Kevin has done a lot of
reporting on Robert Luna and the Long Beach Police Department.
Like the l A Sheriff's Department, there's a long history
of misconduct, abuse, and racism. They're dating back for generations.
There is a major lack of accountability um at the LBPD,
(13:30):
lack of transparency, it's it's a major theme of the
LBPD during the time that I've been reporting on them.
Kevin and his colleagues found that the Long Beach Police
Department has struggled to recruit black officers. Long Beach is
a city has a black population of twelve So if
you look at data on the makeup of of the
of store officers in the lb p D, it's it's white,
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and then you have about Hispanic and black officers only
make up five two percent, and that is at odd
with the demographics of the city. That's part of a
legacy of white supremacist ideology in the Long Beach Police Department.
Is history of policing is inseparable from the desire of
white people in the wealthy to dominate everyone else. I
(14:13):
wrote a peace documenting the kkks and filtration of the
Long Beach Police Department in the first half of the
twentieth century and how in n there were several officers
in KKK GARB that tortured three black teenagers on the
outskirts of town. So we see this kind of racism
repeating itself today. Earlier this year, Michael Colbert, the only
(14:34):
black person to ever hold a pilot position with the
LBPDS Air Support Division, filed a lawsuit against the city.
Kevin is covering the lawsuit for fourth We co published
this with Knock l a black LBPD officer who had
retired who was suing the department and was alleging that
there was workplace discrimination. Her aspment retaliation who's subjected to
(14:57):
racial slurs. We also alleged at it was just all
kinds of racist and demeaning acts by his co workers
throughout a thirty year career at the lb p D.
Those allocations indicate that there's widespread racism in the workplace
at the lb PD, So it's not only pointed outwards,
it's also pointed inwards. The LBPD only promoted a black
(15:19):
woman beyond the rank of sergeant this year, the first
in one hundred and thirty four years. Darren Neely, who
has been on the department for thirty seven years, says
Robert Luna could have done more to retain and promote
black women. Every African American female it was on that
police department after either recruited. I even took some amount
(15:43):
and train with a whole group of people so that
they could do the physical abilities and the oral interviews.
That's how they all got hired. He could have taken
it to the next level and helped them promote through
the system. He didn't because it wasn't important to him
and it wasn't important to the people that he had
put in police. In Long Beach police killed twenty seven
(16:06):
people between and a black person was over three times
more likely to be killed by cops than a white person,
according to Police scorecard dot org. We compiled data on
Long Beach officers who are named in civil rights lawsuits,
and we found that the LBPD almost never fires officers
(16:27):
involved in killing or injuring civilians, and that's even after
a civil jury finds that an officer violated a person's rights.
And we also found that the LVPD promoted at least
a dozen officers who were involved in the acts of
police brutality between two thousand seven and two thousand eighteen,
which results are in civil litigation. If you asked Luna,
he'll tell you that the incidents of excessive force have
(16:51):
been trending down, and this is something that he would
tell the city council during presentations. But if you look
at the actual raw numbers, which were obtained through public
records request, there's almost the thirty increase in use of
force incidents between two thousand sixteen and two thousand nineteen,
which is right in the middle of Luna's tenure. I
spoke with Robert Luna about this, which you'll hear later.
(17:13):
He says that lbp D was able to reduce shootings
by fifty they went up again and now the reductions
are at The Long Beach Police Department has also faced
criticism for its use of an outdated discriminatory practice to
entrap and arrest gay men. These are operations where an
(17:35):
undercover officer would target places that were frequented by gay
men and try to bait them into performing sex acts.
And this was ruled um as a serminatory and constitutional,
mainly because police only went after gay men when lud
conduct complaints are just as common for for heterosexual people.
This is part of a long legacy of what's known
(17:57):
as vice crimes, which you know, which gives pers description
should basically become morality police. And while this is going
on for over a hundred years, Luna allowed these arrests
to go on for the first year and a half
of his tenure as chief before the judge ruled that
they were unconstitutional. He said that the language police was
seeking to quote portray homosexual men a sexual deviance and
(18:20):
pedophiles and quote, and neither the city nor Luna has
ever apologized for these arrests, and arrest like that can
have long term consequences to someone's life. These arrests can
be very damaging to people. You know, they imposed criminal
records on gay men and this could lead to them
being outed. This could lead to them being ostracized from
the community, to having a mental health crisis, to being
(18:40):
fired from a job, and even making it very difficult
to find future employment. Luna spoke to me in depth
about this. He says this incident was a huge quote
learning lesson. Operations carried out by the LBPD were also
shrouded in some amount of secrecy. Under Chief Jim McDonald,
who went on to be the Sheriff of l A County.
(19:02):
Just before Viennueva, the department began using a service called
Tiger Text. Tiger Text was used between police officers to communicate.
It was a self deleting app and you know that
raises issues of again transparency because those messages can't be
retrieved when there is some kind of lawsuit that comes up.
(19:24):
I believe about a hundred police personnel had access to
that app. It would delete the messages after five days.
Their attorneys that we spoke to who said that those
messages being deleted were critical evidence that could be used
and say like an officer involve shooting case. When Luna
spoke about this, I'm believing he was quoted in the
l A Times saying something like that the allegations that
(19:45):
those messages could not be describable was false and that
there was no intention the departments of destroy evidence. Critical
evidence was destroyed, though, in the days before a new
state transparency law came online. Senate Bill fourteen twenty one,
or s B four made police records relating to officer
use of force incidents, sexual assault, and acts of dishonesty
(20:08):
accessible under the California Public Records Act. Ahead of January one, nineteen,
many police departments destroyed their records dating back about twenty years.
The Long Beach Police Department was one of them. Later on,
we did a follow up where we were able to
obtain some internal emails that police press were circulating right
(20:29):
before se came online, and it showed that Luna and
some other police press or circulating these messages from outside
attorneys that were advising them to shred records ahead of
the of the new law. And I want to clear
like there's there isn't an instance in those emails where
Luna gives an order to destroy records or anything like that,
but it kind of just speaks of of like the
(20:52):
messaging that that they were passing back and forth and
the type of advice that police officers get from these
law firms that they often contract with. Prior to SB
four going into effect, there were folks who put flyers
around the parks basically decrying this, this destruction of records,
(21:12):
and there was some emails that were being passed around police,
you know, calling whoever put these flyers up as suspects.
So this is the type of like very reactionary, antagonistic
attitude that the police have to any anybody who's critical
of the police. I mean, even these fokespeople for the
police have been pretty antagonistic towards us when we write
stories that are critical. In his investigations, Kevin says he's
(21:35):
found lots of issues with the lbpds use of surveillance technology.
The LBPDS use of it is that they didn't have
any policies around it, and they were buying this equipment
without the public really knowing. It wouldn't go through the
city council. It would just be purchased either with federal
grants or through other means, and it didn't need to
(21:56):
be reported publicly. Last year, Fourth discovered that the Long
Beach Police Department was sharing data captured by its automatic
license plate readers with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agencies.
These automatic license plate readers, they're often mounted on police
vehicles as well as traffic signal polls, and they're capable
(22:18):
of indiscriminately capturing license plate numbers that are rate of
something like eighteen hundred a minute. So with this data,
police are able to track a person's whereabouts, their travel patterns,
and where they live, where they work, where they go
to the doctor. That's super, super invasive. Our investigation found
(22:42):
that the LBPD was sharing this data not only with
federal immigration authorities, but with hundreds of law enforcement agencies
across the country. In particular, Yes, sharing that data with
with immigration authorities was completely in violation of the sanctuary
policies the local and the state. Luna told me that
(23:04):
it's important to have policies about surveillance technology in place,
otherwise it can lead to quote big trouble. Kevin and
his colleagues at Fourth also obtained evidence of the Long
Beach Police Department running thousands of facial recognition searches on
people associated with protests against police brutality. We noticed that
(23:25):
there was a big spike in the use of this
technology around the time of the George Floyd protests. Directly
after them. We later learned that the police department had
put together this looting task Force which was was submitting
these queries to a facial recognition database that's run by
the Sheriff's department. Actually, this database is basically made up
(23:49):
of mug shots um that go back I believe to
the mid ninety nineties, and the way that they would
record these queries would be by using very vague terms
things like p D protest. And this doesn't allow anybody
to then audit these searches and his facial recognition database
to be able to see if the police were actually
(24:09):
using this within constitutional bounds, which is a big problem.
The fact that they were using this label p D
protests really kind of points to this idea that they
were I would say, this attitude that they had around
the protests, they were missing the point of the whole protest.
Kevin and Fourth documented injuries inflicted by lbp D officers
(24:30):
on protesters, ranging from bruises to a severed finger. Victims
included a teen author, a doctor, and KPCC reporter Adolfo
Guzman Lopez, who had his neck ripped open by a
less lethal projectile, which are usually bean backgrounds, rubber bullets,
or pepper balls. The round was fired by police during
(24:52):
protests for George Floyd. Then Chief Robert Luna was called
before the Long Beach City Council to explain what happened.
His justification was that people had begun to throw rocks
and bottles and things like that. But we need look
at pictures of the protests. You see that the officers were,
you know, in body armor, they had um I believe
(25:14):
they brought out some some armored vehicles. Brocks and bottles
weren't exactly going to you know, defeat a militarized police force.
So yeah, I would say it was it was very
very little tolerance for protesters when it comes to criticizing
the police department. The Long Beach Police Department had no
shortage of issues while under Chief Robert Luna's command. After
(25:37):
the break, he sits down with me for an interview.
I met with former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna
(25:57):
over zoom three weeks before the election. He says it's
time to vote Alex be in a way about out.
It's time for a change. I want to give the
l A County Sheriff's Department back to the community where
it belongs. There are wonderful men and women who work there.
I think you've talked to many of them. But changes
(26:18):
do need to be made and I want I when
I'm campaigning, this is what I tell people. We need
a sheriff who has integrity. Uh. My body of work
shows that I have integrity. Uh. Two, we need a
sheriff who holds himself and his employees accountable. I have
done that over and over. That's not happening right now
(26:41):
with the sheriff's department. We need a sheriff who collaborates. Um. Uh.
It is very important that the sheriff can get along
or at least, let me just say, work with the
board of supervisors, the inspector general civilian oversight. Um. We
cannot have this us versus them mentality anymore. Uh. It
(27:04):
is impacting our public safety. Uh to each and every
one of our families. And then just real quick, because
I didn't get a chance to do this. If you
hear it in my tone of voice and my approach.
It really doesn't always come back to my professional experience.
It comes back to my personal experience. You're listening to
(27:25):
a man who wanted to be a police officer from
an early age, growing up an unincorporated Los Angeles. My father,
uh migrated here from Mexico. Seventh grade education. He was
a janitor. My mom was born in Modesto, but only
because she was part of a a farm, a migrant
farm family from Mitun, Mexico. UH. Third grade education and
(27:48):
sold food on the streets. Those are my humble beginnings.
I ended up face first on the hood of a
police car just because I was riding a bike. You
don't forget those things. And so when I answer questions,
it's not just my professional experience, it is my personal experiences.
I feel it. I want to be on the right
(28:09):
side of history, and I sure hope I earned your vote.
You have to vote if you want change. You just
cannot leave that box unchecked. If you do, can you
imagine for more years of alex Vanueva. We cannot have that, Uh,
We cannot have that. We need change and we need
it now. So thank you for having me on your show,
(28:33):
and thank you for what you do, and you know what,
God willing. If I get elected, I expect you to
keep me in check. I have no doubt you can
do that. This podcast is an investigation of deputy gangs
inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. What is your
plan to root out and prevent the further spread of
deputy gangs? So I want to start off with several
(28:55):
weeks ago, I was in a debate with Alex Mianoueva
and uh, this is this was televised so people can
go back and listen to it. But he was asked
about deputy gangs and he made a statement similar to this,
and he says, deputy gangs are like a unicorn. It's
(29:17):
something everybody talks about, but it doesn't exist. And and
that kind of puts an exclamation point on how he's
been handling this issue. For me, I'm a complete contrast. Uh.
I do believe that they do exist. Uh. And the
first step to making sure you resolve an issue is
(29:40):
to accept the fact that they do exist. So that's
step one, coming in and making sure that everybody knows
their unacceptable um, both inside the department and outside the department. UM.
Then the next thing that has to happen is you
have to set a standard of conduct UM. And what
(30:02):
I mean by that is for me through principal leadership
and to further explain that it goes back to the
code of Ethics and law enforcement. We took an oath,
We raised our right hand and we said we were
going to serve our community. UH no matter who they are,
how much money they have, what color they are, UH
(30:23):
those that's fundamental to our service. And we have to
remind everybody from the time we recruit, to hire, to train,
to promote UH that this is the oath that we
took and gangs talking about gangs and policing in the
same sentence absolutely not not acceptable, meaning that the concept
(30:44):
of of that even UH us thinking about this is
not acceptable. Next is we have to make sure that
there are strict policies and policy. Something in writing that
isn't worth much unless we're following it up with very
good training, consistent follow up training and accountability. So for me,
(31:05):
accountability means holding the individual deputies accountable who are involved
in this level of misconduct, and they're supervisors. If you
have sergeants, lieutenants and above who may be looking the
other way that they should not be supervisors or managers.
They may should maybe not even be on the department
(31:27):
because that's our stock gap to make sure this doesn't happen. UM.
Next for me is what I call federal and state intervention,
is that we need to make sure that we bring
in the FBI, federal d o J, state d o
J and we have to open up every drawer, pull
(31:49):
back every curtain and be open about the information that
we have UM and then that has to be reported out.
And by the way, that does include co operating with
civilian oversight. UH. In my wildest dreams, I could never
live in a world where I would get subpoenut as
the sheriff UH to come in and testify, whether it's
(32:13):
on deputy gangs or any other issue. And I'm not
I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna be there. That's insane.
I expect you to follow the rules. I have to
lead by example not only for our community, but each
and every one of our employees that I want them
UH to live within the parameters of the law. That
becomes very very important as well. UM. I do just
(32:38):
I want to touch on because it says a long answer,
But it's very important is that I do believe that
UH mental health care comes into play here, and let
me explain, mental health care for me in the community
is very, very important. But I also believe that some
of this misconduct may be untreated trauma where employees that
(33:01):
are involved in this activity may be acting out and
it's not acceptable. But what are we doing to make
sure that employees that are have been traumatized because it's
a tough job, it's one of the toughest jobs out there,
that we're providing adequate mental health care for them and
not only are sore and employees, but are professional staff
(33:23):
and their families. Because if we integrated into our disciplinary process,
I want to make it clear you're involved in significant misconduct,
illegal activity, unethical behavior, you don't deserve to wear a badge.
But if there's something that falls below that, why not
include mental health care as part of some kind of
(33:46):
a recovery So then we can not only UH do
better at recruiting employees, but retaining them as well because
they see that we're approaching this a different way, and
then in turn, people start treating our community members are
they start treating our community better and at the end
of the day. I think that's what it's all about.
(34:06):
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has an issue with
use of force UM. Right now, there is a viral
video circulating of a young man being beaten by two
deputy sheriffs in Englewood, UM. Already this year, thirteen people
have been shot as of this recording. Many victims of
that have shared about seeing the deputies who heard or
(34:27):
killed their loved ones around their neighborhood, and many of
those same deputies, under current policy, rarely faced discipline or
criminal charges for their actions. What are your policies on
what should happen to officers or excuse me, to deputies
involved in brutal assaults or fatal shootings. Well, first of all, UH,
(34:48):
any use of force has to be taking has to
be taken very serious because, UH, when you see a
use of force, whether it's on video or it's not.
And I always go back and talk about, uh force
that eye witness as a young boy growing up in
an unincorporated East Los Angeles, I never forgot about that
(35:09):
that's traumatizing. So we have to acknowledge that there's there's
a lot of pain involved on all sides. UH, so
that becomes very important. So because I haven't worked in
the sheriff's apartment, what I could relate to you is
my experiences specifically as the chief of police in Long
(35:29):
Beach and law enforcement has evolved over the last several years,
and UH we were able to, I was able to,
I believe, transform the Long Beach Police Department in the
way UH we did our policy, in the way we
did our training UH and the way we held UH
individual employees accountable. And because we did that, we were
(35:55):
able to reduce our officer involved shootings by thirty three
reduce our use as of force by twenty nine percent,
and our citizen complaints by And the way we did
that is first you look at the policy. And for me,
I always wanted to make sure and this was because
(36:16):
I don't know if you know this about me, but
I was elected and re elected to the executive board
of the Major City Chiefs Association. I was a Western
region representative. That put me at the table with other
police chiefs and sheriff's of the seventy nine largest departments
in the US and Canada. There we discussed all the
(36:37):
current issues involving law enforcement, including the use of force,
deadly force or UH force below that. And so we
were working on UM very updated UH policies. And because
I was at that table, we were able to bring
(36:58):
that right back to Long each and compare our policies
to make sure they not only met national standards, but
they exceeded them. So with that experience, bringing that back
and really having a mindset of UH self reflection and
who we are, one of the things I did is
(37:19):
we started our Office of Constitutional Policing and Long Beach
and that's something I would like to do in the
Sheriff's Department and what that office does I had. I
hired UH an attorney who was actually a defense attorney
in New York for New York p d um uh
I say she worked out of New York, I shouldn't
(37:39):
say for the police department because she was a defense attorney.
And um what she did for us is she was
bringing up she was looking at our policies, she was
looking at our training and researching best practices and bringing
them in. What we were also doing is teaming up
with academic institutions. And one of my goal was to
(38:00):
make sure that we were not thinking insular that we
had outside eyes looking at us and we weren't afraid
to accept outside input. Um. And I'm I started to
mention this, but I'm almost talking too fast here, got
ahead of myself. Part of the the Office of Constitutional
(38:22):
Responsibility was to put together a community advisory board of
a very diverse group of community members that would come
in and the first policy they started to look at
and review was our use of force policy. Uh. It
was that kind of an approach, UH that had us
looking at business differently. Now was it a culture shock
(38:45):
uh to command staff and our officers and our labor.
It was, But you know what, we had really good
people and it takes good leadership and there is some
back and forth, but at the end of the day,
we have to remind each other that we served this munity.
They are our bosses. And yes, you know there's been
that little black box concept and law enforcement that uh,
(39:08):
we do have to modify and change as time goes on.
But what I'm explaining to you is that it's evolving.
It's evolving, and it has to happen at the Sheriff's department.
We have to evolve. It's two. We cannot be doing
the same things we did before. So let me give
you one last example. We're talking about uses of force
(39:30):
and reducing them. So for example, whether you're talking about
this viral video or any other videos, you break that
down into three pieces. The first piece is the pre
use of force conduct is was the approach by the
officers or deputies legal? Why did they approach in the
(39:50):
first place? So we look at that aspect. Was it
tactically sound, where their tactics contributing to the use of force.
Those are the things that we looked at in Long
Beach and it really started changing the mindset that you
know what, we are going to pay attention to tactics.
Tactics do matter, and if your tactics are way out
of bounds, then that you s of force uh could
(40:13):
not should not be in policy. Those are the kind
of things, the hard questions we have to ask ourselves.
Then you look at the use of force itself an
objective review. Is it something that you're using to control
an individual or are you trying to punish them. If
you're trying to control, that could be within policy depending
(40:34):
on the circumstances. If you're trying to punish, that is
absolutely unlawful. And to your point, UH, those are the
kind of things that you know, we have to bring
to bear UH to make sure that at the end
of the day, things are being done UH constitutionally legal
and and correctly. Then you have the post UH use
(40:57):
of force review. UH. Did we properly handle the individual
that we use force on? UH? If you know, God forbid,
they need medical care? UH? Are we rendering first aid
UH CPR if necessary, getting the paramedics there as quickly
as possible, UH, and making sure that we're doing everything
(41:17):
around the scene to make sure we get the appropriate
witnesses UH. And and UH investigators whether it's criminal investigation
or administrative investigation or the d A if they're involved
in the use of force. In the past, the Sheriff's
Department has participated in programs where it results in donations
(41:38):
of stuff like military equipment, surveillance equipment surveillance programs. What
is your stance on the department's continued participation in those
programs and do you think that the Sheriff's Apartment should
accept additional weaponry, vehicles other gear from these programs. I'm
not familiar with what the Sheriff's Department does rank now
(42:01):
but again I can relay it to my experiences in
Long Beach. Uh, and I can tell you that we evolved,
uh two more of what you're saying now, because at
one time, I think most of US police departments and
sheriff's departments may have been taking equipment from the military.
(42:24):
Uh and uh what I ended up doing in Long Beach.
And and please look at Long Beach because we have
a port, so I know like some of the things
we took at the end were like trailers uh to
tow our police boats that were used to patrol the
water site and Long Beach. But then over time, uh
years back, we had taken some military equipment. As a
(42:47):
matter of fact, at one point we ended up giving
some back because we had to really look at our
policies about what would we accept and why. So what
we did in our department is we had a somebody
at the rank of deputy chief who would review the request.
(43:08):
And there were plenty of requests and if they didn't
fit our needs, our community needs, then uh, we weren't
not going to use them. Obviously, you have to find
a balance between military style equipment and what we may
need uh to properly do our jobs. So when you're
(43:31):
talking about, for example, surveillance equipment, uh, is it something
that is uh? And I learned this the hard way
as the chief and Long Beach. Do you have a policy? Uh?
Is it? Um? Uh? Is it being audited? Are we
doing things the right way? Because I'm telling you right
now you can get yourself in big trouble when you
don't have good audit systems in place to manage those things.
(43:55):
In Long Beach, the police killed twenty seven people between
and police scorecard found that black people were over three
times more likely to be stopped by cops than a
white person. Um. What are your thoughts on those statistics?
And how will you approach the black community um? And
(44:15):
cultivate that relationship should you be elected sheriff. Regarding the information,
you never ignore it. Uh. It's information that's out there
and you've got to listen to it. Uh. And I
believe in a healthy skepticism of law enforcement. You know,
I used to tell our recruits and our officers and
(44:37):
when people got promoted, that we have one of the
only jobs where we have the authority to take somebody's property, liberty,
and life away. And UH, if you cannot accept the
fact that you're gonna be second guest, Um, then you
don't belong in this business. Uh. It's a tough job,
and I have so much respect for the people who
(45:00):
do it. So that's my overwriting, uh towards any numbers, UM,
and I I am somewhat familiar. I haven't looked at
the scorecard information lately, but I can tell you this
that over time, if you look at our statistics and
(45:22):
Long Beach p D. I said it earlier, we reduced
our officer involves shootings. Uh. At the end of I
want to say it was I had a fifty percent reduction.
Um it did go up to in twenty one, so
now it's a thirty three reduction. Uh. The uses of
(45:43):
force had dropped. So even though I don't ignore the information, UH,
it doesn't give us credit for us transforming. Our policies
are training and accountability to improve because you have to
start somewhere, and we did improve. And at the end
(46:04):
of the day, my goal, and some people may say
it's unrealistic, is that that number of killing somebody is zero. Uh,
you know, having one is too many, specifically if they're
your family members. In relations to our African American or
Black community in Long Beach. UM. I had an extraordinary
(46:29):
relationship with many. UH. Was it perfect with everybody? No?
It wasn't. I wish it could have been. I wanted
to be perfect. UM. But you know what, I never
closed the door to anybody, even if they disagreed with
me or I disagreed with them. I was willing to listen.
And that's the contrast between me and my opponent right now,
(46:53):
that that that is a big difference. But I had
it an amazing relationship UH with the UH, the Long
Beach branch of the n A c P. I was
often at community events at night on weekends, contributing to Christmas.
I was so proud and and I there's so many
(47:14):
people who can come forward UH and talk about those
relationships um. UH the Minister's Alliance in Long Beach, which
are mostly African American ministers, I work hand in hand
with them, UH. And I've got to say, I've got
to get that. Give them credit because they worked with
me and advising me on how the community felt and
(47:38):
what was important to reduce these numbers. So as you
can see, UM, facing adversity, you have to do that.
As a sheriff, you have to do that as a
police chief. But you have to accept responsibility UH for
the action, your own actions and the actions of your employees,
because making excuses and blaming other people are not going
(48:02):
to work, especially for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
And please remember officer involved shootings between two thousand and
fifteen and UE went down, UM and UH citizen complaints
went down actually thirty percent between that same time period.
(48:23):
For the first year and a half of your ten
year as chief and Long Beach, UM, there was a
decades old practice of entrapping game and for lewd conduct
charges UM that was carried out. There were police staying
operations UM and they were only stopped after an l
A Superior Court judge called these practices out as discriminatory
in the Long Beach Police Department still hasn't apologized for
(48:47):
these things. Is that something that you regret during your
tenure as chief? You know what, it was a huge
learning lesson for me, And it goes back to what
you think is right. One day, all of a sudden, UH,
reality strikes you and you have to I tell people
(49:07):
one of my keys to success is to listen, learn
and love and the l that sounds weird coming from
a police official, but this is a perfect example. Uh,
we had a sting going on because we had complaints
in a public restroom that was in a park across
the street from Wilson High School in Long Beach at
(49:29):
Recreation Park. And when we typically had complaints, the vice
officers would do these things and they were being done
for years, and you almost think, Okay, this is the
way we handle this. But then the superior court judge
issues the decision and at first, you know, you almost
have a tendency to almost get defensive. Wait a minute,
(49:50):
we're just doing our job. But one of the the
advantages I had in Long Beach is I had an
amazing relationship. I keep by using the word amazing because
I was very immersed in our community, with our LGBTQ community,
specifically are l g b t Q Center. And trust me,
when they got wind of this, they were in my face.
(50:11):
They were like, what the heck are you doing? Why
would you do this? And it was like, wait a minute,
We're just doing our job. But what I started to
realize and what I learned is that when they were
asking me questions like this one, they're going, wait a minute,
if you're making arrest of a gay man having sex
(50:31):
with another gay man, how many arrests are you making
for a heterosexual man having sex with a heterosexual woman
on the beach? And you start thinking, wait a minute,
maybe we've been approaching this a whole different way. That
was like a lightbulb moment to think, you know what,
let's get our l g b t Q center involved,
(50:52):
And from now on they helped us reform our policy
and we start looking at a different way of approaching
these complaints, which it starts off with education and then
if education doesn't work, we use our partners at lgbt
Q to help us get the word out uh and
help us and to my knowledge, and I don't think
(51:14):
we've made we didn't have any more stings after that.
I don't think we've made any arrest. We've approached it
completely different. And my relationship with our lgbt Q center
actually was enhanced because we ran across some adversity. UH,
we listened to each other. We changed it for the
betterment of our community, because we have a very large
(51:37):
LGBTQ community and Long Beach and that was a lesson
learned huge lesson learned. UH. And and this is the
experience I'm bringing to the Sheriff's department. You have UH
an executive who has faced adversity, never ran away from it.
UH engaged it. I was very honest about it. And
(51:57):
here this I accepted responsive ability for it. It's like, yeah,
we did it, and you know what, we learned our lessons.
We're not doing this anymore. And that has happened over
and over UH. And that's what I believe. The change
we need in the Sheriff's apartment today is to have
a leader who accepts responsibility, is willing to listen to
(52:18):
their community, work with their community, and make the necessary changes. Now,
when you you ask about an apology, the detectives there
thought they were doing their job. And this is where
it gets a little strange for me. A lot of
times we have to look at our management practices. I
just described what a management practice was. We're sending our
(52:40):
detectives out to do this work. They thought they were
doing a good job. It's management that had to change
the way we are doing things, and we did. And
that happens a lot, especially UM when you have allegations
of like racial profilely because a lot of times we
get pressured, hey, stop the shooting, stop this, stop that,
and then we have our death. But he's our officers
(53:00):
stopping our community members. What are we really asking them
to do. We have to be smarter, We have to
be strategic and take accountability for our actions and the
actions of our employees. And that is very, very very critical.
And um, just so all of the your listeners are aware,
(53:22):
my Mayor Robert Garcia, who is gay. Um, he he
endorsed me for this race. He is one of the
uh individuals I went to as a mentor when we
were going through this about Hey, how do we turn
this around. It's our sitting let's make a difference. So
the LGBTQ community and Long Beach does support me, and
(53:44):
we went through some growing pains, but this is what
you need to go through as a family. Right. The
ballots are still being counted and the fate of the
sheriff's race lies in the voters hands. Soon we'll know
who will be head of the department. A man who
says depp D gangs don't exist, appears to be using
his position for political gain and to five subpoenas or
(54:06):
a chief with his own baggage, eager to restore normalcy
to the Sheriff's Department. Only time and Paul Workers will tell,
I used to alone, did a whole hood. No, fuck
the police, I'm a fucking trophy. You've been listening to
(54:29):
a tradition of violence. The history of deputy gangs in
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hosted an executive produced
by series Castle music by Yellow Hill and Steels. For
breaking news and updates and deputy gangs, follow at l
s D Gangs on social media. The support series is
reporting and for exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the l
s D Gangs Patriots seven
Warning. This podcast contains explicit language in details acts of violence.
Listener discretion is advised. Today in Los Angeles, it's the
day after election day. Ballots across the county are being
tallied up in one of the most watched police races
in the United States, the campaign for Sheriff of Los
(00:20):
Angeles County. Incumbent Sheriff alex Via Nueva's administration has spent
the last four years caught up in scandal after scandal.
He's faced calls from his own party to step down.
We'll know soon what his fate is. He's being challenged
by Robert Luna, the former chief of the Long Beach
(00:41):
Police Department. Luna has the backing of the Los Angeles
County Democratic Party, the support of local officials Mineueva has
openly clashed with and even investigated, and the endorsement of
the Los Angeles Times. Many people think he won the
race months ago. This is a tradition of violence, a
(01:04):
history of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
This week, we're bringing you a special episode about the
man who wants to be Sheriff, Robert Luna. Luna grew
(01:28):
up in East Los Angeles and says that his first
memories of the police were watching sheriff's deputies rough up
people in his neighborhood. Despite his own hostile encounters with
police officers, Luna went on to join the Long Beach
Police Department in as a reserve police officer. He entered
the police academy in April of n and went on
(01:50):
to be promoted through every rank in the department. Luna
became a member of executive staff under Chief Tom Bishop
and went on to succeed Chief Jim McDonald as head
of the Long Beach Police Department when McDonald won the
race for sheriff in Luna was the first Latino chief
in the department's history and was celebrated by local officials,
(02:13):
but other officers of color were wary of Luna. Mark
McGuire joined the Long Beach Police Department in and became
a detective two years later. I was there for twenty
four and a half years, and I've worked either for
or around Robert Luna. He was my sergeant and gangs.
He was my lieutenant at one time, he wasn't my commander.
(02:35):
As he rose through the ranks, he was assigned to
wherever I was assigned, and then he became my deputy chief,
and then he became the chief. So we talked because
there weren't a lot of minorities there. He had an
open door policy, which is a good thing. And I
would vent to him about the racism that I was experiencing,
(02:55):
and he would do nothing about it. And I was
really hurt when he ignored some of the things that
I told him because he knew the truth. One incident
changed Mark's relationship with Luna completely. There was one poster
that I told Robert Luna about and it kind of
set my career back. It was a poster of the tree,
(03:17):
and on this tree were murder suspects that had been
convicted of murder and they were either looking at life
or death. And out of all of the pictures on
the tree, there was one black man hanging by a
noose from around his neck, and that was posted up
in the homicide office. Mark says he reported the poster
to Robert Luna. He told Luna he wanted to remain anonymous.
(03:41):
The poster was placed in a way that when you
walk down the hall, anybody could see it. I didn't
want to be involved because I didn't want that stigma,
being called a snitch or a rat or whatever. And
he assured me that he wasn't going to involve me
in it, but he did as soon as he saw
it whenever he saw it. Later on, I think it
(04:03):
was either that afternoon or the next day. I was
called in to tell my story and then I was labeled.
I was labeled, like I said, a rat, a snitch,
a malcontent, and a troublemaker. When he outed me on
the poster, I never really confided in him as often.
Mark says receiving a negative label for calling out racism
had a huge effect on his career inside of the department.
(04:27):
I couldn't get jobs. I had to stay where I was.
There was only a certain group of people that would
work with or around me. But people knew that I
would report discrimination or shenanigans. If you will, I will
report it because that's what you're supposed to do. You're
supposed to be ethical as an officer, and that's what
I did. Other black officers inside of the LBPD say
(04:49):
they've had their own issues with Luna to Darren Neely
has been a Long Beach Police officer for thirty seven years.
Recently he had to go on light duty. I had
a foot surgery and I had all intensive purposes of
just retiring out. Well, they kept calling the doctor, and
the doctor said, okay, I'm not releasing to go back
(05:10):
and work like duty. And a little birdie had already
told me, hey, listen, when you come in, you work
like duty. Don't do like everybody else does. And when
they just kind of come in, they sit there, they
don't get involved. Darren began rotating from unit to unit
every ninety days. He later had to have eye surgery,
which limited the amount of time he could spend on
(05:32):
the computer. I told him, I said, you know what,
I can do some computer work, but I can't sit
at the computer for long periods of time. Everywhere I went,
the command staff said, hey, can we keep him here?
And it came from Luna's office. No, he hasked to
rotate out. My last assignment. They said, Chief Luna is
(05:54):
going to assign you to the redaction detail. But remember
I can't do the computer work all day long. Well,
where they send me. They put me at a desk
They had two big screens in it, and they said, well,
we want you to do redactions on officer involved shootings,
three thousand pages, four hundred pictures, and I'm doing three
(06:18):
or forties and I'm I'm just I'm putting in work right,
and I wanted to get these cases solved. I wanted
to get these cases redacted so that they could go out.
So I came in early one morning and I'm sitting
there and I'm doing these redactions and my head turning.
Something was wrong, but Darren kept pushing. As he did,
(06:39):
his symptoms got worse. I'm on my way home, going
down the freeway, and I noticed that I was kind
of fighting the steering. I put my hand up over
my left eye. My right eye is black. I can't
see out of my right eye. I go to my
doctor and the doctor goes, yeah, you strained it. You
you spent too much time at the computer. And I went, okay,
(07:00):
I food my workman's comp case. They go, okay, Well,
the doctor says he can come back to work with
no more computer work. Well, Luna's office came out and
said if he can't do computer work, we don't have
a position for a Quincy Miles went through the academy
and for the Long Beach Police department for the first
time in two thousand five. He says he immediately started
(07:23):
encountering racism. Black recruits were always seeing as bad as writing,
regardless of their skill set. So this thing is like generational.
One thing I kind of learned in podcast. Most of
us had college degrees, most of the whites had high
school diplomas. It's almost like we had to come in
almost above the expectations. You're gonna get labeled in Long
(07:47):
Beach if you're black, either you're gonna be confrontational, militant,
or you can't read or write. One of my classmates
had a degree in journalism. You can't tell me you
can't write a police report at Long Beach. Most of
the racists had the stronger personality. They had the alphameric personality.
(08:07):
So that's who dominated the meetings, the hiring, the process.
If the strongest personality is a bigot, that's what you're
gonna get. When Quincy became a police officer and went
out on patrol, he says, the displays of racism became
even more blatant. Just tell you how openly racist you
know the department could be. And I heard this from
(08:30):
a dispatcher and senior officers. They used to clear calls
over the radio anytime, like altercations with black people, T
and D typical new deals over the radio. Openly. Besides
the systemic racism, Mark and Darren alleged that the Long
Beach Police Department had its own issues with a white
(08:52):
supremacist gang inside its ranks, the North Town Rangers. I
am familiar with them, white supremacists, police officers who brutalized
people of color in the community. In North Long Beach.
There were group officers who predominantly worked together and they
were not people of color, and they were accused of
(09:14):
doing some ethical things and it became this Northtown Rangers,
things like a gang type deal. Robert Luna said at
a recent debate that the gang was eradicated and as
a sergeant, there's only so much he could do. But
Mark believes Luna should have done more to get rid
of the gang. He was a sergeant at the time.
During the debate he said they were eradicated. They were not.
(09:38):
They were transferred to other parts of the city. None
of them were fired, and some of them promoted. The
Luna for Share of campaign sent us a statement about
these criticisms, which I'll read. In terms of these comments,
Chief Luna addressed many of them in his interview on
this podcast. We might as well point out that, besides
(10:01):
the incumbent sheriff, the most vocal lunar critics during the
campaign are three disgruntled former Long Beach police officers. Over
the last two months, these former officers have become Alex
Viennuevas quote running mates, going everywhere with the sheriff, who
does not seem to mind that these former officers are
not telling the truth. Former officer Quincy Miles was terminated
(10:24):
by the Long Beach Police Department for numerous violations, including
but not limited to inexcusable neglect of duty for sleeping
in his police vehicle while on duty while a police
officer was shot, dishonesty and subordination, failing to file reports
in a timely manner, and a domestic violence dispute. Miles
(10:45):
also lost his lawsuit claiming discrimination, with the jury returning
a verdict in favor of the City of Long Beach
and requiring the former officer to pay attorney's cost to
the city. Former officer Mark McGuire had a decor aided
career as a homicide detective. In his deposition, he stated
under oath that the despicable Wren family tree poster was
(11:08):
the only racially offensive material he ever saw at the
Long Beach Police Department. He also stated in his deposition
testimony under oath that when he complained to Robert Luna,
who was a sergeant back in, about the poster, Luna
said he would take care of it and did. In
the deposition, McGuire was asked, quote, what did Luna say.
(11:32):
McGuire answered, quote, he told me he would take care
of it. The lawyer asked, quote and did he? And
McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote okay.
And so by the next day when you came to work,
it was gone. McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote,
there was an i A investigation on it. McGuire answered
(11:55):
quote yes. Under oath, wire has a different story than
he has today, and it should be noted that this
happened more than years ago, when Luna had no leadership
position in the department. He was only a sergeant. He
had no authority over i A investigations or discipline. He
was not responsible for what happened in the investigation or
(12:17):
the aftermath. But he reported it as he said he
would and started the investigation of this clearly racist and
disgusting poster. Local media doesn't do a great job of
(12:42):
covering police agencies here in l A County, but luckily
there are several small nonprofit news rooms that are doing
the work. My name is Kevin Fluds. I am the
co founder of fourth dot org, where a not for profit,
worker owned media outlet and Long Beach we published investigative
(13:03):
reporting and community media as well as we're also a
platform for local artists. Kevin has done a lot of
reporting on Robert Luna and the Long Beach Police Department.
Like the l A Sheriff's Department, there's a long history
of misconduct, abuse, and racism. They're dating back for generations.
There is a major lack of accountability um at the LBPD,
(13:30):
lack of transparency, it's it's a major theme of the
LBPD during the time that I've been reporting on them.
Kevin and his colleagues found that the Long Beach Police
Department has struggled to recruit black officers. Long Beach is
a city has a black population of twelve So if
you look at data on the makeup of of the
of store officers in the lb p D, it's it's white,
(13:52):
and then you have about Hispanic and black officers only
make up five two percent, and that is at odd
with the demographics of the city. That's part of a
legacy of white supremacist ideology in the Long Beach Police Department.
Is history of policing is inseparable from the desire of
white people in the wealthy to dominate everyone else. I
(14:13):
wrote a peace documenting the kkks and filtration of the
Long Beach Police Department in the first half of the
twentieth century and how in n there were several officers
in KKK GARB that tortured three black teenagers on the
outskirts of town. So we see this kind of racism
repeating itself today. Earlier this year, Michael Colbert, the only
(14:34):
black person to ever hold a pilot position with the
LBPDS Air Support Division, filed a lawsuit against the city.
Kevin is covering the lawsuit for fourth We co published
this with Knock l a black LBPD officer who had
retired who was suing the department and was alleging that
there was workplace discrimination. Her aspment retaliation who's subjected to
(14:57):
racial slurs. We also alleged at it was just all
kinds of racist and demeaning acts by his co workers
throughout a thirty year career at the lb p D.
Those allocations indicate that there's widespread racism in the workplace
at the lb PD, So it's not only pointed outwards,
it's also pointed inwards. The LBPD only promoted a black
(15:19):
woman beyond the rank of sergeant this year, the first
in one hundred and thirty four years. Darren Neely, who
has been on the department for thirty seven years, says
Robert Luna could have done more to retain and promote
black women. Every African American female it was on that
police department after either recruited. I even took some amount
(15:43):
and train with a whole group of people so that
they could do the physical abilities and the oral interviews.
That's how they all got hired. He could have taken
it to the next level and helped them promote through
the system. He didn't because it wasn't important to him
and it wasn't important to the people that he had
put in police. In Long Beach police killed twenty seven
(16:06):
people between and a black person was over three times
more likely to be killed by cops than a white person,
according to Police scorecard dot org. We compiled data on
Long Beach officers who are named in civil rights lawsuits,
and we found that the LBPD almost never fires officers
(16:27):
involved in killing or injuring civilians, and that's even after
a civil jury finds that an officer violated a person's rights.
And we also found that the LVPD promoted at least
a dozen officers who were involved in the acts of
police brutality between two thousand seven and two thousand eighteen,
which results are in civil litigation. If you asked Luna,
he'll tell you that the incidents of excessive force have
(16:51):
been trending down, and this is something that he would
tell the city council during presentations. But if you look
at the actual raw numbers, which were obtained through public
records request, there's almost the thirty increase in use of
force incidents between two thousand sixteen and two thousand nineteen,
which is right in the middle of Luna's tenure. I
spoke with Robert Luna about this, which you'll hear later.
(17:13):
He says that lbp D was able to reduce shootings
by fifty they went up again and now the reductions
are at The Long Beach Police Department has also faced
criticism for its use of an outdated discriminatory practice to
entrap and arrest gay men. These are operations where an
(17:35):
undercover officer would target places that were frequented by gay
men and try to bait them into performing sex acts.
And this was ruled um as a serminatory and constitutional,
mainly because police only went after gay men when lud
conduct complaints are just as common for for heterosexual people.
This is part of a long legacy of what's known
(17:57):
as vice crimes, which you know, which gives pers description
should basically become morality police. And while this is going
on for over a hundred years, Luna allowed these arrests
to go on for the first year and a half
of his tenure as chief before the judge ruled that
they were unconstitutional. He said that the language police was
seeking to quote portray homosexual men a sexual deviance and
(18:20):
pedophiles and quote, and neither the city nor Luna has
ever apologized for these arrests, and arrest like that can
have long term consequences to someone's life. These arrests can
be very damaging to people. You know, they imposed criminal
records on gay men and this could lead to them
being outed. This could lead to them being ostracized from
the community, to having a mental health crisis, to being
(18:40):
fired from a job, and even making it very difficult
to find future employment. Luna spoke to me in depth
about this. He says this incident was a huge quote
learning lesson. Operations carried out by the LBPD were also
shrouded in some amount of secrecy. Under Chief Jim McDonald,
who went on to be the Sheriff of l A County.
(19:02):
Just before Viennueva, the department began using a service called
Tiger Text. Tiger Text was used between police officers to communicate.
It was a self deleting app and you know that
raises issues of again transparency because those messages can't be
retrieved when there is some kind of lawsuit that comes up.
(19:24):
I believe about a hundred police personnel had access to
that app. It would delete the messages after five days.
Their attorneys that we spoke to who said that those
messages being deleted were critical evidence that could be used
and say like an officer involve shooting case. When Luna
spoke about this, I'm believing he was quoted in the
l A Times saying something like that the allegations that
(19:45):
those messages could not be describable was false and that
there was no intention the departments of destroy evidence. Critical
evidence was destroyed, though, in the days before a new
state transparency law came online. Senate Bill fourteen twenty one,
or s B four made police records relating to officer
use of force incidents, sexual assault, and acts of dishonesty
(20:08):
accessible under the California Public Records Act. Ahead of January one, nineteen,
many police departments destroyed their records dating back about twenty years.
The Long Beach Police Department was one of them. Later on,
we did a follow up where we were able to
obtain some internal emails that police press were circulating right
(20:29):
before se came online, and it showed that Luna and
some other police press or circulating these messages from outside
attorneys that were advising them to shred records ahead of
the of the new law. And I want to clear
like there's there isn't an instance in those emails where
Luna gives an order to destroy records or anything like that,
but it kind of just speaks of of like the
(20:52):
messaging that that they were passing back and forth and
the type of advice that police officers get from these
law firms that they often contract with. Prior to SB
four going into effect, there were folks who put flyers
around the parks basically decrying this, this destruction of records,
(21:12):
and there was some emails that were being passed around police,
you know, calling whoever put these flyers up as suspects.
So this is the type of like very reactionary, antagonistic
attitude that the police have to any anybody who's critical
of the police. I mean, even these fokespeople for the
police have been pretty antagonistic towards us when we write
stories that are critical. In his investigations, Kevin says he's
(21:35):
found lots of issues with the lbpds use of surveillance technology.
The LBPDS use of it is that they didn't have
any policies around it, and they were buying this equipment
without the public really knowing. It wouldn't go through the
city council. It would just be purchased either with federal
grants or through other means, and it didn't need to
(21:56):
be reported publicly. Last year, Fourth discovered that the Long
Beach Police Department was sharing data captured by its automatic
license plate readers with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agencies.
These automatic license plate readers, they're often mounted on police
vehicles as well as traffic signal polls, and they're capable
(22:18):
of indiscriminately capturing license plate numbers that are rate of
something like eighteen hundred a minute. So with this data,
police are able to track a person's whereabouts, their travel patterns,
and where they live, where they work, where they go
to the doctor. That's super, super invasive. Our investigation found
(22:42):
that the LBPD was sharing this data not only with
federal immigration authorities, but with hundreds of law enforcement agencies
across the country. In particular, Yes, sharing that data with
with immigration authorities was completely in violation of the sanctuary
policies the local and the state. Luna told me that
(23:04):
it's important to have policies about surveillance technology in place,
otherwise it can lead to quote big trouble. Kevin and
his colleagues at Fourth also obtained evidence of the Long
Beach Police Department running thousands of facial recognition searches on
people associated with protests against police brutality. We noticed that
(23:25):
there was a big spike in the use of this
technology around the time of the George Floyd protests. Directly
after them. We later learned that the police department had
put together this looting task Force which was was submitting
these queries to a facial recognition database that's run by
the Sheriff's department. Actually, this database is basically made up
(23:49):
of mug shots um that go back I believe to
the mid ninety nineties, and the way that they would
record these queries would be by using very vague terms
things like p D protest. And this doesn't allow anybody
to then audit these searches and his facial recognition database
to be able to see if the police were actually
(24:09):
using this within constitutional bounds, which is a big problem.
The fact that they were using this label p D
protests really kind of points to this idea that they
were I would say, this attitude that they had around
the protests, they were missing the point of the whole protest.
Kevin and Fourth documented injuries inflicted by lbp D officers
(24:30):
on protesters, ranging from bruises to a severed finger. Victims
included a teen author, a doctor, and KPCC reporter Adolfo
Guzman Lopez, who had his neck ripped open by a
less lethal projectile, which are usually bean backgrounds, rubber bullets,
or pepper balls. The round was fired by police during
(24:52):
protests for George Floyd. Then Chief Robert Luna was called
before the Long Beach City Council to explain what happened.
His justification was that people had begun to throw rocks
and bottles and things like that. But we need look
at pictures of the protests. You see that the officers were,
you know, in body armor, they had um I believe
(25:14):
they brought out some some armored vehicles. Brocks and bottles
weren't exactly going to you know, defeat a militarized police force.
So yeah, I would say it was it was very
very little tolerance for protesters when it comes to criticizing
the police department. The Long Beach Police Department had no
shortage of issues while under Chief Robert Luna's command. After
(25:37):
the break, he sits down with me for an interview.
I met with former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna
(25:57):
over zoom three weeks before the election. He says it's
time to vote Alex be in a way about out.
It's time for a change. I want to give the
l A County Sheriff's Department back to the community where
it belongs. There are wonderful men and women who work there.
I think you've talked to many of them. But changes
(26:18):
do need to be made and I want I when
I'm campaigning, this is what I tell people. We need
a sheriff who has integrity. Uh. My body of work
shows that I have integrity. Uh. Two, we need a
sheriff who holds himself and his employees accountable. I have
done that over and over. That's not happening right now
(26:41):
with the sheriff's department. We need a sheriff who collaborates. Um. Uh.
It is very important that the sheriff can get along
or at least, let me just say, work with the
board of supervisors, the inspector general civilian oversight. Um. We
cannot have this us versus them mentality anymore. Uh. It
(27:04):
is impacting our public safety. Uh to each and every
one of our families. And then just real quick, because
I didn't get a chance to do this. If you
hear it in my tone of voice and my approach.
It really doesn't always come back to my professional experience.
It comes back to my personal experience. You're listening to
(27:25):
a man who wanted to be a police officer from
an early age, growing up an unincorporated Los Angeles. My father,
uh migrated here from Mexico. Seventh grade education. He was
a janitor. My mom was born in Modesto, but only
because she was part of a a farm, a migrant
farm family from Mitun, Mexico. UH. Third grade education and
(27:48):
sold food on the streets. Those are my humble beginnings.
I ended up face first on the hood of a
police car just because I was riding a bike. You
don't forget those things. And so when I answer questions,
it's not just my professional experience, it is my personal experiences.
I feel it. I want to be on the right
(28:09):
side of history, and I sure hope I earned your vote.
You have to vote if you want change. You just
cannot leave that box unchecked. If you do, can you
imagine for more years of alex Vanueva. We cannot have that, Uh,
We cannot have that. We need change and we need
it now. So thank you for having me on your show,
(28:33):
and thank you for what you do, and you know what,
God willing. If I get elected, I expect you to
keep me in check. I have no doubt you can
do that. This podcast is an investigation of deputy gangs
inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. What is your
plan to root out and prevent the further spread of
deputy gangs? So I want to start off with several
(28:55):
weeks ago, I was in a debate with Alex Mianoueva
and uh, this is this was televised so people can
go back and listen to it. But he was asked
about deputy gangs and he made a statement similar to this,
and he says, deputy gangs are like a unicorn. It's
(29:17):
something everybody talks about, but it doesn't exist. And and
that kind of puts an exclamation point on how he's
been handling this issue. For me, I'm a complete contrast. Uh.
I do believe that they do exist. Uh. And the
first step to making sure you resolve an issue is
(29:40):
to accept the fact that they do exist. So that's
step one, coming in and making sure that everybody knows
their unacceptable um, both inside the department and outside the department. UM.
Then the next thing that has to happen is you
have to set a standard of conduct UM. And what
(30:02):
I mean by that is for me through principal leadership
and to further explain that it goes back to the
code of Ethics and law enforcement. We took an oath,
We raised our right hand and we said we were
going to serve our community. UH no matter who they are,
how much money they have, what color they are, UH
(30:23):
those that's fundamental to our service. And we have to
remind everybody from the time we recruit, to hire, to train,
to promote UH that this is the oath that we
took and gangs talking about gangs and policing in the
same sentence absolutely not not acceptable, meaning that the concept
(30:44):
of of that even UH us thinking about this is
not acceptable. Next is we have to make sure that
there are strict policies and policy. Something in writing that
isn't worth much unless we're following it up with very
good training, consistent follow up training and accountability. So for me,
(31:05):
accountability means holding the individual deputies accountable who are involved
in this level of misconduct, and they're supervisors. If you
have sergeants, lieutenants and above who may be looking the
other way that they should not be supervisors or managers.
They may should maybe not even be on the department
(31:27):
because that's our stock gap to make sure this doesn't happen. UM.
Next for me is what I call federal and state intervention,
is that we need to make sure that we bring
in the FBI, federal d o J, state d o
J and we have to open up every drawer, pull
(31:49):
back every curtain and be open about the information that
we have UM and then that has to be reported out.
And by the way, that does include co operating with
civilian oversight. UH. In my wildest dreams, I could never
live in a world where I would get subpoenut as
the sheriff UH to come in and testify, whether it's
(32:13):
on deputy gangs or any other issue. And I'm not
I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna be there. That's insane.
I expect you to follow the rules. I have to
lead by example not only for our community, but each
and every one of our employees that I want them
UH to live within the parameters of the law. That
becomes very very important as well. UM. I do just
(32:38):
I want to touch on because it says a long answer,
But it's very important is that I do believe that
UH mental health care comes into play here, and let
me explain, mental health care for me in the community
is very, very important. But I also believe that some
of this misconduct may be untreated trauma where employees that
(33:01):
are involved in this activity may be acting out and
it's not acceptable. But what are we doing to make
sure that employees that are have been traumatized because it's
a tough job, it's one of the toughest jobs out there,
that we're providing adequate mental health care for them and
not only are sore and employees, but are professional staff
(33:23):
and their families. Because if we integrated into our disciplinary process,
I want to make it clear you're involved in significant misconduct,
illegal activity, unethical behavior, you don't deserve to wear a badge.
But if there's something that falls below that, why not
include mental health care as part of some kind of
(33:46):
a recovery So then we can not only UH do
better at recruiting employees, but retaining them as well because
they see that we're approaching this a different way, and
then in turn, people start treating our community members are
they start treating our community better and at the end
of the day. I think that's what it's all about.
(34:06):
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has an issue with
use of force UM. Right now, there is a viral
video circulating of a young man being beaten by two
deputy sheriffs in Englewood, UM. Already this year, thirteen people
have been shot as of this recording. Many victims of
that have shared about seeing the deputies who heard or
(34:27):
killed their loved ones around their neighborhood, and many of
those same deputies, under current policy, rarely faced discipline or
criminal charges for their actions. What are your policies on
what should happen to officers or excuse me, to deputies
involved in brutal assaults or fatal shootings. Well, first of all, UH,
(34:48):
any use of force has to be taking has to
be taken very serious because, UH, when you see a
use of force, whether it's on video or it's not.
And I always go back and talk about, uh force
that eye witness as a young boy growing up in
an unincorporated East Los Angeles, I never forgot about that
(35:09):
that's traumatizing. So we have to acknowledge that there's there's
a lot of pain involved on all sides. UH, so
that becomes very important. So because I haven't worked in
the sheriff's apartment, what I could relate to you is
my experiences specifically as the chief of police in Long
(35:29):
Beach and law enforcement has evolved over the last several years,
and UH we were able to, I was able to,
I believe, transform the Long Beach Police Department in the
way UH we did our policy, in the way we
did our training UH and the way we held UH
individual employees accountable. And because we did that, we were
(35:55):
able to reduce our officer involved shootings by thirty three
reduce our use as of force by twenty nine percent,
and our citizen complaints by And the way we did
that is first you look at the policy. And for me,
I always wanted to make sure and this was because
(36:16):
I don't know if you know this about me, but
I was elected and re elected to the executive board
of the Major City Chiefs Association. I was a Western
region representative. That put me at the table with other
police chiefs and sheriff's of the seventy nine largest departments
in the US and Canada. There we discussed all the
(36:37):
current issues involving law enforcement, including the use of force,
deadly force or UH force below that. And so we
were working on UM very updated UH policies. And because
I was at that table, we were able to bring
(36:58):
that right back to Long each and compare our policies
to make sure they not only met national standards, but
they exceeded them. So with that experience, bringing that back
and really having a mindset of UH self reflection and
who we are, one of the things I did is
(37:19):
we started our Office of Constitutional Policing and Long Beach
and that's something I would like to do in the
Sheriff's Department and what that office does I had. I
hired UH an attorney who was actually a defense attorney
in New York for New York p d um uh
I say she worked out of New York, I shouldn't
(37:39):
say for the police department because she was a defense attorney.
And um what she did for us is she was
bringing up she was looking at our policies, she was
looking at our training and researching best practices and bringing
them in. What we were also doing is teaming up
with academic institutions. And one of my goal was to
(38:00):
make sure that we were not thinking insular that we
had outside eyes looking at us and we weren't afraid
to accept outside input. Um. And I'm I started to
mention this, but I'm almost talking too fast here, got
ahead of myself. Part of the the Office of Constitutional
(38:22):
Responsibility was to put together a community advisory board of
a very diverse group of community members that would come
in and the first policy they started to look at
and review was our use of force policy. Uh. It
was that kind of an approach, UH that had us
looking at business differently. Now was it a culture shock
(38:45):
uh to command staff and our officers and our labor.
It was, But you know what, we had really good
people and it takes good leadership and there is some
back and forth, but at the end of the day,
we have to remind each other that we served this munity.
They are our bosses. And yes, you know there's been
that little black box concept and law enforcement that uh,
(39:08):
we do have to modify and change as time goes on.
But what I'm explaining to you is that it's evolving.
It's evolving, and it has to happen at the Sheriff's department.
We have to evolve. It's two. We cannot be doing
the same things we did before. So let me give
you one last example. We're talking about uses of force
(39:30):
and reducing them. So for example, whether you're talking about
this viral video or any other videos, you break that
down into three pieces. The first piece is the pre
use of force conduct is was the approach by the
officers or deputies legal? Why did they approach in the
(39:50):
first place? So we look at that aspect. Was it
tactically sound, where their tactics contributing to the use of force.
Those are the things that we looked at in Long
Beach and it really started changing the mindset that you
know what, we are going to pay attention to tactics.
Tactics do matter, and if your tactics are way out
of bounds, then that you s of force uh could
(40:13):
not should not be in policy. Those are the kind
of things, the hard questions we have to ask ourselves.
Then you look at the use of force itself an
objective review. Is it something that you're using to control
an individual or are you trying to punish them. If
you're trying to control, that could be within policy depending
(40:34):
on the circumstances. If you're trying to punish, that is
absolutely unlawful. And to your point, UH, those are the
kind of things that you know, we have to bring
to bear UH to make sure that at the end
of the day, things are being done UH constitutionally legal
and and correctly. Then you have the post UH use
(40:57):
of force review. UH. Did we properly handle the individual
that we use force on? UH? If you know, God forbid,
they need medical care? UH? Are we rendering first aid
UH CPR if necessary, getting the paramedics there as quickly
as possible, UH, and making sure that we're doing everything
(41:17):
around the scene to make sure we get the appropriate
witnesses UH. And and UH investigators whether it's criminal investigation
or administrative investigation or the d A if they're involved
in the use of force. In the past, the Sheriff's
Department has participated in programs where it results in donations
(41:38):
of stuff like military equipment, surveillance equipment surveillance programs. What
is your stance on the department's continued participation in those
programs and do you think that the Sheriff's Apartment should
accept additional weaponry, vehicles other gear from these programs. I'm
not familiar with what the Sheriff's Department does rank now
(42:01):
but again I can relay it to my experiences in
Long Beach. Uh, and I can tell you that we evolved,
uh two more of what you're saying now, because at
one time, I think most of US police departments and
sheriff's departments may have been taking equipment from the military.
(42:24):
Uh and uh what I ended up doing in Long Beach.
And and please look at Long Beach because we have
a port, so I know like some of the things
we took at the end were like trailers uh to
tow our police boats that were used to patrol the
water site and Long Beach. But then over time, uh
years back, we had taken some military equipment. As a
(42:47):
matter of fact, at one point we ended up giving
some back because we had to really look at our
policies about what would we accept and why. So what
we did in our department is we had a somebody
at the rank of deputy chief who would review the request.
(43:08):
And there were plenty of requests and if they didn't
fit our needs, our community needs, then uh, we weren't
not going to use them. Obviously, you have to find
a balance between military style equipment and what we may
need uh to properly do our jobs. So when you're
(43:31):
talking about, for example, surveillance equipment, uh, is it something
that is uh? And I learned this the hard way
as the chief and Long Beach. Do you have a policy? Uh?
Is it? Um? Uh? Is it being audited? Are we
doing things the right way? Because I'm telling you right
now you can get yourself in big trouble when you
don't have good audit systems in place to manage those things.
(43:55):
In Long Beach, the police killed twenty seven people between
and police scorecard found that black people were over three
times more likely to be stopped by cops than a
white person. Um. What are your thoughts on those statistics?
And how will you approach the black community um? And
(44:15):
cultivate that relationship should you be elected sheriff. Regarding the information,
you never ignore it. Uh. It's information that's out there
and you've got to listen to it. Uh. And I
believe in a healthy skepticism of law enforcement. You know,
I used to tell our recruits and our officers and
(44:37):
when people got promoted, that we have one of the
only jobs where we have the authority to take somebody's property, liberty,
and life away. And UH, if you cannot accept the
fact that you're gonna be second guest, Um, then you
don't belong in this business. Uh. It's a tough job,
and I have so much respect for the people who
(45:00):
do it. So that's my overwriting, uh towards any numbers, UM,
and I I am somewhat familiar. I haven't looked at
the scorecard information lately, but I can tell you this
that over time, if you look at our statistics and
(45:22):
Long Beach p D. I said it earlier, we reduced
our officer involves shootings. Uh. At the end of I
want to say it was I had a fifty percent reduction.
Um it did go up to in twenty one, so
now it's a thirty three reduction. Uh. The uses of
(45:43):
force had dropped. So even though I don't ignore the information, UH,
it doesn't give us credit for us transforming. Our policies
are training and accountability to improve because you have to
start somewhere, and we did improve. And at the end
(46:04):
of the day, my goal, and some people may say
it's unrealistic, is that that number of killing somebody is zero. Uh,
you know, having one is too many, specifically if they're
your family members. In relations to our African American or
Black community in Long Beach. UM. I had an extraordinary
(46:29):
relationship with many. UH. Was it perfect with everybody? No?
It wasn't. I wish it could have been. I wanted
to be perfect. UM. But you know what, I never
closed the door to anybody, even if they disagreed with
me or I disagreed with them. I was willing to listen.
And that's the contrast between me and my opponent right now,
(46:53):
that that that is a big difference. But I had
it an amazing relationship UH with the UH, the Long
Beach branch of the n A c P. I was
often at community events at night on weekends, contributing to Christmas.
I was so proud and and I there's so many
(47:14):
people who can come forward UH and talk about those
relationships um. UH the Minister's Alliance in Long Beach, which
are mostly African American ministers, I work hand in hand
with them, UH. And I've got to say, I've got
to get that. Give them credit because they worked with
me and advising me on how the community felt and
(47:38):
what was important to reduce these numbers. So as you
can see, UM, facing adversity, you have to do that.
As a sheriff, you have to do that as a
police chief. But you have to accept responsibility UH for
the action, your own actions and the actions of your employees,
because making excuses and blaming other people are not going
(48:02):
to work, especially for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
And please remember officer involved shootings between two thousand and
fifteen and UE went down, UM and UH citizen complaints
went down actually thirty percent between that same time period.
(48:23):
For the first year and a half of your ten
year as chief and Long Beach, UM, there was a
decades old practice of entrapping game and for lewd conduct
charges UM that was carried out. There were police staying
operations UM and they were only stopped after an l
A Superior Court judge called these practices out as discriminatory
in the Long Beach Police Department still hasn't apologized for
(48:47):
these things. Is that something that you regret during your
tenure as chief? You know what, it was a huge
learning lesson for me, And it goes back to what
you think is right. One day, all of a sudden, UH,
reality strikes you and you have to I tell people
(49:07):
one of my keys to success is to listen, learn
and love and the l that sounds weird coming from
a police official, but this is a perfect example. Uh,
we had a sting going on because we had complaints
in a public restroom that was in a park across
the street from Wilson High School in Long Beach at
(49:29):
Recreation Park. And when we typically had complaints, the vice
officers would do these things and they were being done
for years, and you almost think, Okay, this is the
way we handle this. But then the superior court judge
issues the decision and at first, you know, you almost
have a tendency to almost get defensive. Wait a minute,
(49:50):
we're just doing our job. But one of the the
advantages I had in Long Beach is I had an
amazing relationship. I keep by using the word amazing because
I was very immersed in our community, with our LGBTQ community,
specifically are l g b t Q Center. And trust me,
when they got wind of this, they were in my face.
(50:11):
They were like, what the heck are you doing? Why
would you do this? And it was like, wait a minute,
We're just doing our job. But what I started to
realize and what I learned is that when they were
asking me questions like this one, they're going, wait a minute,
if you're making arrest of a gay man having sex
(50:31):
with another gay man, how many arrests are you making
for a heterosexual man having sex with a heterosexual woman
on the beach? And you start thinking, wait a minute,
maybe we've been approaching this a whole different way. That
was like a lightbulb moment to think, you know what,
let's get our l g b t Q center involved,
(50:52):
And from now on they helped us reform our policy
and we start looking at a different way of approaching
these complaints, which it starts off with education and then
if education doesn't work, we use our partners at lgbt
Q to help us get the word out uh and
help us and to my knowledge, and I don't think
(51:14):
we've made we didn't have any more stings after that.
I don't think we've made any arrest. We've approached it
completely different. And my relationship with our lgbt Q center
actually was enhanced because we ran across some adversity. UH,
we listened to each other. We changed it for the
betterment of our community, because we have a very large
(51:37):
LGBTQ community and Long Beach and that was a lesson
learned huge lesson learned. UH. And and this is the
experience I'm bringing to the Sheriff's department. You have UH
an executive who has faced adversity, never ran away from it.
UH engaged it. I was very honest about it. And
(51:57):
here this I accepted responsive ability for it. It's like, yeah,
we did it, and you know what, we learned our lessons.
We're not doing this anymore. And that has happened over
and over UH. And that's what I believe. The change
we need in the Sheriff's apartment today is to have
a leader who accepts responsibility, is willing to listen to
(52:18):
their community, work with their community, and make the necessary changes. Now,
when you you ask about an apology, the detectives there
thought they were doing their job. And this is where
it gets a little strange for me. A lot of
times we have to look at our management practices. I
just described what a management practice was. We're sending our
(52:40):
detectives out to do this work. They thought they were
doing a good job. It's management that had to change
the way we are doing things, and we did. And
that happens a lot, especially UM when you have allegations
of like racial profilely because a lot of times we
get pressured, hey, stop the shooting, stop this, stop that,
and then we have our death. But he's our officers
(53:00):
stopping our community members. What are we really asking them
to do. We have to be smarter, We have to
be strategic and take accountability for our actions and the
actions of our employees. And that is very, very very critical.
And um, just so all of the your listeners are aware,
(53:22):
my Mayor Robert Garcia, who is gay. Um, he he
endorsed me for this race. He is one of the
uh individuals I went to as a mentor when we
were going through this about Hey, how do we turn
this around. It's our sitting let's make a difference. So
the LGBTQ community and Long Beach does support me, and
(53:44):
we went through some growing pains, but this is what
you need to go through as a family. Right. The
ballots are still being counted and the fate of the
sheriff's race lies in the voters hands. Soon we'll know
who will be head of the department. A man who
says depp D gangs don't exist, appears to be using
his position for political gain and to five subpoenas or
(54:06):
a chief with his own baggage, eager to restore normalcy
to the Sheriff's Department. Only time and Paul Workers will tell,
I used to alone, did a whole hood. No, fuck
the police, I'm a fucking trophy. You've been listening to
(54:29):
a tradition of violence. The history of deputy gangs in
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hosted an executive produced
by series Castle music by Yellow Hill and Steels. For
breaking news and updates and deputy gangs, follow at l
s D Gangs on social media. The support series is
reporting and for exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the l
s D Gangs Patriots seven
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