Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva was so overwhelmingly repudiated by voters in his bid for a second time period that it’s straightforward to conclude that he was fallacious about the whole lot, and that he leaves behind no classes or insights of specific worth.
That’s not totally the case. Villanueva’s tenure was disastrous for the county and his division, however he acquired a number of issues proper, often regardless of himself. Robert Luna, who turns into sheriff Monday, would do nicely to take heed. So would the individuals of Los Angeles County.
Villanueva’s most blatant on-target coverage was to take away federal immigration officers from county jails. He noticed, simply as Los Angeles Police Division leaders noticed a long time earlier and state lawmakers extra lately, that residents — even these in jail — should be capable of strategy native legislation enforcement brokers with out worry that doing so will make them or their households targets for deportation. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers have their jobs to do, and sheriff’s deputies have theirs. They do them finest whereas staying out of one another’s manner.
Villanueva understood the wants of the county’s immigrant and working-class households in different methods as nicely. He accurately famous that essentially the most severe theft drawback within the county will not be high-profile crimes equivalent to shoplifting, however wage theft — when employers refuse to pay employees what they owe them, to the tune of about $26 million per week in Los Angeles County alone.
In response, he created a wage theft unit, which, if judged by the amount of cash it recovered, failed miserably. Wage theft falls beneath the jurisdiction of the California Labor Commissioner’s Workplace throughout the state Division of Industrial Relations, and it’s not clear what worth is added by a sheriff’s participation. In higher arms, although, the division would possibly play a constructive position.
A lot of what Villanueva acquired proper could be discovered within the crevices of what he acquired astoundingly fallacious, particularly in his claims that each one of his critics have been a part of a conspiracy towards him.
For instance, he carried a grudge towards what he thought-about the unfair therapy of himself and different deputies by division superiors throughout his profession. Complaints about perceived slights and injustices are typical of any massive, bureaucratic group. However no less than a few of Villanueva’s complaints bore a hoop of reality and are vital to the way forward for the division and the individuals it serves.
There has by no means been a sufficiently thorough outdoors investigation into whether or not promotional examination outcomes through the reign of Undersheriff Paul Tanaka (later sentenced to federal jail for obstruction of justice) and even earlier than have been unfairly doctored, or whether or not some favored personnel have been improperly given further time and diminished duties to raised put together and earn increased scores, as Villanueva and others alleged. However there was sufficient speak among the many ranks about such shenanigans to make deputies overtly query the equity and legitimacy of the promotional system.
Ought to county residents care about Sheriff’s Division promotions? Sure. When confidence in official processes disappear, members of a company will develop alternate options. Off-the-books relationships and codes of conduct supplant rank and chain of command. It’s a phenomenon that produces felony road gangs, and, fairly probably, exacerbated the issue of deputy gangs throughout the division, and raises the specter of armed officers on the road and within the jails taking part in by guidelines they make up themselves.
Villanueva’s response to perceived unfair therapy was unsound. He tried to rehire deputies who he and trusted associates claimed had been improperly terminated, as an alternative of referring the difficulty to outdoors reviewers (some terminations already had been upheld by the civil service fee). As a substitute of correcting an allegedly unfair course of, he substituted in his personal equally whim-based scheme.
However the underlying concern about corrupt processes was heading in the right direction and has but to be totally addressed.
Villanueva was additionally proper a few fundamental and expensive structural failure in county authorities. The county supervisors “are each branches of presidency in a single physique,” he instructed the Los Angeles Instances editorial board. “There needs to be a county mayor. So you might have a real govt department of presidency and [the supervisors] ought to solely be a legislative department of presidency.”
He’s appropriate. County authorities fails to supply the checks and balances that characterize federal, state and metropolis governments, and the county and the individuals undergo from it within the type of inadequate illustration and transparency.
However, as was typical, the sheriff steered his correct commentary into baseless conclusions. He claimed the Board of Supervisors was corrupt, together with everybody the board appointed who criticized or thwarted his mismanagement: the Civilian Oversight Fee, the inspector normal, county counsel, the chief govt officer. The file is devoid of any significant proof that any of these our bodies or people engaged in misconduct or fell brief of their obligation to maintain the sheriff working throughout the legislation and sound coverage. Villanueva’s refusal to adjust to subpoenas or flip over data discredited him and his division. The raid on the houses of Supervisor Shelia Kuehl and fee member Patti Giggans (which Villanueva tried to distance himself from) was the ultimate straw.
And but, the fee and the inspector normal, and the board’s new energy (within the wake of a profitable poll measure) to fireplace a sheriff for trigger, are at finest workarounds that fail to repair a fundamental drawback: The county lacks ample checks and balances.
Nor was the sheriff fully off-base when he accused the board of shifting public funds from county employees to non-public contractors. He supplied solely essentially the most specious proof that contracts are corruptly awarded based mostly on marketing campaign contributions or private friendship, however he put his finger on a central concern. If the county is to develop its program of referring offenders to supportive housing, drug therapy, psychological well being care and different companies typically supplied by nonprofits and personal contractors relatively than jails staffed by deputies — because it ought to — there might be rising pressure between public worker unions and nonprofit service suppliers. And there might be a rising want to guage the nonprofits’ efficiency, and to hint the stream of public cash.
Even when he correctly recognized issues, although, Villanueva did not successfully remedy them, aside from eradicating ICE from the jails. His self-righteousness, his erratic temperament, his defiance of oversight, all undermined him and left his division weaker and fewer revered. He won’t be missed. However he needs to be remembered — for all of the issues he acquired fallacious, sure, but in addition for these few issues he acquired proper.
