Essential California

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, July 23, and I’m writing from Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is an extremely powerful man. As the county’s top cop, he oversees the largest sheriff’s department in the world, as well as the largest jail system in the country. His is an agency with a $3-billion budget and roughly 16,000 employees. It’s also an agency that has weathered more than its fair share of dysfunction and internal turmoil, including a jail abuse scandal that ended with criminal convictions for former Sheriff Lee Baca and several of his top deputies. Villanueva, a former lieutenant in the department, was a relative outsider and long-shot candidate when he rode a wave of progressive support to unseat then incumbent Sheriff Jim McDonnell in a historic upset in November. The victory shocked L.A.'s political establishment. But Villanueva has faced mounting controversies since being sworn in as the county’s 33rd sheriff less than a year ago. He has reinstated troubled deputies who had previously been fired, attacked his predecessor’s jail reforms and come under fire for the continued role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the county jail system. The FBI is investigating a secret society of tattooed deputies in East Los Angeles as well as similar gang-like groups elsewhere within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. (The issue of “deputy gangs”far predates Villanueva’s ascent, but the inquiry “marks the return of federal law enforcement authorities tasked with digging around in the Sheriff’s Department,” as a Times story noted earlier this month.) The progressive support that helped secure Villanueva’s surprising victory has since dissipated. The new sheriff has faced scrutiny from county supervisors, department watchdogs and some of the “contract cities” within L.A. County that are policed by the Sheriff’s Department. Los Angeles magazine recently called him “the Donald Trump of L.A. law enforcement.” On Friday, The Times revealed that Villanueva’s own son was hired to be a deputy seven months after his father took office, despite the son having a record that would probably generate scrutiny. Los Angeles Times reporter Maya Lau has covered the Sheriff’s Department for the last two and a half years, breaking numerous major stories about the agency. I spoke with her to get a better read on what’s been happening in the agency, and who exactly Villanueva is.