During four hours of combative testimony before the Civilian Oversight Commission Friday morning, former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva attempted to downplay the gang problem, refusing to acknowledge its existence and claiming that the gang problem tattooed subgroups is “actually disappearing.” from the Department.
“There is still an attempt to pretend that gangs of helpers exist and that they operate in the countryside looting and looting,” he told special prosecutor Bert Deixler. Minutes earlier, Villanueva testified that if the department got rid of all officers with controversial tattoos, the county would have to fire so many people that it would create a “gigantic public safety crisis.”
The former sheriff, who is currently running for county supervisor, told the commission he never conducted a systematic investigation into deputy gangs. He said he did not ask employees about the nature of their tattoos, and did not question his senior leaders about his involvement in the groups, even though his former chief of staff publicly admitted until he was a member of the Grim Reapers, linked to the now closed Lennox Station.
For years, Villanueva defied subpoenas to testify under oath. Only after a county judge scheduled a hearing to decide whether she ordered him to comply did he change course. Although there were no major surprises in Friday's testimony, commission Chairman Sean Kennedy said the hearing served an important purpose: to demonstrate that even the county's former top cop can face tough questions.
“It is essential that an elected sheriff be held accountable when he defies oversight subpoenas,” Kennedy told the Times on Saturday. Demonstrating that, he said, also “puts pressure” on the current sheriff to move forward with his plans to rid the department of attached gangs.
Sheriff Robert Luna, who takes office in 2022, vowed last year to “eradicate all deputy gangs” from the department. But the problem has vexed oversight officials and county leaders for years, and there is no clear path to eliminating it.
For five decades, the Sheriff's Department has been plagued by groups of dishonest deputies accused of running roughshod over certain stations and promoting a culture of violence. The groups are commonly known by names such as Verdugos, Banditos, Reguladores and Pequenos Diablos, and members often have matching tattoos, numbered sequentially, with macabre images.
Last year, Inspector General Max Huntsman ordered nearly three dozen officers to submit to questioning about officer gangs and show investigators their tattoos in hopes of compiling a list of possible gang members. But the unions sued and a judge temporarily blocked the county watchdog's investigations.
At the same time, the sheriff has been working to implement a stricter policy prohibiting participation in attached gangs, although the latest proposal is still being negotiated with unions. Although Villanueva implemented an anti-gang policy in 2020, critics said he did not go far enough.
Meanwhile, the oversight commission has been trying to investigate the MP gangs for years, despite ongoing problems with reluctant witnesses. Former Undersheriff Tim Murakami has yet to comply with the commission's subpoena efforts, but Deixler still raised questions about his affiliations during Friday's hearing.
Minutes after testimony began, Deixler played a clip from 2022 in which Villanueva compared police gangs to unicorns.
“Everyone knows what a unicorn looks like, but I dare you to name one,” he said during a televised pre-election debate. “Name only one deputy gang member.”
Then Deixler put a picture of a unicorn on the screen and asked, “That's a unicorn, isn't it, sir?”
Seconds later, he showed a photo of the former deputy sheriff and, referencing the name of an alleged deputy gang linked to the East Los Angeles station, said: “And that's a caveman, isn't it, sir?”
Villanueva became enraged and stiffly told Deixler, “That's a former undersheriff.”
At one point, Deixler asked Villanueva if he had been a caveman himself, which the former sheriff denied.
Despite the academic atmosphere at Loyola Law School, the special hearing on deputy gangs — the commission's ninth in the past two years — was marked by spectacle and grandstanding. Audience members frequently interrupted with cheers, jeers and obscenities, while the former sheriff repeatedly insulted the commission, the inspector general, the media and the special counsel's lines of inquiry, which he called “silly.” and “terrible.”
Deixler vigorously questioned Villanueva, sometimes shouting, about some of the most publicized groups of deputies, as well as one recently revealed. first made public last week in The Times. That group, the Indians of Industry, came to light when the department began investigating an off-duty fight in the parking lot of a Montclair bowling alley and discovered that some of the officers involved allegedly had Indians of Industry tattoos.
Once Villanueva admitted knowing about the incident, Deixler questioned whether he had been aware in late 2022 when he compared gangs of helpers to unicorns. The former sheriff said he learned about the investigation when he was leaving office and that it was an example of “misconduct” at a social event, not evidence of gang behavior.
Villanueva said he did not ask people what “ink they have on their bodies” and that during his tenure he “never examined anyone's tattoo.” Even after then-Chief April Tardy, who is now deputy sheriff, testified before the commission that the Banditos met the legal definition of a police gang, Villanueva said she did not launch an investigation.
“We chose not to touch on this matter only because it became a hot-button political issue that you were eager to address,” he said, adding that he thought Tardy's testimony was false.
Instead, he said, he spent his time in office focused on rooting out misconduct, which he said was more important than investigating tattoos or subgroups.
“It's no secret that there are subgroups within the Sheriff's Department,” he said. “They exist everywhere and always will exist.”
Calling them gangs, he said, is “overlooking the key element: bad behavior.”
To some of the community members who came to watch the hearing, the conclusions seemed predictable.
“He still denies that police gangs exist and he still denies that gang tattoos are a problem in the department,” said Stephanie Luna, whose nephew was killed by officers in 2018. “He said the same things he's been saying for years, but they all by just one hit”.
But Friday's hearing may not be the only opportunity to question Villanueva. When the testimony ended, Deixler still had questions to ask, and the commission showed interest in calling the former sheriff in March.
