State probe of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is soon to be released
Let there be no doubt about it: No discussion of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in what could have been a tragic week can go ahead without starting with the relief we all feel over the release from the hospital of Deputy Samuel Aispuro — shot in the back by a coward while on his department motorcycle — and the swift apprehension of the fleeing suspected shooter a day later.
Aispuro, father of two, will live to protect the people of our sprawling and, yes, dangerous county for many more shifts to come.
But all organizations can benefit from scrutiny. And Aispuro’s boss, Sheriff Robert Luna, before the shooting surely had an outside probe on his mind. It was reported earlier this month that after more than three years of investigations, the California Department of Justice is close to reaching a complicated settlement with the sheriff over the existence of so-called deputy gangs within the department and lousy conditions in the Men’s Central Jail. Everyone who follows law enforcement in California knows that those are key issues.
But the real news about the forthcoming report is that it is said to contain some rather startling recommendations: That deputies stop making traffic stops, for instance. That they stop enforcing some drug laws. And that each deputy needs to complete hundreds of hours of new training.
As Keri Blakinger reported in the Los Angeles Times, the probe, launched by former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, “came amid a string of controversial shootings, costly lawsuits, repeated allegations of deputy misconduct and then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s resistance to oversight.”
Law-enforcement organizations across the country are rightly still taking stock of the way they do business in the wake of too many bad shootings, too much busting of too many heads.
And, given the current almost reactionary backlash against some post-George Floyd reforms, the good news is that Luna is not being defensive as he awaits the formal report.
“Community trust is at the core of our work in public safety and with this agreement we will improve our systems … to better serve the citizens of Los Angeles County,” he wrote in an email to his entire staff.
That’s the right attitude for a responsible sheriff to have.