Sheriff's Department announces long-awaited policy banning deputy gangs

New Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna

Sept. 18, 2024 1:58 PM PT

Nearly two years after Sheriff Robert Luna took office and promised to eradicate deputy gangs, and three years after state lawmakers greenlighted a measure requiring police agencies to ban the groups, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department unveiled a much-awaited anti-gang policy Wednesday to comply with the law.

The controversial tattooed groups and their alleged misconduct have plagued the nation’s largest sheriff’s department for decades, spurring oversight investigations, an FBI probe and a stream of lawsuits. But leaders have been hamstrung in their efforts to eradicate the inked groups, in part because being in a gang was never explicitly grounds for firing.

The new policy could change that.

“It’s a huge step forward,” Luna told The Times on Wednesday. “People thought it was going to be impossible for me to start shifting this culture, but it’s happening. I like where we’re going.”

When it takes effect in 30 days, officials say, the policy will ban being in a deputy gang or hate group and require department employees to participate in investigations into the groups. It also will require that allegations of gang membership be referred to the state commission responsible for certifying — or revoking the certification of — peace officers across California. Violating the policy could result in discipline, including termination.

And, as Luna explained, it “lays out the expectations more clearly” and “shows that there are significant consequences if you violate this policy.”

Some deputy union leaders came out in support of the new policy Wednesday.

“This policy enables the Sheriff’s Department to address staff who do not meet the expected standards of conduct, while safeguarding the rights that are afforded to all workers in this country,” Richard Pippin, president of the Assn. of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, told The Times. “Perhaps the ‘defund the police’ crowd won’t be satisfied, but they never will be, shy of the complete end of any kind of effective policing.”

But the county’s watchdog, Inspector General Max Huntsman, had a decidedly less rosy take.

“I’m pleased that they have passed a policy that seems to minimally comply with the law, but it should have happened a long time ago,” he said, adding that he was never allowed to review a draft of the policy and did not receive a copy until 1:05 p.m. Wednesday — minutes before it was publicly released. “It is a huge disappointment that they kept it secret” — which is “not in compliance with California oversight law,” he said.

Similarly Vincent Miller, an attorney who has represented several deputies suing the department — including a former whistleblower who was demoted last week — said the new policy would be “useless” as long as the county resists transparency and retaliates against employees who come forward to report misconduct.

For five decades, the Sheriff’s Department has been beset by allegations about rogue groups of deputies running roughshod over certain stations and promoting a culture of violence. The groups are commonly known by names such as the Executioners, the Banditos, the Regulators and the Little Devils, and members typically have matching, sequentially numbered tattoos featuring macabre imagery.

Over several decades, L.A. County has paid out at least $55 million in settlements in cases involving sheriff’s deputies alleged to belong to the inked groups. Several other cases are still pending, including one scheduled for trial next week. Another, brought by eight deputies who alleged that they were routinely harassed by the Banditos, is wending its way toward trial after a judge decided last year that the case could move forward.

In early 2020, then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva adopted a new policy banning department employees from participating in any “illicit groups” of deputies that promote “conduct that violates the rights” of others. At the time, Villanueva said that made him the first sheriff to “successfully implement a policy banning ‘deputy cliques’” — though he also said that he couldn’t legally ban deputies from joining the groups and he has since repeatedly denied that deputy gangs exist.

Almost from the outset, oversight officials and outside experts said Villanueva’s 2020 policy didn’t go far enough. Some said it lacked teeth and wasn’t being enforced, and researchers at Rand Corp. suggested in a county-commissioned report that the department could improve its policy by defining more specifically what was prohibited and requiring deputies to disclose membership in organizations.

Then in 2021, the state passed a bill explicitly banning law enforcement gangs, defined in Penal Code 13670 as any group of officers who “may identify” with a name and symbol and who “engage in a pattern of on-duty behavior that intentionally violates the law or fundamental principles of professional policing.”

The law, which took effect at the beginning of 2022, also required all departments to have a policy prohibiting participation in gangs and making violations of that policy grounds for termination. Villanueva’s policy, his critics said, did not fully comply with that law.

But later that year, Luna — a department outsider and retired police chief — swept into office promising change. Unlike his predecessor, he admitted that deputy gangs existed and he vowed to eradicate them.

To do that, he established a new Office of Constitutional Policing, run by a former federal prosecutor who once helped put ex-Sheriff Lee Baca behind bars. Under Luna’s administration, officials began asking people promoting into the highest ranks of the department whether they had any tattoos linking them to the controversial groups.

And last year, the Sheriff’s Department used the policy as one of its reasons for firing two deputies who were involved in an off-duty confrontation with a teen and later admitted to having Industry Station Indians tattoos.

Still, some said Luna’s efforts to clamp down on the groups have fallen short. Roughly three months after Luna took office, the Civilian Oversight Commission released a scathing report detailing the history of gangs within the department’s ranks. One week after that, questions surfaced about whether Luna’s second-in-command — Undersheriff April Tardy — has a tattoo signifying allegiance to a deputy “gang.”

This year, oversight officials at the Office of Inspector General issued a 50-page report highlighting gaps in Luna’s efforts to rein in gangs and criticizing the department’s repeated failure to meaningfully investigate the groups.

As the report pointed out, even when the department punished two deputies last year for violating the existing anti-gang policy, the men were fired without being forced to name other members of their alleged group. And when that investigation led to the discovery of another tattooed group linked to the Lakewood Station, the report said the resulting inquiry “failed to ask the most basic questions” and came to an end when deputies at the station said there was no tattooed subgroup there.

(On Wednesday, Luna said that there are at least four deputy gang-related investigations underway, and that internal affairs investigators have done “several hundred” interviews and received additional training on doing more thorough investigations.)

But in recent months, one of the most consistent criticisms focused on the delay in implementing a stronger anti-gang policy. The Sheriff’s Department pointed to the drawn-out process of bargaining with deputy unions as one of the hurdles, but after nearly a year, it seems the parties involved have come to an agreement.

Officials said department members have been notified of the new policy, which was posted online Wednesday. Within minutes, Villanueva — the former sheriff — began criticizing the “fake policy” on social media, alleging it would classify all personnel as gang members “if they have ink but no misconduct — unless they are HIS undersheriff, chief, commander or staff!”

In a post linking a local media article, he added: “This is what failed leadership looks like, with a healthy assist from local media.” Later, in an email he added that the policy was “nothing more than a rehash” of his prior policy but “with an unconstitutional twist that will fail in court.”

Though current department officials say the new policy offers more precise language — including clear definitions of gangs, hate groups and hate group membership — and a more robust accounting of banned behavior and its consequences, Luna acknowledged it would have its critics.

On Wednesday afternoon, he told The Times that he anticipated some oversight officials might take issue with the fact that it banned only deputy gangs and did not also more broadly ban the more loosely affiliated tattooed deputy “cliques.” Originally, he said, the policy was set to address both — but the latter turned out to be more legally complicated, and Luna eventually decided to cleave that off into a separate policy that is still in the works.

“My priority was the gang policy; now it’s cliques,” he said. “We got the use-of-force policy signed off on in July, and we’re still in the process of implementing that. Now, tattoos and emblems will be something that we tackle next. It’s one step at a time.”

Yet several members of the Civilian Oversight Commission expressed concern about the policy. Robert Bonner, the commission’s chair, said it “does not go far enough.” Commissioner Hans Johnson pointed out that the department implemented only six of the commission’s 24 recommendations outlined in 2023. Commissioner Sean Kennedy, who has homed in on investigating law enforcement gang allegations, said that, although the new policy doesn’t go as far as the commission asked, it is a “long overdue step” in the right direction.

“The real challenge will be getting the LASD leadership to truly investigate and enforce the new policy,” he said. “In the past, they have all turned a blind eye to internal gangs and cliques, which is how the gang culture became so pervasive within the department. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of the end of 50 years of deputy gangs in the LASD.”

Sheriff’s Department announces long-awaited policy banning deputy gangs

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