Did sheriff's officials conspire to set up whistleblowing lieutenant?

Dec. 18, 2024 3 AM PT

When L.A. County Sheriff’s Sgt. William Morris was investigating a criminal case against a fellow lieutenant based on a rumor, he kept running into a glaring problem: No one could tell him where the rumor had started.

The claim was that Lt. Joseph Garrido had been spotted using a department-issued vehicle to tow his boat to Lake Havasu City in Arizona for a vacation in 2022 — an offense that, if true, could have gotten him disciplined or even prosecuted. It had trickled down from the highest levels of the Sheriff’s Department to land in front of Morris at the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau in May of that year.

Morris probed top executives for months about the rumor’s origins and received a confounding mix of finger-pointing and memory lapses, as detailed in a 1,100-page investigative case file reviewed by The Times.

Then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva, for example, told Morris he heard the allegation from his chief of staff at the time, John Satterfield. Satterfield said he heard it from multiple sources, but he could recall only one: the constitutional policing advisor. The advisor, Georgina Glaviano, first said she actually heard it from Satterfield, but then said she couldn’t remember for sure.

Meanwhile, Morris’ supervisor — Capt. Catrina Khasaempanth — allegedly told a lieutenant she heard about the allegation from then-Undersheriff Tim Murakami’s office, though Khasaempanth later denied talking to Murakami directly about it. Meanwhile, Murakami said he learned about it during a meeting between the sheriff and his top commanders.

Despite recording nearly two dozen interviews in about a year, Morris never identified the tipster or found evidence of the allegations against Garrido. Instead, he had another, more troubling, theory: Garrido had been set up.

In a highly critical email to a top executive that is part of the case file, Morris said he suspected that Khasaempanth — head of the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau — had conspired to obstruct an investigation and falsify a police report in ways that made Garrido look guilty. On “several occasions,” Morris wrote, he’d shared his concerns with Undersheriff April Tardy.

“The abovementioned concerns and beliefs are not a personal attack on Captain Khasaempanth or the numerous executives named in my investigation, nor am I an obstructionist or malcontent,” Morris wrote in his March 2023 email. “I am also trying to morally navigate this unfortunate event that came to light under the previous regime’s command and prevent the Department from facing further embarrassment.”

Khasaempanth — who was never charged with a crime — and several other officials did not respond to requests for comment. Morris and Garrido declined to comment. The former sheriff did not immediately respond to an emailed set of questions.

There’s no indication in the case file that Tardy or anyone else in Sheriff Robert Luna’s administration investigated Morris’ concerns. But early this year, the county watchdog elliptically referenced the case in a quarterly Office of Inspector General report, noting that at least one administration official was eventually reported to the state commission in charge of certifying and decertifying peace officers. The report did not indicate which official or why the person was reported.

According to Vincent Miller, the attorney representing Garrido, the case has also been reported to the FBI and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The FBI would not confirm whether it was investigating the case, and on Dec. 11 the district attorney’s office said it was aware of the matter but declined to comment further.

“It’s outrageous that these executives ... are getting away with it,” Miller told The Times. “Luna ran an anti-corruption campaign — but all the failure to investigate the wrongdoers has been under Luna’s administration.”

In an emailed statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it could not comment on details of the case because of confidentiality laws protecting police personnel records as well as pending litigation.

“The Sheriff does not tolerate any form of corruption and has instituted several reforms to enhance accountability across all ranks, from executives to deputies,” the statement said.

In the two years since he first learned of the investigation, Garrido has repeatedly alleged that top Sheriff’s Department officials manufactured the inquiry as payback for a $1,500 campaign donation he made to one of Villanueva’s political rivals. In October 2022, Garrido made his allegations the basis of a lawsuit against the county, which is still pending in federal court.

Garrido also has claimed he was targeted for helping expose a scheme by sheriff’s officials to withhold bonus pay and for calling attention to the death of a police dog who overheated in a sergeant’s car in 2020.

To Inspector General Max Huntsman, the department’s handling of the case has been a disappointment.

“Over the past two years, we have documented a great deal of disturbing evidence of retaliation against whistleblowers and protection of command personnel,” Huntsman told The Times last week. “Despite new laws requiring action, the Sheriff’s Department has been dismissive and repeatedly refused to investigate, responding instead with personal attacks reminiscent of previous administrations.”

Before he hurt his back in January 2022, Garrido had been assigned to the department’s elite Special Enforcement Bureau. Deputies in that unit are assigned county cars to take home so they can respond quickly to emergencies at any time.

After Garrido went on leave, he kept his Chevrolet Tahoe for a little over three months, racking up about 440 miles in that time.

Then in mid-April, he went on a 10-day trip out of state. While he was gone, his commander texted him to ask about the car and let him know he’d need to return it. Garrido was immediately suspicious.

“I find this odd, after I openly tell you I would be out of town,” he texted the commander, according to screenshots of the texts included in the case file. “Very unlike you.”

Still, he told his boss the Tahoe was in his garage at home and that he’d return it when he got back.

A few days later, Garrido started hearing the rumor: He’d supposedly been spotted in Arizona, towing a boat with the Tahoe. The rumor could have been quickly debunked by a mileage check; a drive to Arizona and back was at least 540 miles, well over the 440 extra miles on the car.

But when the allegation reached Villanueva that spring, the sheriff told Satterfield to make sure it was investigated properly, according to transcripts of Villanueva’s interviews with investigators. A few weeks later, on May 16, Morris was assigned the case.

Morris ran Garrido’s cars through license plate tracking databases. He didn’t get any hits for the Tahoe during the months Garrido was out injured — though he did get hits showing the lieutenant’s personal vehicle had been out of state during his trip in April.

Morris also sought the Tahoe’s GPS records, but the vehicle wasn’t equipped with a system. He had the car checked for signs of odometer tampering but didn’t find any.

By late May, Morris started canvassing Garrido’s neighbors, trying — unsuccessfully — to find home security video of Garrido towing his boat.

When Garrido found out Morris was in the neighborhood asking questions, he confronted the investigator with questions of his own. Afterward, Garrido emailed Morris a copy of a five-page memo he’d written to an assistant sheriff a day earlier explaining the situation.

Since getting the Tahoe in 2018, Garrido said in the memo — which was included in the lengthy investigative file — he’d used it strictly for work-related travel and had only taken it out of state twice. Once was for training and once for a convention. Neither of those trips took place during the months he was off work in 2022.

“It is physically impossible to drive to any surrounding state and return within 443 miles,” Garrido wrote, already raising concerns about the reasons for the probe. “It is also my belief that the criminal investigation is politically motivated. I request that the validity of the source and date of sighting of the false allegation is verified before proceeding with such a slanderous criminal allegation.”

Soon, Morris began raising questions, too. For months, he and his lieutenants interviewed executives and reviewed department records trying to track down the source of the tip.

When they interviewed Villanueva, he pointed to his chief of staff, Satterfield. “I think other people probably reported to him and then of course he let me know, ‘Hey, this is the scuttlebutt,’” Villanueva told investigators, according to a transcript of the interview.

Though he couldn’t remember the date or the source, Satterfield told investigators he heard a vague rumor one morning at work. Within an hour, he added, he heard it again — this time from Glaviano, the Sheriff’s Department constitutional policing advisor — and with more detail, including Garrido’s name. (Satterfield and Glaviano did not respond to requests for comment.)

“It was just her and I walking when she told me,” Satterfield said to the investigators. “I remember thinking, well, I just heard this too.”

Glaviano remembers it differently. She was fuzzy on details but unequivocal according to the lengthy report that she was not the source of the rumor, which she said she first learned about when she was called into a meeting with Satterfield and asked whether employees are allowed to keep their county cars while on medical leave.

Satterfield then instructed her to tell Chief Jack Ewell — head of the division that included Garrido’s specialized unit — about the rumor, and ask him to look into it.

Ewell “was kind of taken aback,” she told investigators. “He was like, ‘I don’t believe that it’s true, but I will get back to you and I’ll let you know.’”

In an email later that day, Ewell told her he’d found no indication Garrido took the car out of state.

But when investigators interviewed Ewell, he said he didn’t remember the conversation with Glaviano. Instead, he said he learned about the anonymous complaint from the assistant sheriff. Afterward, Ewell said, he had directed Garrido’s boss to do a supervisory inquiry, the first step toward a formal investigation.

At the time, Garrido’s boss was Oscar Barragan, who was then the acting captain of the Special Enforcement Bureau. After finishing his inquiry, Barragan outlined his findings in a two-page memo.

“In summary, a total of 440 miles were driven since the last fill-up on January 4, 2022,” he wrote. “Lieutenant Garrido has been off work, injured on duty (IOD) since January 6, 2022. I am requesting an administrative investigation regarding the possible misuse of vehicle SH7616.”

The memo didn’t mention that Garrido had three doctor’s appointments he needed to get to, or that he hadn’t driven enough miles to account for a single out-of-state trip. Ewell told investigators that driving the Tahoe to doctor’s visits would have been “perfectly legitimate.”

A few days later, Barragan sent another memo to Ewell, this time pushing to further elevate the case by asking for a criminal investigation into Garrido.

Though Ewell later said he “didn’t see any evidence of any kind of criminal activity,” on May 11 he decided to open a criminal case, and formally sent Khasaempanth a request to investigate. Morris was assigned the probe, and at times his lieutenants helped.

One of them, Nicole Palomino, later told Morris that she had expressed concerns early on about not knowing who the anonymous tipster was. And she told him that Khasaempanth said it would be fine if Garrido’s commanders just claimed they were doing a random audit of his vehicle instead of saying the tip came from an informant, according to a transcript of her interview.

Palomino also said Khasaempanth told her that executives “were upset” early on that a criminal case hadn’t yet been opened and wanted the captain to speak with Barragan to “help him in articulating what to put in his memo,” so the case would go to the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, according to a transcript of her interview.

When Morris first turned in a draft of his investigative report in late 2022, Khasaempanth pushed back, outlining three pages of corrections and edits she wanted him to make.

“You veer off into some sort of quasi admin investigation as to how this case came to ICIB,” she wrote, adding that anything “pertaining to this side administrative concern you had needs to be removed from the criminal case and placed in a memo from you to me.”

Not deterred, Morris thought the department should investigate how the rumor started. So in March, Morris emailed Khasaempanth’s supervisor and raised questions of a possible conspiracy to target Garrido based on a “woefully inadequate” initial inquiry and “the comprised amount of law enforcement experience of the concerned Executives and their lack of questions and involvement after learning of the allegation.”

The next month, Morris closed the criminal case against Garrido.

“Based on my inability to identify or confirm the existence of the anonymous informant, the lack of witnesses, video surveillance footage, or GPS information to corroborate the allegation, and the roundtrip mileage associated with travel to Arizona exceeded the miles that had elapsed on Mr. Garrido’s Department-issued vehicle; there is insufficient evidence to support the allegation that Mr. Garrido used his Department-issued vehicle to travel to Arizona or used it to tow a personal boat to the same location,” Morris wrote in his report.

After he closed the case, department records show that Morris moved to another unit — though it’s not clear whether the change was voluntary.

Many of the top executives Morris interviewed have since left the Sheriff’s Department. Garrido is now retired, and the department said this month that “any and all” of the allegations he brought up in his lawsuit “were or are being fully investigated and addressed.”

Khasaempanth is still captain of the Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau.