I'm not seeing much action on police reform on the local, state or federal levels, hope that changes. A new bill in the CA legislature attempts to rein in county sheriffs who have refused to cooperate with county inspectors general.
There seems to be no low to which sheriffs in California won’t stoop to fight off even a modicum of oversight.
The latest example, of course, comes from L.A. County’s very own Alex Villanueva. Apparently irked by Supervisor Hilda Solis, who recently dared to point out the obvious, saying that law enforcement engages in clear patterns of race-based brutality, the sheriff questioned whether she was trying to create distrust between his department and the community. Never mind that one of his deputies shot a Latino teenager, Andres Guardado, five times in the back last month and the sheriff is refusing to release any information.
“I don’t know,” Villanueva said of Solis, streaming live on Facebook. “Are you trying to earn the title of a La Malinche? Is that what it is?” A “La Malinche”? SERIOUSLY?! You are calling a county supervisor a TRAITOR?
Because sitting on deck in the California Legislature, which returned to session this week, is AB 1185. Authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), it would let counties establish an oversight board or an office of inspector general, and then give them true investigatory powers with the ability to issue subpoenas. Witnesses, including deputies, could be called to testify and sheriff’s departments would have to turn over documents. In short, AB 1185 would mean that sheriffs can no longer just blow off outside oversight anytime they see fit. And in counties, such as L.A., where an oversight board and inspector general’s office already exist and have subpoena power, it would bolster the authority of both.
“We’re saying that the sheriff needs to respect that,” McCarty said. “He can’t ignore information requests.” Because that’s exactly what has been happening.
In an even more ridiculous stunt, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones locked the county’s then-inspector general, Rick Braziel out of his department, revoking all access to records and personnel and effectively bringing all independent investigations to a halt. The reason? Because the inspector general wrote a report that criticized deputies for engaging in a foot chase with a mentally ill Black man, Mikel McIntyre, and shooting wildly amid traffic on a freeway until they killed him. In that case, the Board of Supervisors felt powerless to do just about anything to force the sheriff to comply.
That also was the case for the supervisors in rural Trinity County in 2018, when then-Sheriff Bruce Haney moved six hours away to Oregon and stopped coming to work — while continuing to collect his salary and benefits, of course — because he got mad over the way the board wanted to enforce cannabis regulations.
Elected sheriffs, whose powers come from the California Constitution, aren’t like police chiefs, who are appointed and take direction from mayors, city councils and city managers.
It’s this difference, and that of cities being more liberal and counties being more conservative, that has played out in reform efforts up until now. While sheriffs, by and large, have resisted calls for more transparency and accountability, dragging their feet on things such as body cameras, police departments across the state have generally moved faster to adopt such tools and change their policies to meet the needs of the moment.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -oversight
Democrats in the CA legislature have a history of wimping out when confronted by powerful law enforcement leaders and police unions. They're just like law and order Republicans who back the badge every time. The two most prominent bad acting sheriffs are in blue metro areas, most sheriffs in CA work with their county boards.
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