Warning. This podcast contains explicit language in details acts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. Today in Los Angeles, it's the day after election day. Ballots across the county are being tallied up in one of the most watched police races in the United States, the campaign for Sheriff of Los Angeles County. Incumbent Sheriff alex Via Nueva's administration has spent the last four years caught up in scandal after scandal. He's faced calls from his own party to step down. We'll know soon what his fate is. He's being challenged by Robert Luna, the former chief of the Long Beach Police Department. Luna has the backing of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, the support of local officials Mineueva has openly clashed with and even investigated, and the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times. Many people think he won the race months ago. This is a tradition of violence, a history of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. This week, we're bringing you a special episode about the man who wants to be Sheriff, Robert Luna. Luna grew up in East Los Angeles and says that his first memories of the police were watching sheriff's deputies rough up people in his neighborhood. Despite his own hostile encounters with police officers, Luna went on to join the Long Beach Police Department in as a reserve police officer. He entered the police academy in April of n and went on to be promoted through every rank in the department. Luna became a member of executive staff under Chief Tom Bishop and went on to succeed Chief Jim McDonald as head of the Long Beach Police Department when McDonald won the race for sheriff in Luna was the first Latino chief in the department's history and was celebrated by local officials, but other officers of color were wary of Luna. Mark McGuire joined the Long Beach Police Department in and became a detective two years later. I was there for twenty four and a half years, and I've worked either for or around Robert Luna. He was my sergeant and gangs. He was my lieutenant at one time, he wasn't my commander. As he rose through the ranks, he was assigned to wherever I was assigned, and then he became my deputy chief, and then he became the chief. So we talked because there weren't a lot of minorities there. He had an open door policy, which is a good thing. And I would vent to him about the racism that I was experiencing, and he would do nothing about it. And I was really hurt when he ignored some of the things that I told him because he knew the truth. One incident changed Mark's relationship with Luna completely. There was one poster that I told Robert Luna about and it kind of set my career back. It was a poster of the tree, and on this tree were murder suspects that had been convicted of murder and they were either looking at life or death. And out of all of the pictures on the tree, there was one black man hanging by a noose from around his neck, and that was posted up in the homicide office. Mark says he reported the poster to Robert Luna. He told Luna he wanted to remain anonymous. The poster was placed in a way that when you walk down the hall, anybody could see it. I didn't want to be involved because I didn't want that stigma, being called a snitch or a rat or whatever. And he assured me that he wasn't going to involve me in it, but he did as soon as he saw it whenever he saw it. Later on, I think it was either that afternoon or the next day. I was called in to tell my story and then I was labeled. I was labeled, like I said, a rat, a snitch, a malcontent, and a troublemaker. When he outed me on the poster, I never really confided in him as often. Mark says receiving a negative label for calling out racism had a huge effect on his career inside of the department. I couldn't get jobs. I had to stay where I was. There was only a certain group of people that would work with or around me. But people knew that I would report discrimination or shenanigans. If you will, I will report it because that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be ethical as an officer, and that's what I did. Other black officers inside of the LBPD say they've had their own issues with Luna to Darren Neely has been a Long Beach Police officer for thirty seven years. Recently he had to go on light duty. I had a foot surgery and I had all intensive purposes of just retiring out. Well, they kept calling the doctor, and the doctor said, okay, I'm not releasing to go back and work like duty. And a little birdie had already told me, hey, listen, when you come in, you work like duty. Don't do like everybody else does. And when they just kind of come in, they sit there, they don't get involved. Darren began rotating from unit to unit every ninety days. He later had to have eye surgery, which limited the amount of time he could spend on the computer. I told him, I said, you know what, I can do some computer work, but I can't sit at the computer for long periods of time. Everywhere I went, the command staff said, hey, can we keep him here? And it came from Luna's office. No, he hasked to rotate out. My last assignment. They said, Chief Luna is going to assign you to the redaction detail. But remember I can't do the computer work all day long. Well, where they send me. They put me at a desk They had two big screens in it, and they said, well, we want you to do redactions on officer involved shootings, three thousand pages, four hundred pictures, and I'm doing three or forties and I'm I'm just I'm putting in work right, and I wanted to get these cases solved. I wanted to get these cases redacted so that they could go out. So I came in early one morning and I'm sitting there and I'm doing these redactions and my head turning. Something was wrong, but Darren kept pushing. As he did, his symptoms got worse. I'm on my way home, going down the freeway, and I noticed that I was kind of fighting the steering. I put my hand up over my left eye. My right eye is black. I can't see out of my right eye. I go to my doctor and the doctor goes, yeah, you strained it. You you spent too much time at the computer. And I went, okay, I food my workman's comp case. They go, okay, Well, the doctor says he can come back to work with no more computer work. Well, Luna's office came out and said if he can't do computer work, we don't have a position for a Quincy Miles went through the academy and for the Long Beach Police department for the first time in two thousand five. He says he immediately started encountering racism. Black recruits were always seeing as bad as writing, regardless of their skill set. So this thing is like generational. One thing I kind of learned in podcast. Most of us had college degrees, most of the whites had high school diplomas. It's almost like we had to come in almost above the expectations. You're gonna get labeled in Long Beach if you're black, either you're gonna be confrontational, militant, or you can't read or write. One of my classmates had a degree in journalism. You can't tell me you can't write a police report at Long Beach. Most of the racists had the stronger personality. They had the alphameric personality. So that's who dominated the meetings, the hiring, the process. If the strongest personality is a bigot, that's what you're gonna get. When Quincy became a police officer and went out on patrol, he says, the displays of racism became even more blatant. Just tell you how openly racist you know the department could be. And I heard this from a dispatcher and senior officers. They used to clear calls over the radio anytime, like altercations with black people, T and D typical new deals over the radio. Openly. Besides the systemic racism, Mark and Darren alleged that the Long Beach Police Department had its own issues with a white supremacist gang inside its ranks, the North Town Rangers. I am familiar with them, white supremacists, police officers who brutalized people of color in the community. In North Long Beach. There were group officers who predominantly worked together and they were not people of color, and they were accused of doing some ethical things and it became this Northtown Rangers, things like a gang type deal. Robert Luna said at a recent debate that the gang was eradicated and as a sergeant, there's only so much he could do. But Mark believes Luna should have done more to get rid of the gang. He was a sergeant at the time. During the debate he said they were eradicated. They were not. They were transferred to other parts of the city. None of them were fired, and some of them promoted. The Luna for Share of campaign sent us a statement about these criticisms, which I'll read. In terms of these comments, Chief Luna addressed many of them in his interview on this podcast. We might as well point out that, besides the incumbent sheriff, the most vocal lunar critics during the campaign are three disgruntled former Long Beach police officers. Over the last two months, these former officers have become Alex Viennuevas quote running mates, going everywhere with the sheriff, who does not seem to mind that these former officers are not telling the truth. Former officer Quincy Miles was terminated by the Long Beach Police Department for numerous violations, including but not limited to inexcusable neglect of duty for sleeping in his police vehicle while on duty while a police officer was shot, dishonesty and subordination, failing to file reports in a timely manner, and a domestic violence dispute. Miles also lost his lawsuit claiming discrimination, with the jury returning a verdict in favor of the City of Long Beach and requiring the former officer to pay attorney's cost to the city. Former officer Mark McGuire had a decor aided career as a homicide detective. In his deposition, he stated under oath that the despicable Wren family tree poster was the only racially offensive material he ever saw at the Long Beach Police Department. He also stated in his deposition testimony under oath that when he complained to Robert Luna, who was a sergeant back in, about the poster, Luna said he would take care of it and did. In the deposition, McGuire was asked, quote, what did Luna say. McGuire answered, quote, he told me he would take care of it. The lawyer asked, quote and did he? And McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote okay. And so by the next day when you came to work, it was gone. McGuire answered, quote yes. And the lawyer asked, quote, there was an i A investigation on it. McGuire answered quote yes. Under oath, wire has a different story than he has today, and it should be noted that this happened more than years ago, when Luna had no leadership position in the department. He was only a sergeant. He had no authority over i A investigations or discipline. He was not responsible for what happened in the investigation or the aftermath. But he reported it as he said he would and started the investigation of this clearly racist and disgusting poster. Local media doesn't do a great job of covering police agencies here in l A County, but luckily there are several small nonprofit news rooms that are doing the work. My name is Kevin Fluds. I am the co founder of fourth dot org, where a not for profit, worker owned media outlet and Long Beach we published investigative reporting and community media as well as we're also a platform for local artists. Kevin has done a lot of reporting on Robert Luna and the Long Beach Police Department. Like the l A Sheriff's Department, there's a long history of misconduct, abuse, and racism. They're dating back for generations. There is a major lack of accountability um at the LBPD, lack of transparency, it's it's a major theme of the LBPD during the time that I've been reporting on them. Kevin and his colleagues found that the Long Beach Police Department has struggled to recruit black officers. Long Beach is a city has a black population of twelve So if you look at data on the makeup of of the of store officers in the lb p D, it's it's white, and then you have about Hispanic and black officers only make up five two percent, and that is at odd with the demographics of the city. That's part of a legacy of white supremacist ideology in the Long Beach Police Department. Is history of policing is inseparable from the desire of white people in the wealthy to dominate everyone else. I wrote a peace documenting the kkks and filtration of the Long Beach Police Department in the first half of the twentieth century and how in n there were several officers in KKK GARB that tortured three black teenagers on the outskirts of town. So we see this kind of racism repeating itself today. Earlier this year, Michael Colbert, the only black person to ever hold a pilot position with the LBPDS Air Support Division, filed a lawsuit against the city. Kevin is covering the lawsuit for fourth We co published this with Knock l a black LBPD officer who had retired who was suing the department and was alleging that there was workplace discrimination. Her aspment retaliation who's subjected to racial slurs. We also alleged at it was just all kinds of racist and demeaning acts by his co workers throughout a thirty year career at the lb p D. Those allocations indicate that there's widespread racism in the workplace at the lb PD, So it's not only pointed outwards, it's also pointed inwards. The LBPD only promoted a black woman beyond the rank of sergeant this year, the first in one hundred and thirty four years. Darren Neely, who has been on the department for thirty seven years, says Robert Luna could have done more to retain and promote black women. Every African American female it was on that police department after either recruited. I even took some amount and train with a whole group of people so that they could do the physical abilities and the oral interviews. That's how they all got hired. He could have taken it to the next level and helped them promote through the system. He didn't because it wasn't important to him and it wasn't important to the people that he had put in police. In Long Beach police killed twenty seven people between and a black person was over three times more likely to be killed by cops than a white person, according to Police scorecard dot org. We compiled data on Long Beach officers who are named in civil rights lawsuits, and we found that the LBPD almost never fires officers involved in killing or injuring civilians, and that's even after a civil jury finds that an officer violated a person's rights. And we also found that the LVPD promoted at least a dozen officers who were involved in the acts of police brutality between two thousand seven and two thousand eighteen, which results are in civil litigation. If you asked Luna, he'll tell you that the incidents of excessive force have been trending down, and this is something that he would tell the city council during presentations. But if you look at the actual raw numbers, which were obtained through public records request, there's almost the thirty increase in use of force incidents between two thousand sixteen and two thousand nineteen, which is right in the middle of Luna's tenure. I spoke with Robert Luna about this, which you'll hear later. He says that lbp D was able to reduce shootings by fifty they went up again and now the reductions are at The Long Beach Police Department has also faced criticism for its use of an outdated discriminatory practice to entrap and arrest gay men. These are operations where an undercover officer would target places that were frequented by gay men and try to bait them into performing sex acts. And this was ruled um as a serminatory and constitutional, mainly because police only went after gay men when lud conduct complaints are just as common for for heterosexual people. This is part of a long legacy of what's known as vice crimes, which you know, which gives pers description should basically become morality police. And while this is going on for over a hundred years, Luna allowed these arrests to go on for the first year and a half of his tenure as chief before the judge ruled that they were unconstitutional. He said that the language police was seeking to quote portray homosexual men a sexual deviance and pedophiles and quote, and neither the city nor Luna has ever apologized for these arrests, and arrest like that can have long term consequences to someone's life. These arrests can be very damaging to people. You know, they imposed criminal records on gay men and this could lead to them being outed. This could lead to them being ostracized from the community, to having a mental health crisis, to being fired from a job, and even making it very difficult to find future employment. Luna spoke to me in depth about this. He says this incident was a huge quote learning lesson. Operations carried out by the LBPD were also shrouded in some amount of secrecy. Under Chief Jim McDonald, who went on to be the Sheriff of l A County. Just before Viennueva, the department began using a service called Tiger Text. Tiger Text was used between police officers to communicate. It was a self deleting app and you know that raises issues of again transparency because those messages can't be retrieved when there is some kind of lawsuit that comes up. I believe about a hundred police personnel had access to that app. It would delete the messages after five days. Their attorneys that we spoke to who said that those messages being deleted were critical evidence that could be used and say like an officer involve shooting case. When Luna spoke about this, I'm believing he was quoted in the l A Times saying something like that the allegations that those messages could not be describable was false and that there was no intention the departments of destroy evidence. Critical evidence was destroyed, though, in the days before a new state transparency law came online. Senate Bill fourteen twenty one, or s B four made police records relating to officer use of force incidents, sexual assault, and acts of dishonesty accessible under the California Public Records Act. Ahead of January one, nineteen, many police departments destroyed their records dating back about twenty years. The Long Beach Police Department was one of them. Later on, we did a follow up where we were able to obtain some internal emails that police press were circulating right before se came online, and it showed that Luna and some other police press or circulating these messages from outside attorneys that were advising them to shred records ahead of the of the new law. And I want to clear like there's there isn't an instance in those emails where Luna gives an order to destroy records or anything like that, but it kind of just speaks of of like the messaging that that they were passing back and forth and the type of advice that police officers get from these law firms that they often contract with. Prior to SB four going into effect, there were folks who put flyers around the parks basically decrying this, this destruction of records, and there was some emails that were being passed around police, you know, calling whoever put these flyers up as suspects. So this is the type of like very reactionary, antagonistic attitude that the police have to any anybody who's critical of the police. I mean, even these fokespeople for the police have been pretty antagonistic towards us when we write stories that are critical. In his investigations, Kevin says he's found lots of issues with the lbpds use of surveillance technology. The LBPDS use of it is that they didn't have any policies around it, and they were buying this equipment without the public really knowing. It wouldn't go through the city council. It would just be purchased either with federal grants or through other means, and it didn't need to be reported publicly. Last year, Fourth discovered that the Long Beach Police Department was sharing data captured by its automatic license plate readers with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agencies. These automatic license plate readers, they're often mounted on police vehicles as well as traffic signal polls, and they're capable of indiscriminately capturing license plate numbers that are rate of something like eighteen hundred a minute. So with this data, police are able to track a person's whereabouts, their travel patterns, and where they live, where they work, where they go to the doctor. That's super, super invasive. Our investigation found that the LBPD was sharing this data not only with federal immigration authorities, but with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country. In particular, Yes, sharing that data with with immigration authorities was completely in violation of the sanctuary policies the local and the state. Luna told me that it's important to have policies about surveillance technology in place, otherwise it can lead to quote big trouble. Kevin and his colleagues at Fourth also obtained evidence of the Long Beach Police Department running thousands of facial recognition searches on people associated with protests against police brutality. We noticed that there was a big spike in the use of this technology around the time of the George Floyd protests. Directly after them. We later learned that the police department had put together this looting task Force which was was submitting these queries to a facial recognition database that's run by the Sheriff's department. Actually, this database is basically made up of mug shots um that go back I believe to the mid ninety nineties, and the way that they would record these queries would be by using very vague terms things like p D protest. And this doesn't allow anybody to then audit these searches and his facial recognition database to be able to see if the police were actually using this within constitutional bounds, which is a big problem. The fact that they were using this label p D protests really kind of points to this idea that they were I would say, this attitude that they had around the protests, they were missing the point of the whole protest. Kevin and Fourth documented injuries inflicted by lbp D officers on protesters, ranging from bruises to a severed finger. Victims included a teen author, a doctor, and KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman Lopez, who had his neck ripped open by a less lethal projectile, which are usually bean backgrounds, rubber bullets, or pepper balls. The round was fired by police during protests for George Floyd. Then Chief Robert Luna was called before the Long Beach City Council to explain what happened. His justification was that people had begun to throw rocks and bottles and things like that. But we need look at pictures of the protests. You see that the officers were, you know, in body armor, they had um I believe they brought out some some armored vehicles. Brocks and bottles weren't exactly going to you know, defeat a militarized police force. So yeah, I would say it was it was very very little tolerance for protesters when it comes to criticizing the police department. The Long Beach Police Department had no shortage of issues while under Chief Robert Luna's command. After the break, he sits down with me for an interview. I met with former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna over zoom three weeks before the election. He says it's time to vote Alex be in a way about out. It's time for a change. I want to give the l A County Sheriff's Department back to the community where it belongs. There are wonderful men and women who work there. I think you've talked to many of them. But changes do need to be made and I want I when I'm campaigning, this is what I tell people. We need a sheriff who has integrity. Uh. My body of work shows that I have integrity. Uh. Two, we need a sheriff who holds himself and his employees accountable. I have done that over and over. That's not happening right now with the sheriff's department. We need a sheriff who collaborates. Um. Uh. It is very important that the sheriff can get along or at least, let me just say, work with the board of supervisors, the inspector general civilian oversight. Um. We cannot have this us versus them mentality anymore. Uh. It is impacting our public safety. Uh to each and every one of our families. And then just real quick, because I didn't get a chance to do this. If you hear it in my tone of voice and my approach. It really doesn't always come back to my professional experience. It comes back to my personal experience. You're listening to a man who wanted to be a police officer from an early age, growing up an unincorporated Los Angeles. My father, uh migrated here from Mexico. Seventh grade education. He was a janitor. My mom was born in Modesto, but only because she was part of a a farm, a migrant farm family from Mitun, Mexico. UH. Third grade education and sold food on the streets. Those are my humble beginnings. I ended up face first on the hood of a police car just because I was riding a bike. You don't forget those things. And so when I answer questions, it's not just my professional experience, it is my personal experiences. I feel it. I want to be on the right side of history, and I sure hope I earned your vote. You have to vote if you want change. You just cannot leave that box unchecked. If you do, can you imagine for more years of alex Vanueva. We cannot have that, Uh, We cannot have that. We need change and we need it now. So thank you for having me on your show, and thank you for what you do, and you know what, God willing. If I get elected, I expect you to keep me in check. I have no doubt you can do that. This podcast is an investigation of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. What is your plan to root out and prevent the further spread of deputy gangs? So I want to start off with several weeks ago, I was in a debate with Alex Mianoueva and uh, this is this was televised so people can go back and listen to it. But he was asked about deputy gangs and he made a statement similar to this, and he says, deputy gangs are like a unicorn. It's something everybody talks about, but it doesn't exist. And and that kind of puts an exclamation point on how he's been handling this issue. For me, I'm a complete contrast. Uh. I do believe that they do exist. Uh. And the first step to making sure you resolve an issue is to accept the fact that they do exist. So that's step one, coming in and making sure that everybody knows their unacceptable um, both inside the department and outside the department. UM. Then the next thing that has to happen is you have to set a standard of conduct UM. And what I mean by that is for me through principal leadership and to further explain that it goes back to the code of Ethics and law enforcement. We took an oath, We raised our right hand and we said we were going to serve our community. UH no matter who they are, how much money they have, what color they are, UH those that's fundamental to our service. And we have to remind everybody from the time we recruit, to hire, to train, to promote UH that this is the oath that we took and gangs talking about gangs and policing in the same sentence absolutely not not acceptable, meaning that the concept of of that even UH us thinking about this is not acceptable. Next is we have to make sure that there are strict policies and policy. Something in writing that isn't worth much unless we're following it up with very good training, consistent follow up training and accountability. So for me, accountability means holding the individual deputies accountable who are involved in this level of misconduct, and they're supervisors. If you have sergeants, lieutenants and above who may be looking the other way that they should not be supervisors or managers. They may should maybe not even be on the department because that's our stock gap to make sure this doesn't happen. UM. Next for me is what I call federal and state intervention, is that we need to make sure that we bring in the FBI, federal d o J, state d o J and we have to open up every drawer, pull back every curtain and be open about the information that we have UM and then that has to be reported out. And by the way, that does include co operating with civilian oversight. UH. In my wildest dreams, I could never live in a world where I would get subpoenut as the sheriff UH to come in and testify, whether it's on deputy gangs or any other issue. And I'm not I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna be there. That's insane. I expect you to follow the rules. I have to lead by example not only for our community, but each and every one of our employees that I want them UH to live within the parameters of the law. That becomes very very important as well. UM. I do just I want to touch on because it says a long answer, But it's very important is that I do believe that UH mental health care comes into play here, and let me explain, mental health care for me in the community is very, very important. But I also believe that some of this misconduct may be untreated trauma where employees that are involved in this activity may be acting out and it's not acceptable. But what are we doing to make sure that employees that are have been traumatized because it's a tough job, it's one of the toughest jobs out there, that we're providing adequate mental health care for them and not only are sore and employees, but are professional staff and their families. Because if we integrated into our disciplinary process, I want to make it clear you're involved in significant misconduct, illegal activity, unethical behavior, you don't deserve to wear a badge. But if there's something that falls below that, why not include mental health care as part of some kind of a recovery So then we can not only UH do better at recruiting employees, but retaining them as well because they see that we're approaching this a different way, and then in turn, people start treating our community members are they start treating our community better and at the end of the day. I think that's what it's all about. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has an issue with use of force UM. Right now, there is a viral video circulating of a young man being beaten by two deputy sheriffs in Englewood, UM. Already this year, thirteen people have been shot as of this recording. Many victims of that have shared about seeing the deputies who heard or killed their loved ones around their neighborhood, and many of those same deputies, under current policy, rarely faced discipline or criminal charges for their actions. What are your policies on what should happen to officers or excuse me, to deputies involved in brutal assaults or fatal shootings. Well, first of all, UH, any use of force has to be taking has to be taken very serious because, UH, when you see a use of force, whether it's on video or it's not. And I always go back and talk about, uh force that eye witness as a young boy growing up in an unincorporated East Los Angeles, I never forgot about that that's traumatizing. So we have to acknowledge that there's there's a lot of pain involved on all sides. UH, so that becomes very important. So because I haven't worked in the sheriff's apartment, what I could relate to you is my experiences specifically as the chief of police in Long Beach and law enforcement has evolved over the last several years, and UH we were able to, I was able to, I believe, transform the Long Beach Police Department in the way UH we did our policy, in the way we did our training UH and the way we held UH individual employees accountable. And because we did that, we were able to reduce our officer involved shootings by thirty three reduce our use as of force by twenty nine percent, and our citizen complaints by And the way we did that is first you look at the policy. And for me, I always wanted to make sure and this was because I don't know if you know this about me, but I was elected and re elected to the executive board of the Major City Chiefs Association. I was a Western region representative. That put me at the table with other police chiefs and sheriff's of the seventy nine largest departments in the US and Canada. There we discussed all the current issues involving law enforcement, including the use of force, deadly force or UH force below that. And so we were working on UM very updated UH policies. And because I was at that table, we were able to bring that right back to Long each and compare our policies to make sure they not only met national standards, but they exceeded them. So with that experience, bringing that back and really having a mindset of UH self reflection and who we are, one of the things I did is we started our Office of Constitutional Policing and Long Beach and that's something I would like to do in the Sheriff's Department and what that office does I had. I hired UH an attorney who was actually a defense attorney in New York for New York p d um uh I say she worked out of New York, I shouldn't say for the police department because she was a defense attorney. And um what she did for us is she was bringing up she was looking at our policies, she was looking at our training and researching best practices and bringing them in. What we were also doing is teaming up with academic institutions. And one of my goal was to make sure that we were not thinking insular that we had outside eyes looking at us and we weren't afraid to accept outside input. Um. And I'm I started to mention this, but I'm almost talking too fast here, got ahead of myself. Part of the the Office of Constitutional Responsibility was to put together a community advisory board of a very diverse group of community members that would come in and the first policy they started to look at and review was our use of force policy. Uh. It was that kind of an approach, UH that had us looking at business differently. Now was it a culture shock uh to command staff and our officers and our labor. It was, But you know what, we had really good people and it takes good leadership and there is some back and forth, but at the end of the day, we have to remind each other that we served this munity. They are our bosses. And yes, you know there's been that little black box concept and law enforcement that uh, we do have to modify and change as time goes on. But what I'm explaining to you is that it's evolving. It's evolving, and it has to happen at the Sheriff's department. We have to evolve. It's two. We cannot be doing the same things we did before. So let me give you one last example. We're talking about uses of force and reducing them. So for example, whether you're talking about this viral video or any other videos, you break that down into three pieces. The first piece is the pre use of force conduct is was the approach by the officers or deputies legal? Why did they approach in the first place? So we look at that aspect. Was it tactically sound, where their tactics contributing to the use of force. Those are the things that we looked at in Long Beach and it really started changing the mindset that you know what, we are going to pay attention to tactics. Tactics do matter, and if your tactics are way out of bounds, then that you s of force uh could not should not be in policy. Those are the kind of things, the hard questions we have to ask ourselves. Then you look at the use of force itself an objective review. Is it something that you're using to control an individual or are you trying to punish them. If you're trying to control, that could be within policy depending on the circumstances. If you're trying to punish, that is absolutely unlawful. And to your point, UH, those are the kind of things that you know, we have to bring to bear UH to make sure that at the end of the day, things are being done UH constitutionally legal and and correctly. Then you have the post UH use of force review. UH. Did we properly handle the individual that we use force on? UH? If you know, God forbid, they need medical care? UH? Are we rendering first aid UH CPR if necessary, getting the paramedics there as quickly as possible, UH, and making sure that we're doing everything around the scene to make sure we get the appropriate witnesses UH. And and UH investigators whether it's criminal investigation or administrative investigation or the d A if they're involved in the use of force. In the past, the Sheriff's Department has participated in programs where it results in donations of stuff like military equipment, surveillance equipment surveillance programs. What is your stance on the department's continued participation in those programs and do you think that the Sheriff's Apartment should accept additional weaponry, vehicles other gear from these programs. I'm not familiar with what the Sheriff's Department does rank now but again I can relay it to my experiences in Long Beach. Uh, and I can tell you that we evolved, uh two more of what you're saying now, because at one time, I think most of US police departments and sheriff's departments may have been taking equipment from the military. Uh and uh what I ended up doing in Long Beach. And and please look at Long Beach because we have a port, so I know like some of the things we took at the end were like trailers uh to tow our police boats that were used to patrol the water site and Long Beach. But then over time, uh years back, we had taken some military equipment. As a matter of fact, at one point we ended up giving some back because we had to really look at our policies about what would we accept and why. So what we did in our department is we had a somebody at the rank of deputy chief who would review the request. And there were plenty of requests and if they didn't fit our needs, our community needs, then uh, we weren't not going to use them. Obviously, you have to find a balance between military style equipment and what we may need uh to properly do our jobs. So when you're talking about, for example, surveillance equipment, uh, is it something that is uh? And I learned this the hard way as the chief and Long Beach. Do you have a policy? Uh? Is it? Um? Uh? Is it being audited? Are we doing things the right way? Because I'm telling you right now you can get yourself in big trouble when you don't have good audit systems in place to manage those things. In Long Beach, the police killed twenty seven people between and police scorecard found that black people were over three times more likely to be stopped by cops than a white person. Um. What are your thoughts on those statistics? And how will you approach the black community um? And cultivate that relationship should you be elected sheriff. Regarding the information, you never ignore it. Uh. It's information that's out there and you've got to listen to it. Uh. And I believe in a healthy skepticism of law enforcement. You know, I used to tell our recruits and our officers and when people got promoted, that we have one of the only jobs where we have the authority to take somebody's property, liberty, and life away. And UH, if you cannot accept the fact that you're gonna be second guest, Um, then you don't belong in this business. Uh. It's a tough job, and I have so much respect for the people who do it. So that's my overwriting, uh towards any numbers, UM, and I I am somewhat familiar. I haven't looked at the scorecard information lately, but I can tell you this that over time, if you look at our statistics and Long Beach p D. I said it earlier, we reduced our officer involves shootings. Uh. At the end of I want to say it was I had a fifty percent reduction. Um it did go up to in twenty one, so now it's a thirty three reduction. Uh. The uses of force had dropped. So even though I don't ignore the information, UH, it doesn't give us credit for us transforming. Our policies are training and accountability to improve because you have to start somewhere, and we did improve. And at the end of the day, my goal, and some people may say it's unrealistic, is that that number of killing somebody is zero. Uh, you know, having one is too many, specifically if they're your family members. In relations to our African American or Black community in Long Beach. UM. I had an extraordinary relationship with many. UH. Was it perfect with everybody? No? It wasn't. I wish it could have been. I wanted to be perfect. UM. But you know what, I never closed the door to anybody, even if they disagreed with me or I disagreed with them. I was willing to listen. And that's the contrast between me and my opponent right now, that that that is a big difference. But I had it an amazing relationship UH with the UH, the Long Beach branch of the n A c P. I was often at community events at night on weekends, contributing to Christmas. I was so proud and and I there's so many people who can come forward UH and talk about those relationships um. UH the Minister's Alliance in Long Beach, which are mostly African American ministers, I work hand in hand with them, UH. And I've got to say, I've got to get that. Give them credit because they worked with me and advising me on how the community felt and what was important to reduce these numbers. So as you can see, UM, facing adversity, you have to do that. As a sheriff, you have to do that as a police chief. But you have to accept responsibility UH for the action, your own actions and the actions of your employees, because making excuses and blaming other people are not going to work, especially for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. And please remember officer involved shootings between two thousand and fifteen and UE went down, UM and UH citizen complaints went down actually thirty percent between that same time period. For the first year and a half of your ten year as chief and Long Beach, UM, there was a decades old practice of entrapping game and for lewd conduct charges UM that was carried out. There were police staying operations UM and they were only stopped after an l A Superior Court judge called these practices out as discriminatory in the Long Beach Police Department still hasn't apologized for these things. Is that something that you regret during your tenure as chief? You know what, it was a huge learning lesson for me, And it goes back to what you think is right. One day, all of a sudden, UH, reality strikes you and you have to I tell people one of my keys to success is to listen, learn and love and the l that sounds weird coming from a police official, but this is a perfect example. Uh, we had a sting going on because we had complaints in a public restroom that was in a park across the street from Wilson High School in Long Beach at Recreation Park. And when we typically had complaints, the vice officers would do these things and they were being done for years, and you almost think, Okay, this is the way we handle this. But then the superior court judge issues the decision and at first, you know, you almost have a tendency to almost get defensive. Wait a minute, we're just doing our job. But one of the the advantages I had in Long Beach is I had an amazing relationship. I keep by using the word amazing because I was very immersed in our community, with our LGBTQ community, specifically are l g b t Q Center. And trust me, when they got wind of this, they were in my face. They were like, what the heck are you doing? Why would you do this? And it was like, wait a minute, We're just doing our job. But what I started to realize and what I learned is that when they were asking me questions like this one, they're going, wait a minute, if you're making arrest of a gay man having sex with another gay man, how many arrests are you making for a heterosexual man having sex with a heterosexual woman on the beach? And you start thinking, wait a minute, maybe we've been approaching this a whole different way. That was like a lightbulb moment to think, you know what, let's get our l g b t Q center involved, And from now on they helped us reform our policy and we start looking at a different way of approaching these complaints, which it starts off with education and then if education doesn't work, we use our partners at lgbt Q to help us get the word out uh and help us and to my knowledge, and I don't think we've made we didn't have any more stings after that. I don't think we've made any arrest. We've approached it completely different. And my relationship with our lgbt Q center actually was enhanced because we ran across some adversity. UH, we listened to each other. We changed it for the betterment of our community, because we have a very large LGBTQ community and Long Beach and that was a lesson learned huge lesson learned. UH. And and this is the experience I'm bringing to the Sheriff's department. You have UH an executive who has faced adversity, never ran away from it. UH engaged it. I was very honest about it. And here this I accepted responsive ability for it. It's like, yeah, we did it, and you know what, we learned our lessons. We're not doing this anymore. And that has happened over and over UH. And that's what I believe. The change we need in the Sheriff's apartment today is to have a leader who accepts responsibility, is willing to listen to their community, work with their community, and make the necessary changes. Now, when you you ask about an apology, the detectives there thought they were doing their job. And this is where it gets a little strange for me. A lot of times we have to look at our management practices. I just described what a management practice was. We're sending our detectives out to do this work. They thought they were doing a good job. It's management that had to change the way we are doing things, and we did. And that happens a lot, especially UM when you have allegations of like racial profilely because a lot of times we get pressured, hey, stop the shooting, stop this, stop that, and then we have our death. But he's our officers stopping our community members. What are we really asking them to do. We have to be smarter, We have to be strategic and take accountability for our actions and the actions of our employees. And that is very, very very critical. And um, just so all of the your listeners are aware, my Mayor Robert Garcia, who is gay. Um, he he endorsed me for this race. He is one of the uh individuals I went to as a mentor when we were going through this about Hey, how do we turn this around. It's our sitting let's make a difference. So the LGBTQ community and Long Beach does support me, and we went through some growing pains, but this is what you need to go through as a family. Right. The ballots are still being counted and the fate of the sheriff's race lies in the voters hands. Soon we'll know who will be head of the department. A man who says depp D gangs don't exist, appears to be using his position for political gain and to five subpoenas or a chief with his own baggage, eager to restore normalcy to the Sheriff's Department. Only time and Paul Workers will tell, I used to alone, did a whole hood. No, fuck the police, I'm a fucking trophy. You've been listening to a tradition of violence. The history of deputy gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hosted an executive produced by series Castle music by Yellow Hill and Steels. For breaking news and updates and deputy gangs, follow at l s D Gangs on social media. The support series is reporting and for exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the l s D Gangs Patriots seven