Oversight officials this month urged the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to disband a specialized bureau they say is silencing whistleblowers, protecting favored employees and downplaying misconduct in the upper ranks.
The job of the 83-person Risk Management Bureau is to help the Sheriff’s Department minimize its liability by avoiding accidents and defending against lawsuits. But the L.A. County Office of Inspector General’s latest report, released Feb. 20, describes a historically “flawed” bureau that became “inappropriately aggressive” under the prior sheriff and has not improved under the current one.
In one instance, the report said, the bureau appeared to retaliate against a whistleblowing deputy by wrongly reporting him to state oversight authorities for dishonesty, an accusation that could have caused him to lose his law enforcement certification permanently.
Yet, repeatedly, the bureau failed to report to state authorities allegations suggesting possible deputy gang membership — even after one deputy named names in court. And when former Sheriff Alex Villanueva and several top aides were caught on tape “lying to a reporter” about a photo-sharing scandal, the department failed to investigate at all, the report said.