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> The recent-former Sheriff Alex Villanueva won office in 2018 after campaigning as a reformer. But if Villanueva paid lip service to ending LASD’s gang culture
by dmix 4y ago
> The recent-former Sheriff Alex Villanueva won office in 2018 after campaigning as a reformer. But if Villanueva paid lip service to ending LASD’s gang culture, his hiring practices told a much different story. “Sheriff Villanueva promoted Timothy Murakami, a tattooed Caveman, to Undersheriff and Lawrence Del Mese, a tattooed Grim Reaper, to Chief of Staff,” the investigation reports. (The report states that both Villanueva and Murakami refused to participate in the investigation, while Del Mese testified he’d had his tattoos removed when joining the Villanueva regime, because they were a “liability” and “a bad look.”)
Listening to the LA sheriff debate was interesting:
https://youtu.be/C0BHOA1mMco https://youtu.be/C0BHOA1mMco
They both have connections to gangs? And one is denying they exist.
It makes you wonder if hiring for these top positions would be nearly impossible if you had to exclude gang-connected (directly or indirectly) because almost all of the seniority probably had some connection to it in order to get where they are.
Some organizations are so deeply rotted it's nearly impossible to do an internal clean up without getting rid of the bulk of the staff.
And I'm sure the difficulty of hiring new police officers since 2020 is a big excuse for keeping them, because who is going to replace them? You almost have to a) choose the less bad ones or b) spend a lot of time/money to import senior police from other states or counties.
- carlosjobim 4y agoThe solution is to bring in huge amounts of military police from other parts of the state or country, and arm the citizens. Street gangs and police gangs are analogous to having armed battalions of enemy soldiers in your city, that calls for a military response.
- vorpalhex 4y ago1. If you think gangs in police are bad, wait until you find out about gangs in the military 2. You probably almost certainly do not want martial law. 3. The military is not an intelligence organization.
- carlosjobim 4y agoYou can have military police without martial law. You can split investigative units from the enforcing/order keeping battalions, the military does not need to be involved in investigative work. Most lawyers could be suited for investigative police work. Gangs would have a hard time forming in battalions mixed by people from all over the country.
- vorpalhex 4y agoMost military gangs form on aircraft carriers. Lots of people + difficult day to day + natural divisions (everything is shift work, work is isolated to different areas). In any kind of deployment you will tend to see the same issues. MPs have jurisdictional limits. Their jurisdiction can only be expanded to broad civilians under martial law conditions (there are some weird exceptions here like posse comitatus but those remain exceptional). Nor do you want MPs broadly enforcing the law. Handcuffing someone to a radiator for a half day because they mouthed off is not aligned with a civilian led culture.
- dmix 4y agoLA country sheriffs are one of the largest police organizations in the country. Where would you ever find enough military police? Are they even trained for normal policing?
- carlosjobim 4y agoThey can hardly be larger than the army. Who else except the regular military could have the means to combat a militarized police force and militarized street gangs?
- isleyaardvark 4y agoIn the past this has been successfully dealt with the FBI investigating and imprisoning local cops to clean up police departments. Not the military and militias roaming the streets(?)
- voltaireodactyl 4y agoIf you are willing and have the time, I would appreciate any specific instance/cases of this you could point me towards. My current understanding is that the FBI often investigates such situations, but I am not familiar with any such cases that I would consider "successfully dealt with" -- rather, a few specific folks are hung out to dry, but it appears to me that the institutional issues always remain. Part of me wonder if issue may be (at least partially) a result of the fact that the FBI themselves are "cops", and it can be unsettling to prosecute illegal conduct in which you and your fellow officers also engage.
- baremetal 4y ago[flagged]