Villanueva fails yet another stress test

When you're running for local office in Los Angeles County and get some national press and television coverage, you have to figure that, while readers and viewers in Tupelo and Hoboken may not be able to vote here, hey, a little wider recognition can't hurt.

Unless you're increasingly erratic incumbent Sheriff Alex Villanueva, that is, who is running for a second term just as first CBS News and then The New Yorker's Dana Goodyear produced damning indictments of the criminal deputygang culture Villanueva claims doesn't exist but that clearly is a rot at the core of one of the United States' largest lawenforcement agencies, to the peril of all Angelenos.

Goodyear's lengthy takedown, which includes in-depth interviews with the sheriff himself, says, “Some deputies are discouraged by what they see as the corruption of Villanueva's administration,” and quotes a retired deputy from the East Los Angeles station, where the infamous Banditos gang of uniformed deputies holds sway, as saying, “At East L.A., you've got a group of people there who need to be rooted out, and [Villanueva is] an executive who won't do it.”

The sheriff nominally acts concerned about what he terms as deputy “subgroups,” pointing to legislation he supports against them. But that's just talk; what eight deputies who have sued their department say is that the Banditos gang “controls the East Los Angeles station like inmates running a prison yard.”

One brave deputy, Rosa Gonzalez, who got out of the East L.A. station with her dignity intact after refusing to bow to the gang that controls shifts and promotions there, says that if Villanueva gets reelected, “she fears the Banditos will have won.”

Late last month, former sheriff's Chief Matthew Burson testified to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission that when he was investigating an assault involving Banditos members, Villanueva's chief of staff directed him not to ask questions about the group. Villanueva and his undersheriff, Tim Murakami, defied subpoenas to appear, with the latter saying, “Testifying would be too stressful and create an adverse health risk,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

You know what's stressful to Angelenos? Having Villanueva as sheriff. Vote instead for former Long Beach Chief Robert Luna in November.