Latest / Your Leo Nation / LA Sheriff Race: Alex Villanueva with Mark Garrett
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to your Leo Nation, where we believe in and support the rule of law. And joining us today is our friend, the thirty third sheriff of Los Angeles County, Alex Vienawe. Alex, great to have you back, sir. speaker-1: great to see you, Mark. Hope all is well with you and family. speaker-0: Well, listen, life is good here in the free state of Florida. And I'm hoping that you will become the thirty fifth sheriff of Los Angeles County here, come in a couple of weeks. Folks, if you love guests like Sheriff Vinawayva, make sure you subscribe right now before we get into any more of the interview with the sheriff right now. Subscribe, like, share. We need the support. We appreciate it. So gonna dive right into it. I'm sure the race is close. competitive. It is Los Angeles County. So I tell you right now, there it's Halloween every day. mostly tricks and no treats. I don't know what's gonna happen on election day. I just I'm so glad to be out of California, but thank God people like you are still there fighting. So going back here to the primaries a couple of months, a few months ago, your opponent got what, about forty four percent of the vote, is that correct? speaker-1: Yes. speaker-0: Now, I know some people might might take that to say, well, you got forty four percent of the vote, but I think what people failed to realize is there were multiple people, first of all, in the race. So the rest of the vote was split up quite a bit. but give me your take on on that forty four percent, kind of what it means historically. Is it any indication of what's gonna happen on November third? speaker-1: Well I'll tell you this, in twenty eighteen my opponent got forty seven percent of the vote and he lost. That was McDonald. So forty four percent means a majority of voters do not want him returning as sheriff and they want change. And so I'm representing that other fifty six percent. speaker-0: Well, and that's the way that I see it. you know, and listen, I don't want to be I don't wanna be polyannic or dismissive of of you know, kind of reality. Certainly some of those people may go the other way, but the point is this is a competitive race. And we know that look, we know that morale right now with the sheriff's department is not where it should be, where it could be, and certainly not where it is when you were The sheriff, how do you plan to reverse that trend and really kind of pump in the enthusiasm back into the department, Sheriff? speaker-1: Well, I think one thing is just getting Luna out of office, that and of itself would be like a shot of adrenaline in the arm to the entire organization. Because with politicians, especially the ones that basically ushered in and shoehorned Luna the position four years ago, they had zero respect for the sheriff and the relationship between the sheriff and his own workforce. They could care less. They thought we'll just replace it with somebody else and nothing will happen. Well, no, there's a lot that happens and a lot has to do with trust, with institutional knowledge, respect for the culture of the organization. And instead of demonizing and defunding it, is actually supported. So now, four years later, their experiment blew up in their face massively. I mean, you have a record level exodus of employees, record vacancies, and record number of employees suicides, sixteen on his watch. These are numbers unheard of. And then When it impacts directly public safety, a hundred and fifty six in custody deaths, thirty one residents burned to death in their homes because the sheriff didn't know that he was in charge of evacuations. speaker-0: You know what? let me stop right there, because this hits home, no pun intended, because our our former home, our house in California was in that burn area, Eden Canyon. we lived a mile from the ignition point. And I heard about this. I I read about it. about the the evacuation and the lack of coordination. This is something really I think the public should sink seek their teeth into when you're talking about. Electing the head of the largest sheriff department in the country. What went wrong, you know, from your point of view with the evacuation? By the way, I want to lay the foundation here. Evacuation, it's one of the fundamental authorities that the sheriff in a particular county has. Nobody else. Not not the local law enforcement, you know, local PD, not the state, not the California. I have control of my old agent. It's the sheriff of that county. Who orders evacuations and coordinates with other agencies, but it coordinates the evacuations. What happened? What went wrong there, sir? speaker-1: I can tell you this. What went wrong was actually it was created first in April, March April of twenty twenty. And that's when the Board of Supervisor decided to strip the sheriff from the title of Director of Emergency Management. In speaker-0: Uh-huh. speaker-1: the title County CEO, basically a politician they appoint. Of course, this person had zero experience or knowledge in emergency management. And like a good politician, what do they do? They delegated it to a mid level staffer who's in charge of the office of emergency management. Now, this kid, you know, he sounds like Pee Wee Herman, so of we nicknamed him Pee Wee Herman. You know, mid level manager is probably not gonna tell the sheriff or the county fire or LEPD chief what to do. They just got zero respect. They don't even listen to it. And so when you had five days advanced notice from the National Weather Service of a particularly dangerous situation, nothing happened. That was the problem. They had the management by committee. They decided to sit on their hands and he figured out as the fires are burning sideways. And that's the worst time possible to figure out what to do. So there was no meeting of the mines, there was no evacuation plans, there was no prepositioning of assets, there was no Forward thinking, realize, hey, we already have a skeleton crew. We're gonna need a lot more bodies. Let's call up the National Guards here to replenish our our resources and protect the areas that are going to be evacuated for to prevent looting and all these things. None of that happened. It was all after the fact. People trying to play catch up, deputies on the ground in Altadena on their own, figuring out how to save as many lives as they could. And they did an admirable job, but it was all in the absence of true leadership. that comes from supposed to come from the sheriff. And just for that reason alone, I'll give you the story. Have you sir heard of Anthony Mitchell and Justin Mitchell? speaker-0: I don't believe so. Fill me in. speaker-1: This is a sad story coming from West Al Tadena. This is a father and son. They're both homebound, both wheelchair bound, cannot move without great assistance. The son's cerebral palsy, the DAC, I think double amputee. So as they saw the fire approaching, they got on the horn, called 911 three times. Each time they called, say, Hey, it's getting nearer. can you get us out of here? And they said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're on it. Helps on the way. Well the help never came. They burned to death in their own home. speaker-0: my god. speaker-1: And this is just appalling. For that reason alone, Luna should have just resigned and said, Hey, you know what, this is beyond my understanding or capabilities. But no, he's out there campaigning like he did a great job. It even talks about progress. We have progress. No. no, but we're regressing. speaker-0: Well, when you tell that story, it pardon me for interrupting, but you tell the story, it does refresh my memory. And I remember now about a father-son couple that died and and and now it rings a bell. I but I did not know about the nine one ones calls that were placed. But you know, for for yeah, three times. But for people for people I'll say people listening, for for people listening, for people watching, for people in Los Angeles County. And we can talk about we could talk about a hundred different topics. I I get that. But ultimately, this comes down to who is going to do a better job at providing public safety, safety for lives or human beings, and the protection of public property. This is the core, the core issue at heart when it comes to any law enforcement agency and any law enforcement professional, period. And when you're talking about Los Angeles County, 13 million people or so, give or take. I've been gone a few years, somewhere around there, largest agency, law largest sheriff department in the country, this should not be political. I know, I understand it's an elected office. I get that, but this should be about law enforcement and the core values And I'm telling you right now, my experience of living there during your t your t tenure as sheriff, this is exactly what you exhibited. Not so much, in my humble opinion, from the fella we have in office right now. I want to touch on this in in regards to you talked about a little bit a minute ago about about recruitment. Listen, no leader can can get their job done unless they have the right people as part of their team and enough people as part of their team. I think they're down about about two thousand deputies right now. Is that is that right, Sheriff? speaker-1: thousand. speaker-0: Two thousand. And is this just in during the tenure of the the current sheriff? speaker-1: This is I had ten thousand sworn in April of twenty twenty. And then while the board was recruiting Luna to challenge me and grooming him, they froze my ability to hire deputies, which obviously started a downward descent. When I left office there was a little bit over nine thousand. And since that point he's lost another thousand. So the department is shrinking every month and he cannot keep up with attrition. He's going the wrong way. And without your workforce trusting your leadership, you're simply not gonna recruit people to fill the ranks. It's just not happening. That is a cold hard truth that the board of supervisors and all the activists and all the politicians just simply refuse to acknowledge. speaker-0: This is serious stuff for so many reasons. immediate, obviously, immediate need for the deputies to be on patrol, to do proactive, proactive law enforcement, preventing crimes from happening, investigating crimes to do, catching the bad guys. These things have to happen now. But it's beyond that. And and I'm talking about just in in really less than two years from now, we're going to be hosting we, this country, but Los Angeles County, the Olympics. Now we know that they're the the LA City Olympics, but of course we understand that many venues are going to be outside of the city of Los Angeles, some in unincorporate areas that you are primarily primarily responsible for. Some in cities that do not have the resources. They're small cities that will need help from outside agencies, primarily the sheriff's department. I want you to talk to me about the the really the urgency for you to fill those ranks, Sheriff, in time for the Olympics and how you really how do you get people trained up enough in order to be effective just in in less than two years if you are elected hopefully in a couple of weeks? speaker-1: Well the I tell you this, it my goal is to hire two thousand deputies in two years. And we need to and you're right. I mean, just on the normal twenty four seven operations of patrol in the jail facilities, you need to have the full complement of deputies. And we're already seeing work. We have a massive amount of forced overtime. You have deputies falling asleep at the wheel, crashing and dying. I mean, the death toll the workers com claims that are happening and all this is tied to you know very repressive and toxic work environment. That's gotta change. And then you throw on top of that an emergency situation or a planned event, for example like the Olympics, you need a a full complement. You need a fully staffed department and beyond that, and we're it's kinda like if you want to take a plane from here to New York but you go west, you're not getting where you need to be going. That's exactly for the department right now. speaker-0: and of course it's not just the LA Sheriff's Department. LAPD is experiencing the you know the similar staffing shortages, obviously a law enforcement partner of yours, and another one of the biggest law enforcement agencies in the country, right in the county. I'm gonna pivot here a little bit because this seems to be it it's like the rash that won't it just won't go away. And I'm talking about This claim that that there are gangs rampant within the sheriff's department. And you got the whatever Neil this and you got the boys this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it seems, because we've had you on the show here a a number of times, but it just and and dispelling this rumor. But it it keeps popping up and it's popping up right now during the election. And I want you to address that again. What is the reality? surrounding these allegations that the Sheriff Department is is full of gang members within the ranks. speaker-1: The reality is a small group of trial attorneys started the narrative in the early nineties at Linwood Station and they started with the Vikings and that morphed into, my God, any station that has a a station logo, a tattoo, they must be gang members. And the politicians picked up on that and probably around twenty twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, after the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence, they picked up politicians and then the activists joined suit. And however, they understood that it was harmful for the elected sheriff. So when McDonald was in office, they really didn't want to touch or make a big issue of it. When I took office, all of a sudden it became a crisis overnight. my God, the sky is falling. Gangs run the sheriff's department. Gangs run the stations. They dictate who gets promoted. I mean it's kind of laughable when you think about it. And then you had Sacramento with Assembly Bill nine fifty eight, the one that identified what a law enforcement gang was. And you look at it, the key point is there has to be misconduct. So you had all these activists and you had Loyola Marymount and all these people came up with all these different studies and reports claiming that you know there's deputy gangs, you know, destroying the department, terrorizing the community, but you Take it apart, you realize there are anthologies of tattoos. That's about it. They cannot match the tattoo with a person who did something. You know, give me, you know, Deputy A did crime B and crime C. Okay, now we got somewhere to go. There was no somewhere to go. So I I equated them to unicorns. Everybody knows what they look like, but give me a unicorn. speaker-0: And no one's ever seen one person. Yeah. speaker-1: So we policies against unicorns, the state launched a policy against unicorn, Lewina campaigned to eradicate unicorns the department. Well he hasn't eradicated a single unicorn. He's still looking, but that's it's just a political game. speaker-0: Well you know what? sorry, go Go ahead and finish your point. speaker-1: I guarantee you the CHP has unit level tattoos within your rank and file of the C Any larger organization is spread out is gonna have unit level identifiers. It doesn't make anybody a gang member. Right it's a conduct that distinguishes someone who's ethical versus someone who does not belong in uniform. We took all the efforts and make sure that anyone who did not was not deserved form got terminated. In fact they terminated 165 people. But the activists and the politicians simply would refuse to acknowledge that. They say, they we have no evidence of that. This is Max Huntsman, inspecting general. I have no evidence of that. He was handed every single termination. speaker-0: It's and and and we're not going to we're not gonna spend time maybe maybe a couple of seconds because it's it's so tempting. But this whole thing that we're talking about the the the supervisors and and other bureaucrats, elected officials that for any number of reasons have it out for you. And so this is an example with with the the unicorns, with the gang members. It seems to rear its ugly head every time, just at the right moment, it becomes a public issue again. And it's it's clearly fed by people who are opposed to you being a sheriff's bottom line. b but you make a good point. Listen, by the way, you said that that the current sheriff hasn't found any of Listen, if deputies keep quitting at this rate, he'll have a few to sort through pretty soon. Should be easy to find him. But if the There's another thing that pops up here, and it's not just it's just not about the sheriff's race and and LA County. It seems kind of in California. You know, politicians are really promoting this downward trend, this crime trend. We we have, you know, less crime, we have fewer murders, we have fewer of this, we have fewer of that, things like that. And it I'll be honest with you, because we know what one can do with stats. So I'm not a hundred percent sure about exactly what reality is. But it seems to me there might be a little bit of fudging of the numbers, and those fudged numbers might be getting promoted pretty heavily right now in favor of somebody else maybe you're running against. is that fair to say? speaker-1: That is more than fair to say. I'll tell you this. Using the department's own statistics, it's on the website right now. We determined that arrests by the Sheriff's Department dropped a staggering forty nine point three percent Luna's first year in office. speaker-0: How wait, how say that again? How how much? speaker-1: Half 49.3% drop in arrests. They went from 107,000 my first year in office to like 57, 56,000 his first year in office, which is a huge number. And you can appreciate the statistics behind that. So how could you cut your arrests in half and claim crime is down? That doesn't make sense because I compare my first year versus his first year. Crime went up seventeen point five percent, all part one crimes. And now we're s it's starting to make sense. So you have people not reporting crime anymore. Right. speaker-0: That's the that's the part right there. Go right ahead. speaker-1: People have been disincentivized to report crime. Corporate America is telling retail outlets don't report a crime unless someone got hurt. Well, that means you're pissing off an awful lot of two elevens, four eighty sevens, four eighty eight's, and all that stuff. They're just not being recorded anymore. That is a big problem. So the reliability of crime statistics is probably at an all time low right now. Only two accounts are pretty reliable. That's homicide. Well, there's a dead body. Okay, that's you count one. And a stolen car, 'cause in sure, people tend to report their cars being stolen. Outside of those two numbers, if you start looking at everything else, no, it's a very different picture than the rosy one politicians are trying to send you. speaker-0: Well, I said that's the that's the impression that I get, and then it's the underreporting of crime that really skews those numbers. And and there's a lot more talk about that, but I it regarding that, but that that's you encapsulate it perfectly here. The numbers can be skewed, and of course the worst part is it's it's when those numbers start getting promoted and during election time, you know, in this case we have a we we're seeing a reduction in crime because, you know, this person's doing such a great job here. doesn't seem to be the reality, especially I didn't know that. I knew that there was a reduction in arrest when Luna took over, but I didn't know that it was darn near half, like you said. And that that's it's just it's impossible for both of those things to drive. 50% reduction in crime and a reduction in crime. I'm sorry, in arrest and a reduction in crime. Doesn't make any sense. Sheriff, I wanna finish up with this. What is, because you've been through this now. You you were there, you did four years. Of course, you have 36 years total in the sheriff's department, but you did four years as the boss, as the sheriff. What is, I'm I'm going to interview you, what what is your 30 or 60 or 180 day plan that you have in mind? What what and when what are your priorities when you get back in office? What are the things you want to fix and under what time frame? speaker-1: I'll tell you this. My first goal is to hire those two thousand deputies. So we're gonna have to basically clean house and restructure the machine, the apparatus that allowed us to hire eleven hundred deputies in one year in twenty nineteen. I'm gonna have to recreate that 'cause I know a lot of those parts have been basically wandered away and been unused. So we're gonna have to recreate that part of the operation. Hire that many people. We're also going to have to at the same time lower the workload of the remaining people that are working their tail off to where it's digestible and we're not killing our own people but overworking them. So we're gonna have to reduce the footprint as far as we can legally, lighten their load, so basically we don't lose more people than we're losing right now. And then the third thing is and that's probably that's within the first thirty days of those top two right there. We gotta speaker-0: Well, speaker-1: do both those things at the same time. lighten the load and that that actually convinces the workforce that we care about them and they're gonna start recruiting. This kind of a cycle it feeds itself those two things. We get new people, we got a bunch of people have already told me, hey if you come back, can I come back? And I'm like, hell yes, we'll take you back. Or they're waiting to apply when Luna leaves. That is a hard one the speaker-0: And that's a sad reality. speaker-1: difficult one. This is gonna take me probably a good ninety days plus. Is disentangle the independence of the Sheriff's Department from the clutches of the Board of Supervisors. Yes. Lona has pretty much surrendered his entire authority to the board and they're running the entire operation and destroying it, just like they did with probation. So we're gonna have to separate the two. maybe forceful, I don't know how, depending. And boy, this is there you go. And get back to the business of being independent, an important part of the checks and balances. between the different basically heads of government in the county level. speaker-0: Well, listen, it's a good plan. I think you've got your your priorities straight and you know, looking out for those employees, their emotional health, their physical health it right away. I hundred percent I agree with you. It's going to drive enthusiasm and drive their willingness and really and their enthusiasm to to recruit, you know, their next beat partner. Sheriff Alex Vienaway, the thirty third sheriff and hopefully the thirty fifth sheriff of Los Angeles County. It's been a pleasure and honor to have you on again. I wish you the best of luck. I I split from California, but I still love California. And Los Angeles County is the population and kind of cultural center of the whole state. And I wish it the best. And someone like you can make that wish come true. And I would like for you to give a pitch. Where can people find you, support you, send donation, whatever they can do, give me some contact info quick. speaker-1: Yeah, my website AlexVillenueva twenty twenty six dot com. There you can donate. You can volunteer. We're doing meet and greets, we're doing ballot you know, bring your own ballot, you know, BYOB, a different version of BYOB. Bring your own ballot to ballot parties. You can donate, you can stay get updates on the different events we're doing all the way up to election day and election evening. And you can follow me on social media, Alex Villanueva thirty three on X and share Villanueva thirty three on Facebook and Instagram and folks we just gotta get people to start turning in those ballots. Like our life depends on it. 'Cause right now law enforcement, law and order is on the ballot in LA County and this is a tipping point. So let's see which way the voters wanna take us. speaker-0: Ladies and gentlemen, if you believe and support the rule law like I do, like Sheriff Villa Nueva does, make sure you get out and vote. Got a lot of early voting going in California. Already voted. Hope vote voted for this man. If you haven't, check that box for Villanueva. I wish you the best of luck. Ladies and gentlemen, if you love this content, if you love guests, like Sheriff Villaneueva, please subscribe, share, hit that button. We'll see you next time here on your. Leonation.