For nearly five hours Friday, the Civilian Oversight Commission questioned two former members of a secret unit within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department accused of targeting enemies of former Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
The controversial – and now disbanded – Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail was behind several high-profile, headline-grabbing investigations throughout Villanueva’s tenure, including those into the county watchdog, a county supervisor, a member of the board of supervisors and a Los Angeles. Journalist for the Angeles Times.
Nearly two years after voters ousted Villanueva and elected Robert Luna as sheriff, questions remain about what the unit did and why it was created in the first place. This week’s special hearing demanded answers from two of the unit’s central figures, Sgt. Max Fernandez and the former homicide detective. Marc Lillienfeld.
Their testimony showed the unit reviewed more cases than expected, even though officials apparently only released those related to Villanueva’s most vocal critics. And in some cases, enforcement officials said, the unit’s own members appeared to be above the law.
By the time testimony concluded midafternoon, the commission’s usually reserved chairman, Robert Bonner, had come to a stark conclusion about the “McCarthy” unit: “It was created to intimidate critics of Alex Villanueva,” he said. “We need to be sure this never happens again.”
Villanueva has already defended unity, calling it a necessary tool to fight corruption and saying he recused himself from any decision-making that could create a conflict of interest.
The idea of a secret team at the center of Friday’s hearing stems from Villanueva’s campaign for sheriff in 2018, when he presented himself as a progressive reformer promising to fight corruption in the department’s upper echelons. According to Lillienfeld, the unit formed about six months after Villanueva took office, although he said Villanueva first pitched the idea to him two weeks before winning the election.
When the Times investigated the unit three years agothere were nine known members. This week, Lillienfeld said that number ranged from two to ten. On paper, the unit’s detectives were scattered around the department on other assignments. One was supposed to work on patrol in Lancaster and another was assigned to a gang unit.
In 2021, a rating of Sean Kennedy, Member of the Oversight Commission suggested asking state or federal officials to investigate the Villanueva administration’s “highly unusual announcements” regarding investigations that appeared to “suggest a pattern of targeting” those critical of the department.
On Friday, Kennedy and other commissioners reiterated that sentiment — especially after Lillienfeld revealed the unit had reviewed “55 or 60” complaints.
“It’s interesting, there have been 55 or 60 cases,” Bonner said, “but the only ones that anyone has ever heard of are the investigations of Commissioner Patti Giggans, Supervisor [Sheila] Kuehl, Sachi Hamai the Elder [L.A. County] CEO, Inspector General Max Huntsman and Maya Lau, Times reporter. They’re the only ones you’ve ever heard of – and there’s a reason for that.
Villanueva’s administration rehired Lillienfeld to join the unit in 2019, after he had already retired from the department and spent time working for the prosecutor’s office.
While working for the DA in 2018, he was temporarily banned from all county jails when he was filmed dressing as a deputy and sneaking into Men’s Central Jail to deliver a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee to an inmate.
On Friday, Lillienfeld offered a more detailed account of the unusual incident, saying it was all part of an investigation to free a wrongly convicted prisoner by finding evidence that would point to the real killer. As part of the investigation, he began leaving food for an inmate informant to give to the suspected murderer in order to gain his trust. Eventually, Lillienfeld said, he planned to sneak in a tapped cell phone in hopes that the real killer would confess.
But the operation, which Lillienfeld said was authorized by a court order, turned sour when another inmate discovered the food and prison officials caught on. Afterward, a commander who Lillienfeld said had it in for him decided to open an administrative investigation and post fliers in every county jail warning deputies not to let him in.
“I’m the good guy here who got an innocent man out of jail,” Lillienfeld said Friday, adding that he was “very happy” with his salary at the Sheriff’s Department and didn’t need to introduce smuggling contraband into prisons. side.
When Fernandez, the sergeant who also served in the unit, took the stand, he was asked about his tattoos and whether they signified his membership in one of the deputy gangs or subgroups that torment the sheriff’s department for half a century.
Fernandez said he was not part of either group, but testified that in the early 2000s he designed a logo for Compton Station’s Baker-to-Vegas relay race team. The intricate hand-drawn image depicted a kneeling samurai-style warrior holding a double-headed ax and a shield adorned with a skull and the letters CPT.
After leaving the Compton station, Fernandez said, he heard that some of the other deputies had turned his art into a tattoo. One of the deputies with this tattoo is Lieutenant Larry Waldiewho previously testified that the image was associated with the Gladiators, an adjunct group he said clashed with Compton Station’s most notorious inked group, known as the Executioners.
Although Fernandez said he, too, had a tattoo of the warrior’s image, he said his was not numbered — as some deputy clique tattoos are — and that he does not consider himself a member of the Gladiators.
At one point, Kennedy more directly raised questions about Fernandez’s credibility and whether that would affect his fitness to serve on an anti-corruption team. He mentioned a criminal case from the mid-2000s in which an appeals court said Fernandez gave false testimony during a felony trial and that the error was “deliberate and without a slip of the tongue.”
Asked about it, Fernandez pushed back.
“I have never lied on the stand,” he said. “This is ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”
One of the anti-corruption investigations he led involved the case of Kuehl and Giggans, both vocal critics of the Villanueva government. The investigation focused on contracts worth more than $800,000 awarded by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to Peace Over Violence, a nonprofit organization headed by Giggans. The organization’s hotline for reporting sexual harassment in the transit system has come under scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that Giggans was unfairly awarded the bus’s contract. hotline in return for its support of Kuehl.
This year, state prosecutors formally dismissed the case, saying they had completed a “thorough and independent investigation.” But on Friday, Fernandez claimed state investigators told him prosecutors never let them review the evidence.
“All of this was covered up,” he said.
The Peace Over Violence investigation had also led to other allegations, including the claim — frequently repeated by Villanueva — that Huntsman was involved in alerting Kuehl before the Sheriff’s Department searched his home.
In a statement Friday, Villanueva called Fernandez’s testimony “a damning indictment against the integrity of [state Atty. Gen. Rob] Bonta’s position on the Peace Over Violence investigation.
“Fernandez confirmed what we knew, that Bonta took control of the public corruption investigation for the sole purpose of burying it, not to investigate as he claimed,” he said . “This requires a federal review of Bonta’s actions and public statements, which do not appear to align with the facts.”
During Friday’s hearing, Kennedy asked Lillienfeld why he didn’t investigate after learning that Fernandez may have done something similar, allegedly informing the whistleblower’s husband about a search warrant. in this matter. Lillienfeld said he did not believe Fernandez leaked information maliciously and emphasized that Fernandez did not notify the targets of any warrants.
Some commissioners balked at this reasoning.
“It makes it seem like we have two systems of justice,” Commissioner Irma Cooper said. “Anyone else you would have indicted.” »
One set of questions for which Lillienfeld provided few answers concerned Villanueva administration investigations into journalistsincluding a former Times reporter who wrote an article in 2017 about a leaked list of problematic MPs. After a lengthy and secret criminal investigation, in 2021 the Sheriff’s Department urged the state attorney general to prosecute several enforcement officials as well as Lau, then a Times reporter, alleging she knowingly received “stolen property “. This year, the state dismissed the case.
Although Lillienfeld said the corruption team does not systematically investigate Times journalists, he did not provide additional details about the investigation into Lau, citing a related investigation that is ongoing.
The Oversight Commission initially embarked on a series of special hearings in early 2022 as part of a long-term effort to investigate deputy gangs. After hearing sworn testimony from whistleblowers and other members of the department for several months, in early 2023, the commission’s special counsel issued a report. denounce the “cancer” of deputy gangs and urging the sheriff to ban the groups.
This year, the hearings resumed, with testimony from Villanueva and his former undersheriff. No additional hearings are planned, but as Kennedy wrapped up his questioning Friday, he raised the possibility.
“I think this hearing raises surprising questions about how the Sheriff’s Department has targeted this commission and other oversight officials,” he said. “Unfortunately, due to repeated requests for confidentiality, it is very difficult to get to the bottom of this, although I think we have succeeded.”
