LOS ANGELES — LA County voters will decide who will lead the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department when they go to the polls in November.    

“Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen spoke with Retired Long Beach Police Chief and current LA County Sheriff candidate Robert Luna in September, days before he squared off with LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva for a televised debate.

The two men are running very different campaigns.  

In a campaign ad, Villanueva’s voice plays over a run-down depiction of Los Angeles saying “The California Dream has turned into a nightmare. The politicians have let us down.” 

Meanwhile, Luna highlights endorsements he’s received from politicians, including all five members of the LA County Board of Supervisors.

But, there are some things the two share in common. 

In a New Yorker profile, Villanueva described his struggles to rise among the ranks of law enforcement as a Latino man who was not always welcomed.

Luna also struggled. Growing up in East LA with immigrant parents, he said he did not always have the best relationship with law enforcement.

“When I told my parents, that’s what I wanted to do. I remember my father being pretty upset. He did not have good experiences. He feared the police, and he did not want his son to go down that path,” he said.

Luna was appointed chief of the Long Beach Police Department in 2014 and served in that position for 7 years. Luna said he would bring the tactics he used in Long Beach with him were he to win the election in November.

“The first thing you need to do when you look at crime, is you need to look in the mirror and remember our oath,” he said. “No matter what the barriers are, we have a responsibility and a moral obligation to our community.”

Some critics have raised concerns about transparency in Luna’s career.  

Back in 2018, while Luna was serving as chief, an investigative report from Al Jazeera found that the Long Beach Police Department had been using a text message app called Tiger Text, which allowed messages to disappear after a set period of time.

The investigation found the department began using the app in 2014, before Luna’s tenure as chief.

Luna said he took responsibility for ending the practice and asked the city manager to bring in an outside agency to investigate Tiger Text. 

“I knew that even though there may have been something wrong, the intent behind it wasn’t a bad one. But if somebody found something, then let’s get it out there so that the community can know,” he said. “There was an independent investigation and a review of what happened and they made recommendations and I’m proud to say that we embraced them.”  

One issue going into the election is the concerns and allegations about deputy gangs inside the LA County Sheriff’s Department. 

The County’s Civilian Oversight Commission is currently investigating deputy gangs within the department and Villanueva has refused to testify about alleged misconduct of a group referred to as the Banditos.

Luna said any deputy gangs “will not be accepted under any circumstances.”

“The first step in how I’m going to address it is to acknowledge that they actually occur,” he said. “Everybody should 100% say it’s unacceptable to say that we have gangs and police or sheriffs or deputies in the same sentence.”

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