LOS ANGELES — Inside historic Union Station in Los Angeles, retired sheriff’s Capt. Matt Rodriguez sees a metaphor for everything at stake in the primary election — a department that’s gone off the rails.
“This is the biggest election in the history of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department,” Rodriguez said. “The electorate in Los Angeles County got it wrong four years ago.”
Rodriguez is the only registered Republican among eight challengers seeking to unseat Sheriff Alex Villanueva in the June 7 primary. If no one gets 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will head to a runoff in November. Only about 17% of Los Angeles County voters are registered Republicans.
Los Angeles County’s public transportation is currently policed by a combination of deputies from LASD and officers from the Los Angeles and Long Beach police departments.
In April, Villanueva threatened to pull his deputies off all buses, trains and platforms June 1 if LASD does not get the full contract to police the transit system to enforce fares and code of conduct violations. In a letter to Metro’s board of directors, Villanueva said there’s a feeling of lawlessness on the system.
To Rodriguez, the threat to remove deputies crossed a line.
“That, to me, was such an unconscionable act, because what he’s really doing is endangering millions of people each month who get transported on this very important system,” Rodriguez said.
Like other challengers in the race, Rodriguez said Villanueva has failed to end the department’s decades-old deputy gang problem. With deputies who have matching and menacing tattoos still on the force, the Sheriff’s oversight body will hold hearings this week to gauge the extent of the problem.
Villanueva supports a new California law that criminalizes law enforcement gangs, and said he’s unable to fire deputies for having specific tattoos.
“Let’s be realistic here. These are grown men, grown women, and the tattoos they put on themselves are an expression of their First Amendment right,” Villanueva told Spectrum News during an interview in March. “If and when that translates into criminal conduct or behavior that harms other people, please, we’re all ears, and we have addressed that.”
Rodriguez said he declined to get a tattoo with a skull in front of a gravestone and an iron cross when he was a deputy working at the Carson sheriff’s station.
“To me, it was menacing. I think it was supposed to represent early morning graveyard hours, but it also had flared tips that reminded me of an iron cross, which was used in Nazi Germany for atrocious purposes,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez stayed friends with the deputies who had the tattoo, and characterized his time in Carson as a “tour” of duty, like a soldier spending time in combat.
“They were just hard working, beer drinking guys, but they invited me to be a part of this group, which I didn’t feel comfortable identifying with.”
He’s calling for big changes to the department, including the closure of the Men’s Central Jail.
In his view, law and order are on the ballot in June.