This started out as a happy holiday column, but then the federal government stepped in Monday and announced serious felony charges against 18 Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials. This announcement included two lieutenants, three sergeants and the rest deputies in connection with jail beatings of inmates and visitors, including an Austrian consular official. Additionally, there looks to be several counts of obstruction of justice, including trying to intimidate an FBI agent.Â
If the charges turn out to be accurate, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Lee Baca and the former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, both candidates for the Sheriff’s job in the upcoming election, are going to have a lot of explaining to do. Presuming the federal prosecutors approach this in their usual style, which was developed in no small measure going after organized crime, they may be granting plea deals to some of the minor players in return for fingering and testifying against some of the major players farther up the chain. It’s altogether possible that in time, there will be further charges against other officials.
I’m guessing that a number of deputies have already hired criminal lawyers and there is already a line of defense lawyers at the U.S. Attorneys’ Office trying to elbow each other out of the way to make a deal for their clients. Usually this is the kind of deal that goes to the swiftest or anyone who has documentary evidence, like emails or notes, that the prosecution would like to get their hands on.
These charges set us wondering whether this was just scandal centered around the county jail, or if it had broader implications countywide, and just how did it impact Malibu, if at all. The City of Malibu is a contract city, which means it buys its police services from the LA County Sheriff’s Department. County Sheriff Lee Baca is the top guy, but the reality is that the captain of the sheriff’s station in Lost Hills is the Malibu Chief of Police answerable to the Malibu City Council, our governing body, and also to the sheriff of the county. Additionally, many of the adjacent cities like Calabasas, Agoura Hills and others also use the sheriff on contract.
On a whole it works efficiently, since the sheriff already patrols the unincorporated portion of the area. Clustering all of the cities that contract with the sheriff appears to be cost-effective and makes the best use of the facilities and the deputies. What we don’t know is how effective the system is, what kind of oversight there is and whether the mechanisms that are in place are doing their job. For example, the City Council of Malibu has a Public Safety Subcommittee with two council members on it, Lou La Monte and Laura Rosenthal. The city also has a Public Safety Commission with five members appointed by the council: Chris Frost, Marlene Matlow, Meril May, Carol Randall and David Saul. Our Associate Editor, Knowles Adkisson, and city hall reporter, Melissa Caskey, have been calling around to take soundings on how our system is functioning, but there are few simple answers and I suspect over time there will be a series of stories. We’d also like to hear from you, our readers, publicly or privately. What have you seen and what do you think?
On a lighter holiday tone, this past weekend had a series of holiday spectaculars. On Saturday the Children’s Lifesaving Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary with a gala concert to a packed house at the Malibu Performing Arts Center, which is a theater right in City Hall. The evening was hosted by Neil Giraldo and Pat Benatar with special performances by Dick Van Dyke and Rick Springfield, all Malibu locals.Â
On Sunday afternoon, another Malibu local, Grammy Award-winner Johnny Mandel, and his 20-plus piece band played to another packed house at the Malibu Performing Arts Center, at a fundraiser for the Malibu Urgent Care Center
Last but not least, there is a rumor floating around Sacramento that the Speaker of the Assembly, John Perez, is about to introduce a bill that may try and clip the wings of the California Coastal Commission and take away some of their power over local coastal plans. A number of small coastal cities, like Malibu, and some not-so-small coastal counties, are chafing at the degree of control the Coastal Commission has over their coasts and coastal development, sort of acting as a super planning department answerable to no one but the Commission. I’ll provide details once I see a copy of the bill.