In the United States, Office of Inspector General (OIG) is a generic term for the oversight division of a federal or state agency aimed at preventing inefficient or unlawful operations within their parent agency. Such offices are attached to many federal executive departments, independent federal agencies, as well as state and local governments. Each office includes an inspector general and employees charged with identifying, auditing, and investigating fraud, waste, abuse, embezzlement and mismanagement of any kind within the executive department.
Paul K. Tanaka is an American former politician, former law-enforcement officer, and convicted felon who served with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He was convicted April 4, 2016, in Federal Court of conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice. Tanaka served as Undersheriff of Los Angeles County from 2011 to 2013. He was also mayor of the City of Gardena, California. His tenure has provoked controversy due to allegations of violence, corruption, and alleged membership in the Lynwood Vikings, a deputy gang, which was described as a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang" by a federal judge.
Leroy David Baca is a former American law enforcement officer and convicted felon who served as the 30th Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California from 1998 to 2014. In 2017, he was convicted of felony obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.
Glenn Alan Fine is the former principal deputy Inspector General of the Department of Defense and former Acting IG of the Department of Defense. Fine previously served as the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) from 2000 until January 2011. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 15, 2000. Prior to his appointment as the DOJ Inspector General, Fine served as Special Counsel to the DOJ Inspector General from January 1995 until 1996, when he was made Director of the OIG's Special Investigations and Review Unit.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States and the third largest local police agency in the United States, following the New York Police Department, and the Chicago Police Department. LASD has approximately 18,000 employees, 9,915 sworn deputies and 9,244 unsworn members. It is sometimes confused with the unrelated Los Angeles Police Department which provides law enforcement service within the city of Los Angeles, which is the county seat of Los Angeles County.
James McDonnell is the former sheriff of Los Angeles County. McDonnell was elected as L.A. County's 32nd sheriff on November 4, 2014, defeating former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka. He replaced interim sheriff John Scott on December 1, 2014. Scott replaced former sheriff Lee Baca. Previously, McDonnell served as the Chief of Police in Long Beach, California and before that in the Los Angeles Police Department. McDonnell was defeated in 2018 by Alex Villanueva.
The Lynwood Vikings is one of several deputy gangs of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), appearing to meet the legal definition of a gang when taking into account the department's repeated illegal conduct. The Vikings, formerly based at the now-defunct Lynwood station, are composed of sworn deputy sheriffs in the LASD.
On February 4, 2018, Anthony Weber, a 16-year-old African-American boy, was fatally shot by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Westmont, California. Deputies came to the scene because they received a 911 call. The caller claimed someone had pointed a gun at him. The deputies claimed that Weber reached into his waistband so they shot him over ten times. Deputies did not find a gun on Weber.
Alejandro Villanueva is an American law enforcement officer who served as the 33rd sheriff of Los Angeles County, California from 2018 until 2022. He defeated incumbent sheriff Jim McDonnell in the 2018 L.A. County Sheriff's race, making him the first to unseat an incumbent in over 100 years. Before becoming Sheriff, he was a lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The Office of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Inspector General (OIG) is the Office of Inspector General specific to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that is responsible for conducting monitoring and oversight of MTA activities, programs, and employees.
The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) is one of two police unions for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) officers, the other being the Los Angeles Sheriff's Professional Association (LASPA).
Andres Guardado was an 18-year-old Salvadoran-American man shot in the back and killed by a deputy sheriff from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on June 18, 2020, in the unincorporated community of West Rancho Dominguez, California, just outside of the Harbor Gateway section of the City of Los Angeles. Guardado ran from two uniformed police officers into an alley, where he died after being shot by deputies. Seven shots were fired and Guardado was hit in the upper torso. Police say that Guardado produced a handgun during the chase. Investigators do not believe it was fired. Accounts of the incident are disputed between police and witnesses. Police stated they were searching for footage of the incident. Store-owner Andrew Heney reported that several cameras at the scene, including a digital video recorder that stored surveillance footage, were taken and destroyed by police.
Dijon Kizzee, an African-American man, was shot and killed in the Los Angeles County community of Westmont on August 31, 2020, by deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). For days, protesters gathered outside the South Los Angeles sheriff's station. By September 6, those demonstrations had escalated to clashes, with deputies firing projectiles and tear gas at the crowds and arresting 35 people over four nights of unrest.
The Compton Executioners is a deputy gang within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). In July 2021, U.S. Congressional Representative Maxine Waters called for a Department of Justice inquiry into the existence of the gang.
The 2022 Los Angeles County elections were held on November 8, 2022, in Los Angeles County, California, with nonpartisan blanket primary elections for certain offices being held on June 7. Two of the five seats of the Board of Supervisors were up for election, as well as two of the countywide elected officials, the Sheriff and the Assessor. In addition, elections were held for the Superior Court, along with two ballot measures.
Cerise Castle is an American journalist. She received the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award and the American Mosaic Journalism Prize for her investigative series on deputy gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Robert G. Luna is an American law enforcement officer who is the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, previously serving as Chief of the Long Beach Police Department before defeating Sheriff Alex Villanueva in the 2022 election.
Since the 1970's, several deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have formed gangs in which membership is exclusive to certain deputies, often along ethnic lines, and requires certain acts, such as police violence, in order to be initiated into said gang. Members are often tattooed and are expected to not cross the blue wall of silence, fabricate evidence, engage in police corruption, and engage in criminal activity such as vandalism and homicide, among other things. Historically, almost all instances of deputy gang violence has either been ignored by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office or the office has stood by the members of the deputy gangs, alongside the tolerance or assistance of the county sheriff. Although not unique to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, it suffers from the most prolific case of the existence law enforcement gangs in the state.
Susan Hutson is an American lawyer serving as Sheriff of New Orleans, Louisiana since May 2, 2022. A Democrat, Hutson is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to serving, she worked in criminal justice reform and police oversight.
