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The first victim was discovered Monday at around 10:30 a.m. in Valencia. A little more than two hours later, at 12:53 p.m., LASD detectives responded to another death in Lancaster and a third at 5:40 p.m. in Stevenson Ranch. The fourth victim was discovered Tuesday at around 7:30 a.m. in the city of Pomona. ccording to The Times, one of the victims was 25-year career veteran Cmdr. Darren Harris, who was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Monday morning. Another victim was retired Sgt. Greg Hovland, who was discovered just hours later. The four deaths are being investigated by...

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department leaders say they have taken action as the L.A. County Civilian Oversight Commission looks into allegations of deputy gangs. However, the commission claims the department is being less than cooperative. Advertisement The sheriff's department has been dealing with the issue of cliques, or deputy gangs, and on Wednesday, officials talked about what they've done. "Sheriff Villanueva was the first sheriff to successfully implement a policy banning deputy clicks, and holding our personnel accountable," said LASD Assistant Sheriff Holly Francisco. The Los Angeles County Civilian Oversight Commission announced it will undertake a "full-scale investigation'' into alleged...

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a vaccine mandate for all county employees that went into effect on Oct. 1, and Villanueva has previously said he does not plan to enforce the mandate. On Thursday, Villanueva took his concerns to the public, noting that “homicides continued to rise” and might continue to do so, while as much as “20%-30% of [the Sheriff’s Department] workforce is no longer available to provide service” with the mandate in place. “The Board’s vaccination mandate is causing a mass exodus within the Department, which is an absolutely absurd result … We are experiencing an...

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has authorized his deputies to conceal their names while policing protests and other civil disturbances. Villanueva said Wednesday that the change to the department’s long-standing practice of requiring deputies to wear tags engraved with their last names on their uniform shirts was in response to recent incidents in which deputies were harassed and had personal information revealed by protesters. The change came after a protest last week outside Men’s Central Jail at which several deputies were filmed with duct tape covering their name tags. The move troubled activists and department watchdogs, who said such...

Blanca Briceno ... called the police one day in March to help her son, who was in the midst of a mental health crisis. But by the end, he’d been beaten and Tasered to death. At one point, she said, deputies grabbed her phone when she tried to film what was happening. [C]coroner’s officials concluded that Briceno, 39, died of cardiopulmonary arrest, resulting from neck compression and restraint with a Taser. The death was ruled a homicide, although the designation doesn’t mean it was intentional or a crime. The Briceno family last month filed a wrongful death claim, precursor to...

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: [Y]ou-know-who used it as part of his law and order pitch, at his mostly unmasked Nevada rally last night, and there's no proof there's no connection to demonstrators WHOOPI: Well, I want to point out there is no -- there's no proof that this shooter has anything to do with Black Lives Matter. They don't know who it is. That's why they're asking for the public's help. So I don't want to marry those two things when we don't know if they're connected. SARA HAINES: Well, you can't conflate the two [BLM and cop shooting], and I don't...

Two police officers were ambushed and shot last night in LA. A manhunt was underway in California early Sunday after two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were shot in their patrol car Saturday by a suspect who “opened fire without warning or provocation,” authorities said. The deputies, a 24-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman, were both in critical condition and “fighting for their lives” as they underwent surgery following the attack, which occurred around 7 p.m. local time outside a Metro rail station in Compton, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. ... Both deputies were sworn-in just over a year ago and the female deputy is the mother of a 6-year-old...

Palanca, who works in the Lakewood station, continues fighting for her life in the hospital after first being assaulted by one suspect and then run over by another. She had responded Monday evening to a call of a person acting erratically in the 8500 block of Alondra Boulevard. Before she could even get out of her car, the suspect started attacking her, punching her through the window of the cruiser, according to Sheriff Alex Villanueva. She got out of the car and gave chase to the suspect on foot through a nearby parking lot. As the foot chase crossed Alondra...

LOS ANGELES (FOX 11) - The FBI is investigating a secret society of tattooed deputies in East Los Angeles as well as similar gang-like groups elsewhere within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, it was reported Thursday. News of the probe comes from multiple people familiar with the inquiry, the Los Angeles Times reported. The federal probe follows allegations of beatings and harassment by members of the Banditos, a group of deputies assigned to the Sheriff's East L.A. station who brand themselves with matching tattoos of a skeleton outfitted in a sombrero, bandolier and pistol. The clique's members are accused...

Melvin Castro and his trainee, Deputy Omar Sanchez, turned onto the 2100 block of Grace Avenue in Carson. There, in the middle of the street, a male adult frantically jumped and wailed his arms in the sky in a desperate attempt to get their attention. Deputies Castro and Sanchez sped to the frantic man, quickly parking the patrol car, and followed behind the father who was desperately guiding them to his dying baby girl. At the rear of the house, deputies Castro and Sanchez were met by a hysterical mother who ran towards them, clutching her one year-old baby in...

Some members of a Los Angeles County watchdog panel are calling on Sheriff Jim McDonnell to launch a thorough investigation into allegations of a secret society of deputies that brands its members with matching skull tattoos. The revelation this week that a deputy admitted to getting inked two years ago as part of a ritual within the Compton station has raised concerns that deputy cliques, long part of a controversial agency subculture, have persisted despite the department’s reform efforts. Hernán Vera, who serves on the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, said the deputy’s admission in a lawsuit over a fatal shooting...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A federal grand jury indicted former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca for conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstructing justice and lying to the FBI over corruption inside county jails. In 2010, the FBI launched an investigation into civil rights abuses and corruption inside the jails. In February, Baca had agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of lying to the FBI about his knowledge that sheriff's officials approached and threatened to arrest an FBI agent in 2013. Baca ended up withdrawing his guilty plea when a judge rejected a plea deal with a maximum six-month...

Despite efforts to address the problem, the risk associated with the new Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm "remains substantial," according to the report by Los Angeles County Inspector General Max Huntsman. ... The report, an advance copy of which was obtained by CNN, found that a sheriff's department training program for deputies converting to the new gun is inadequate. "We conclude that the current training program is insufficient to overcome old habits learned on other handguns," the 52-page report states. "As a result, many deputies appear to be to undertrained for the weapon they are using."

Eighteen current or former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials have been indicted in five separate criminal cases in connection with a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct inside L.A. County jails. The four grand jury indictments unsealed Monday and one criminal complaint allege that deputies beat jail inmates and visitors without justification, unjustly detained people and conspired to obstruct a federal investigation into misconduct at the Men's Central Jail. Sixteen of the defendants were arrested Monday and are expected to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court.

H/T to Patterico It's truly an upsidedown world. This AM I get an email from Curt asking me to do a post on the above report by Patterico. It's an eye-opening piece on the "Self-styled police “expert” Merrick Bobb", and his habitual forgetfulness to disclose a conflict of interest with one of his own, in-house consultants when playing civilian "police watchdog". With the civilian micromanaging and "recommendations" being thrust upon the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department by Bobb for over a decade, this is a subject near and dear to Curt's heart. Our FA "founding father", however, finds himself unable to...

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Walth wanted an adventure and something different, so he joined a group of International Police Advisors in Iraq to train Iraqi police officers on community policing. Training Iraqi police officers in a war zone is a job unlike any other mission he has taken and has significant differences from training deputies at the Lancaster Sheriff's Station. "As much training as we received before going over there, it's still an eye-opener when (an explosive attack) happens right in front of you," Walth said. Walth believes the challenges he encountered in Iraq will be useful to...

A female Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy was shot and fatally wounded in the driveway of a home in Long Beach this morning. Neighbors in the middle-class Wrigley district reported hearing four gunshots around 6 a.m., apparently as the deputy was approaching her car to go to work. Long Beach police and Sheriff's detectives were on the scene in the 2900 block of Eucalyptus Avenue investigating. The 30-year-old deputy was rushed to Long Beach Memorial Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.

LANCASTER - An apartment complex near Avenue K and Gadsden Avenue in Lancaster was cordoned off as deputies searched for a suspected sniper who is believed to have shot at three deputies Thursday night. A Lancaster Sheriff's Department team originally responded around 9 p.m. to a report of a shot fired that shattered a display window at the Lancaster Auto Mall's Suzuki Mazda dealership, in the 43000 block of Drivers Way. The dealership's employees called 911. Upon arriving, the trio of deputies sent onto the scene said there was no other evidence of any other shots fired. The rest of...

Glendora PD was in a pursuit of a male with an AK47. Officer flipped off the 210 freeway near the 57. There is a large containment of the area with LASD SWAT, LAPD, Glendora PD and other agencies. Officer was cut out of patrol car and airlifted to hospital with critical injuries. 210 fwy shutdown in both directions, has been on KABC TV live off and on 483.0875 LASD ATAC 1

LOS ANGELES Los Angeles police have set up a special command center following a series of deadly explosions in London today. Police dispatcher Anthony Rivers says officials are meeting to discuss whether to step up security locally. He says he doesn't know whether officials will upgrade the city's security alert level at this point.