On Thursday, March 20, 2025, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna attended the monthly meeting of the county’s Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission—or COC. The sheriff was scheduled to give a 30-minute presentation to the commission, in which he would attempt to answer 27 previously submitted questions regarding what he and his staff are doing to address the ongoing problem of deputy gangs that has plagued the department for more than a half century.
But, before the commission members could turn their attention to the issue of deputy cliques, the meeting’s agenda was derailed when it became apparent that neither the sheriff, nor the LASD deputy designated as custodian of records, had brought three reports that the Oversight Commission had subpoenaed at the end of February, and that it was the commissioners understanding would be delivered at the March 20 meeting.
When Robert Bonner, who is, at present, the chairperson of the commission, asked Luna about the subpoenaed documents, the sheriff told Bonner and the rest of the commission that, “based on the advice of counsel,” the department would not be turning over the subpoenaed material, which consisted of reports on three high profile instances in which deputies beat or shot young men, one of them Andres Guardardo, who was fatally shot in the back by two deputies on June 18, 2020.
Yet, instead of bringing the documents, unbeknownst to the commission, the day before the March 20 meeting, “on the advice of counsel,” the sheriff’s department filed with L.A. County’s Superior Court in order to determine if they really, truly had to respond to the COC’s subpoena and fork over the reports, a question that the commission believed had been settled five years ago by a ballot measure known as Measure R.
Furthermore, a few months after the passage of measure R, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law AB1185, which granted subpoena power to oversight bodies statewide.
So it was confusing as to why County Counsel was giving the sheriff this advice.
“This isn’t an issue of trying to hide any information,” Luna said. “We just want clarification so we can follow the law. What you’re asking us to do right now violates the law, according to county counsel.”
When Luna referred to “the advice of counsel,” he meant The Office of County Counsel, which provides legal representation to the Board of Supervisors, County departments, and county agencies.
In response, Bonner told the sheriff that, with this advice, County Counsel “has committed malpractice, in my opinion. As a former federal judge I find this extraordinary!”
Later Luna gave the verbal report he had come to the meeting to give, regarding what he and the department are doing about the deputy gang issue, which has reportedly been escalating in certain areas of the county, in particular.
Then the commission vanished into a closed session to discuss how best to sue sheriff’s department over its failure to bring the reports that the commission subpoenaed, a subpoena that Los Angeles County’s head lawyer advised the sheriff to challenge in court.
Threats and legal briefs
The subpoena issue is far from the first disagreement between the COC and County Counsel but, of late, the conflicts have been escalating.
Things noticeably moved into a more adversarial arena on February 16, 2025, when Dawyn R. Harrison—who is the head of the Office of the County Counsel—sent a threatening letter to the COC.
The threat came in the form of an emailed letter from Harrison to Bonner who, as mentioned above is, at present, the chair of the commission.
Harris did not threaten Bonner personally in the letter. Instead she threatened Sean Kennedy, who, like Bonner, is a founding member of the Oversight Commission, the legal purpose of which is to “improve public transparency and accountability with respect to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
A disagreement with the definition of the oversight commission’s raison d’etre appears to be among the issues that precipitated County Counsel’s threat, which came in response to an Amicus Brief that Sean Kennedy was preparing to file with California’s Second District Court of Appeal, which is located in Los Angeles.
The Amicus brief (which you can find here) pertains to an extremely controversial criminal case filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonner a little over a year ago.
The charges were filed against Diana Teran, a long-respected prosecutor who, in the past worked as the Constitutional Advisor for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, among other positions. Her case is at the appellate stage of the legal process, meaning appellate briefs are being accepted and could matter.
We’ll give you more on the Teran case in part 2 of this story, and why it matters to the COC. But suffice it to say that, from the time the charges were announced, the case that AG Bonner brought against Teran has been disputed by a list of legal experts, who believe that the charges are wrong-headed and that, if successful, they would set a dangerous precedent that is not in the interest of justice.
Furthermore, according to Kennedy and Bonner, the case against Turan has a direct bearing on the commission’s oversight function, in that the leadership of the LASD has begun using the pending prosecution as an excuse not to produce documents for the COC, which it is legally entitled to receive. This is reportedly particularly true when it comes to the COC’s requests for documents having to do with the LASD’s toxic deputy gang problem.
In any event, given the importance of the Teran prosecution, on Thursday, February 13, 2025—two days before Harrison would send her threatening email—the COC convened a special meeting for the purpose of discussing Kennedy’s brief, and whether or not the brief should be filed, not by him individually, but under the banner of the Oversight Commission, thus giving it more weight.
At the Feb. 13 meeting, after a brief but energetic discussion, all the commissioners present voted in favor of directing Kennedy to file the amicus brief in the COC’s name.
It appeared that the only interested party who did not agree with the plan was deputy county counsel Janssen Diaz, who, as usual, was present at the meeting Yet, his objections seemed mostly proforma, and were treated as such.
The response from head County Counsel Harrison—who did not attend the meeting, at least not in person—was another matter.
On February 16, three days after the COC meeting and the vote, Harrison e-mailed a four-page letter to Robert Bonner in which she said that Kennedy could only file the brief as a private citizen, but not on behalf of the COC.
And if Kennedy went ahead and filed the brief for the COC anyway, her office was “prepared to file a letter with the Court of Appeal clarifying that County Counsel is counsel for the COC and Commissioner Kennedy does not have authority to represent the COC in the filing.”
In her email to COC Chair Bonner, Harrison also wrote that the Civilian Oversight Commission did not have the power to file an amicus brief of any sort anyway.
Actions, consequences, and a resignation
Harrison went on to describe COC’s reason for being, which she mostly characterized as that of an “advisory body to the Board of Supervisors,” with very little purpose or power beyond that function.
Nevertheless, despite the threat from lead County Counsel Harrison, on February 17, 2025, COC Commissioner Sean Kennedy with Commissioner Robert Bonner co-signing, filed the amicus brief with the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, Division Two.
Immediately following the filing, Kennedy resigned from the Civilian Oversight Commission he had helped to form nearly a decade ago.
“We can’t let County Counsel run oversight,” Kennedy told WLA when we asked him about his resignation. “They represent the sheriffs, which means that part of their job is to hide deputies’ misconduct. So, for her to continue to try to control the COC’s independent oversight decision making,” said Kennedy, “is a terrible conflict of interest.”
Two days later, finding that Kennedy and Bonner had not followed her orders, County Counsel Harrison made good on her threat and, on February 19, sent a four-page letter to the appellate justices, which contained the following:
“The COC did not seek or obtain Board approval; consequently, its actions in submitting the application are ultra vires and legally invalid,” she wrote, which was a remarkable accusation to level.
Harris then followed with a request that the court “not consider the COC’s application or its attached proposed amicus curiae brief.”
The conflict with the head of County Counsel did not end there.
However, before we go further, it helps to know a bit about the two people that County Counsel Harrison put in her gun sights, and the history of the commission that Harrison inexplicably describes as having almost zero power and purpose.
Kennedy, Bonner, and the creation of the COC
Sean Kennedy is highly experienced in the world of law in general, and criminal law specifically. He is the Kaplan and Feldman Executive Director of Loyola Law School’s Center for Juvenile Law and Policy, the former Federal Public Defender for the Central District of California, where he also served as Chief of the Federal Public Defender’s Capital Habeas Unit, all of which made him an expert in appellate issues. He’s won a pile of awards for his work as an attorney. He is also well known for his expertise in the realm of LA’s deputy gangs, which is one of the issues on which the COC has focused since its birth.
Commissioner Robert Bonner is a former U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (His appointments to lead the above two law enforcement agencies were made by two different Republican presidents.) Bonner is also a former U.S. Attorney, and a former prosecutor for California’s Central District.
Regarding the COC, as longtime WLA readers will likely remember, the Sheriff’s Civilian oversight commission was voted into being by the LA County Board of Supervisors in 2016. This new oversight commission was created in response to the work of the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence (CCJV), which in the fall of 2012, presented a lengthy and meticulously researched report on problems inside the sheriff’s department, which prominently included a “culture of corruption and violence” in the nation’s largest jail system.
(It was this culture of corruption that would eventually result in the convictions of then sheriff Lee Baca, and his shadow sheriff, former undersheriff Paul Tanaka.)
In its detailed report, the CCJV’s most prominent suggestion for departmental reform was the creation of an independent oversight entity that would have “unfettered access” to “department records, witness interviews, video footage, data, personnel, and facilities.”
The creation of this new commission required an amendment of the LA County ordinance known as Title 3, which governs Advisory Commissions and Committees in the county.
Yet, the COC’s birth didn’t end with Title 3. Instead, in March of 2020, two years after the commission’s formation, the COC was given still more powers and more independence via Measure R, a ballot initiative backed by a coalition of local leaders and organizations, including the ACLU, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and political strategist Jasmyne Cannick, plus a long list of activist community members impacted by the justice system. These powers include subpoena power.
Yet, despite the above well-documented facts, Harrison and her representatives continue to state that the COC had few purposes or powers, and was subject to the direction of the County Counsel.
All of the this brings us back to the topic of the Amicus brief, and the unusual criminal case that brought it into being.
To be continued
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Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series Wednesday, April 2.
Luna and Villanueva tie for 1st place. What a continuous mess while taxpayers foot the bill.