Dear Sheriff Baca, It’s Time To Steer Your Own Ship—Soon Would be Good

Friday’s LA Times contains an editorial that has strong words for Sheriff Lee Baca, who continues to blame his command staff—and anyone else within verbal reach—for the abuse of inmates by deputies scandal that is plaguing the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

Here’s a clip from the editorial:

….In October, Baca was more outraged by a federal investigation into the jails than the allegations of inmate abuse and deputy misconduct that prompted it. He even went so far as to suggest that the FBI was the real source of troubles in the jails, for its conduct in an investigation there. When he finally backed away from accusing the FBI of misconduct, he blamed his command staff for keeping him in the dark about the scandal, yet refused to discipline anyone for it.

Now, one of the department’s top commanders says he did attempt to warn Baca that deputies were using excessive force against inmates, but was ignored….

The Times is referring to Bob Olmsted, the recently retired LASD Commander who told WitnessLA’s Matt Fleischer that he’d attempted to warn Baca and other members of the command staff multiple times about the jail issues, but was rebuffed or overruled each time.

Olmsted also spoke this week to Times’ reporters Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard and gave them the same information about how Baca had failed to heed his warnings. Faturechi and Leonard, in turn, confronted Baca with what Olmsted had said. In response, Baca preposterously blamed Olmsted for not somehow fixing the problem himself—nevermind the fact that top members of Baca’s command staff blew off Olmsted’s concerns, and were in other ways obstructive of reform attempts.

Baca’s excuses regarding Olmsted’s warnings are simply a variation on his earlier, credibility-stretching claims that he had no idea things were so bad in the jails, that the knowledge was kept from him, that he assumed his command staff was handling the problems, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But, okay, let’s say, hypothetically, that what Baca said is in part true, that he’s a delegating kind ‘o guy who trusted his command staff to at least make sure that the jails weren’t teaming with badge-wearing gangs of inmate pounding civil rights violators.

Unfortunately the command staff blithely allowed the aforementioned rogue deputies to run riot through the jails producing a ton of use-of force reports, inmate injuries, the most scathing ACLU report to date, a bunch of high ticket lawsuits—and a nice, big federal investigation.

Bummer.

Now, theoretically, the scales have fallen from Baca’s eyes. So why in the world is the same coterie of command staffers—led by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka—still running the department day to day? Why hasn’t Baca fired at least a couple of their asses, or transferred them, or demoted them, (or whatever it is that ALADS—the LASD union—will allow one to do).

Incredibly, rather than ankling anybody, Baca chose Tanaka and associates to oversee his special task force that was formed to investigate abuse in the jails.

Henhouse meet foxes.

So, what does all that tell us? Well, one thing it suggests is that, for some time, Sheriff Lee Baca has not been, and is not presently, running the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

Or to give it a more positive spin, if Baca is steering the LASD ship, now would be a good time to step up and demonstrate it.

It is my understanding that Baca has, instead, planned yet another trip to the Middle East. He was, I think, to have left December 1—yesterday—returning next week. (I have yet to confirm if he did indeed leave.)

Not the greatest timing, Sheriff.

In the meantime, I’ve heard from some of my LASD sources that the command staff’s inner circle has assured each other that all this jail nastiness will blow over soon, that they are beyond the worst of it, that things will shortly go back to “normal.”