As most readers know by now, Max Huntsman, Los Angeles County’s longtime and highly respected Inspector General has announced his retirement.
His letter to the members of the LA County’s Board of Supervisors (which you can find here) became official last Tuesday, December 9, 2025.
Now that we’re a week beyond the AG’s announcement, the meaning and importance of Huntsman’s exit from the world of oversight is beginning to unfold in detail.
Sean Kennedy—expert in deputy gangs, professor at Loyola Law School, and founding member of the Sheriff’s Community Oversight Commission, or COC—had this to say when we asked about Huntsman’s retirement:
“Max Huntsman’s resignation letter is an indictment of the entire county government’s approach to oversight of the Sheriff’s Department,” wrote Kennedy in an email to WLA.
“The Board of Supervisors and the County Counsel prioritize secrecy and litigation ‘risk management’ over constitutional policing and procedural justice”
“We will never achieve real police reforms until the Board of Supervisors stops enabling the LASD’s hiding misconduct from oversight authorities.”
When Huntsman and I talked, he described a similar conclusion.
Yet, before we discuss what Huntsman told WLA in recent days, it helps to look at how the job of LA County Inspector General came into being.
The birth of Los Angeles County’s Office of the Inspector General
As longtime WLA readers may remember, the event that directly triggered the creation of the position of Los Angeles County Inspector General, was a lengthy report generated by a temporary advisory group called the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence—or CCJV.
For those unfamiliar, the CCJV came into being in the fall of 2011, with the mandate to investigate the root causes of the ghastly level of violence and corruption that was plaguing the nation’s largest jail system, which is controlled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
At that time, the LASD was led by Sheriff Lee Baca. Yet, in those years—as nearly anyone who was watching was aware—much of the root cause of the violence inside the jails had to do with the fact that department was not in fact controlled by Baca, but by undersheriff Paul Tanaka, aka the shadow sheriff.
Shadow sheriffs notwithstanding, after the seven high profile commissioners finished their investigation—which included a series of public hearings, plus the review of thousands of documents—the commission began working on a report in which they would “recommend corrective action as necessary.”
The result was a 194-page report released in September 2012.
Interestingly, the most urgent among the commissioners’ list of recommendations was the recommendation that LA County must create a new kind of oversight entity: namely the Office of the Inspector General—or OIG.
This Inspector General—wrote the commission—would engage in independent oversight of the department, and report back to “an engaged Board of Supervisors.” Yet the OIG’s oversight would also be independent in order to “ensure that it implements meaningful and lasting reform.”
And so it was that, in November of 2012, two months after the commission’s report was made available to the public, the LA County Board of Supervisors selected Max Huntsman as the best person to have the “responsibility for providing independent oversight” of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department.
“I didn’t really want to work for politicians,” Huntsman told WLA regarding the new job he was offered thirteen years ago.
“I didn’t trust politicians.”
Yet, it turned out that choosing the guy who didn’t want to work for politicians to launch the much needed new oversight entity, was exactly the right choice,
Fortunately, while part of him was still reluctant, Huntsman told us he was heartened by the sense that the board members really “had a reason to want something that they hadn’t wanted in the past,” he said.
“They saw a need for it. And so did I,” he said, meaning the creation of an oversight entity. “And they seemed willing to follow through on setting up something that wasn’t the norm in county government.
“So I took the job.”
The decision paid off when, four years later, in 2016, the same board of supervisors voted into being a second entity to engage in oversight of the LASD. The new entity was christened the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission, or COC, a 9-member body created to “increase transparency and accountability of the LASD,” by “fostering public trust through recommendations,” monitoring problematic LASD policies, and by working with the Office of Inspector General (OIG).”
The Alex Villanueva factor
Things got more challenging in 2018, two years after the formation of the COC, when a former LASD lieutenant named Alex Villanueva, defeated then Sheriff Jim McDonald, “which was a terrible thing for the county,” said Huntsman.
“But,” Huntsman added, when we talked, “he was a great thing for oversight because he did so much outrageous stuff that it triggered additional awareness in the board members. This occurred in part “because he went after them,” along with with a line-up of other people that Villanueva threatened with arrest and prosecution.
Including LA’s Inspector General Max Huntsman.
(For more on former sheriff Villanueva’s enemies list, check out Sean Kennedy’s detailed report describing a “pattern of LASD officials announcing they have opened ‘criminal investigations’ of various department heads, oversight officials, and professionals.” )
(Note: by the time AV was sworn in, both former sheriff Lee Baca, and former undersheriff and Paul Tanaka, were convicted of federal crimes and sentenced to federal prison.)
Subpoena Power
Enemies lists not withstanding, Huntsman told us that, when, in 2018, Villanueva was sworn in to lead the LASD, until he was voted out of office in 2022, by current sheriff Robert Luna, in a weird way, the enemies list-wielding sheriff, “extended the life and effectiveness of this oversight experiment.”
Most notably, as Villanueva’s actions became ever more troubling near the end of July 2019, the members of the board of supervisors who were then in office, made one more important decision to strengthen oversight— which was to make it possible to grant the COC and the OIG subpoena power, which the board saw would be needed if the Inspector General was to be able examine the longtime problem of deputy cliques in the LA County Sheriff’s Department, among other critical issues.
In other words, if the oversight entities were to engage in: serious oversight, they would need the right tools.
Earlier, the board had rejected the notion of subpoena power, but on Tuesday, July 23, 2019, Huntsman announced to the supervisors the following:
“I was hired in part to tell you if we ever faced a Tanaka-level crisis again,” he said.
“We face it now.” he said, referring to Villanueva.
So, if the county doesn’t want to simply “stand by and watch,” Huntsman concluded, “we’ll need a stronger ordinance, one that rejects secrecy and has strong mechanisms for enforcement.”
The board, it seemed, decided it did not want to stand back and watch.
A change in focus?
Recently, however, according to the newly retired Huntsman, what he’d earlier described as a “unified desire” among the board members to see reform take place, now appears to have “faded” from the county’s leadership, he told WLA.
Now, rather than work toward reform, said Huntsman, county officials appear to focus on the lawsuits that people continue to bring against the county.
“The lesson that should be taken from those lawsuits,” said Huntsman, is the fact that the county has a list problems that urgently need fixing,”in order that five or ten years from now,” the county doesn’t have to pay out piles of money.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the lesson they learned,’ he told us, his tone grim.
“Instead the lesson taken is to fight the lawsuits aggressively,” rather than fix the conditions that triggered the lawsuits
To illustrate his point Huntsman pointed to several examples.
Among those he mentioned was the September filing by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta against LA County, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and LA County’s Correctional Health Services (CHS), all of which are responsible for what AG Bonta described the “unconstitutional and inhumane conditions” in the nation’s largest jail system.
(See WLA’s story on September’s lawsuit filed by the AG.)
According to Huntsman, the list of troubling lawsuits keeps on coming, and the present board of supervisors, continues to avoid fixing the issues that the lawsuits illuminate.
Huntsman point has been validated in the last few days by the LASD’s reports, which show that, as of today, there have been 45 LA County jail deaths for the year of 2025.
Youth Justice and lawsuits
The same problem-avoiding attitude appears to apply to the board’s response to the staggering problems that afflict LA County’s youth justice system.
For example, this past summer, when the Board of Supervisors agreed to pay $2.7 million to an 18-year-old young man named Jose Rivas Barillas, who was 16-years old when, in December 2023, with the encouragement of staff, he was beaten by several other young people in the course of a series of so-called gladiator fights that took place at Los Padrinos youth hall in December 2023, a terrifying beating that was captured on CCTV in the facility.
The big payout for the teenager was only made possible because the beating took place within visual reach of the CCTV camera.
WLA reported on the terrible beating, and the settlement. Yet, when, on a whim we reviewed the county’s “Proposed Settlement of Litigation” outline, which contained the county’s proposed fiscal settlement. It turned out to be an interesting read as it gave a reader a glimpse of the county lawyers’ perspective on the matter, which seemed to be mostly to be self-serving.
“Given the risks and uncertainties of litigation,” wrote the county’s lawyers, a “reasonable settlement at this time will avoid further litigation costs; therefore, a full and final settlement of the case is warranted.”
There was no suggestion that that there might be an employee culture that encouraged the beat down, and that this toxic culture needs to be addressed.
Defunding oversight
Instead, county officials just keep making cutbacks, because they need to make these massive payouts, Huntsman told us.
“And then they defund oversight,” Huntsman said, which meant a 30 percent cut in his staff at the Office of the Inspector General,—as his retirement letter mentioned.
“Most of those people they just took away,”—he told us. “…Without any consultation, and without any discussion.”
Now, instead of making use of the experience and staff of the OIG, the board is reportedly planning instead to set up a new “ethics office,” which theoretically will provide strong independent oversight.
In this environment, according to Huntsman, it is perhaps not surprising, that in recent months county officials have managed to drive away two of the founding members of the Civilian Oversight Commission (Namely Sean Kennedy, and Rob Bonner.)
And now the board has all but defunded the Office of Inspector General by removing a third of its staff.
“Government always claims to value transparency and accountability,” said Huntsman, but shooting the messenger still appears to be the most common response to criticism.
“In my twelve years at this work, I have longed for the day that the county would address the conditions described in our reports without a court fight.”
Oversight & Subpoena power
Theoretically, such legal fights should not be necessary.
But, at the moment, county officials seem to no longer support oversight of the LA County Sheriff’s Department.
For example, earlier this year, 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, during 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.
Theoretically, Sheriff Luna’s presentation about how the department is dealing with deputy gangs could have been aided by a quick read through of the law signed by the governor on Jan. 1, 2023, which states that each law enforcement agency, “shall maintain a policy that prohibits participation in a law enforcement gang and that makes violation of that policy grounds for termination.”
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 the sheriff had not brought the three reports that the Sheriff’s Oversight Commission had subpoenaed weeks before via IG Max Huntsman.
The material subpoenaed consisted of reports on three high profile incidents in which deputies beat or shot young men, one of the cases pertained to the death of Andres Guardardo, who was fatally shot in the back by two deputies on June 18, 2020.
When former federal Judge, Robert Bonner, who was, at the time, still a member of the COC, asked Luna about the subpoenaed documents, he looked decidedly uncomfortable, as he told the commissioners that, “based on the advice of counsel,” meaning County Counsel, the sheriff department’s lawyer, he would not be turning over the subpoenaed material.
It appeared not to matter that, sin recent years, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law, AB1185, which granted subpoena power to sheriff’s oversight bodies statewide.
Nevertheless it appeared that County Counsel told the sheriff that he could and should tell the COC and LA County’s Inspector General to pound sand, when it came to subpoenas.
Oversight theater
When WLA talked with Huntsman about this particular incident, he paused.
Such actions on the part of county officials, he said, turns oversight of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department into “oversight theater.”
Civil rights attorney Vincent Miller told us, that matters have not been helped by the fact that members of County Counsel—the county’s and the LASD’s legal firm—”have been gunning for Huntsman now, more than ever.”
There is, of course, much more to report about the significance of Max Huntsman’s retirement, and about the importance of well-informed community oversight of the LA County Sheriff’s Department and community oversight of LA County’s youth probation system.
In fact a piece of news regarding oversight appears that it may possibly break tomorrow.
So…stay tuned.