Los Angeles, CA, January 29th, 2021 –  

The Center for Juvenile Law and Policy (CJLP) at the Loyola Law School has released a report, “50 Years of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department,” that rigorously documents evidence of deputy gangs throughout the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and the impact these gangs have on our communities. The report is a culmination of over a year’s worth of research spanning legal documents, internal memos and interviews. It states, “The proliferation of deputy gangs and cliques within the LASD for nearly 50 years is not happenstance. Many LASD members have embraced a warrior model of policing in which deputies behave like an occupying force over the communities they police.”

Dignity and Power NOW has long been pointing out the existence and harms of deputy gangs in LASD, and demanding accountability. The CJLP’s “50 Years” report is important in that it amplifies what families of people killed by LA County Sheriff’s deputies have been saying for generations: that corruption, violence, and terror run rampant in LASD. The harms of gangs in the Department are yet another reason that we must divest from law enforcement and invest in systems of community care.  DPN has long been advocating that we shift resources away from the Sheriff’s and Probation Departments, and towards community-based and front-end approaches to public safety.  

  Dr. Lamia El Sadek, Executive Director of Dignity and Power NOW, says, “For too long, it has been an open secret that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is replete with violent deputy gangs, secrecy, and corruption. Dignity and Power NOW’s very mission is to address this corruption, and to simultaneously build a world that centers healing justice and care rather than violence.  We are encouraged by the important evidence that this LMU CJLP Report brings to light, while we also prioritize the testimony of our community members who have experienced this violence firsthand. Our organizers and family members will not stop demanding accountability for deputy violence, and simultaneously fighting for broader social transformation.”

Los Angeles County officials, media outlets, and scholars must believe community members when they share their experiences of law enforcement trauma. Lex Steppling, Director of Campaigns and Policy at Dignity and Power NOW, sheds light on this, saying, “This public reckoning would have come much sooner had the voices of the community been listened to consistently by the press and academia.”

Dignity and Power NOW staff stress the hypocrisy of criminalizing, arresting and killing our community members for so-called affiliation with gangs, while deputy gangs run rampant in LASD. Labeling a community member as a ‘gang member’ has become a proxy for race and class identity in impacted communities. This labeling destroys peoples’ lives, while LASD simultaneously has thriving Sheriff gangs that have existed for generations without scrutiny. James Nelson, Senior Advocacy Lead with Dignity and Power NOW, says, “Our tax dollars should not be funding LASD Deputy gangs. As someone who was impacted by an officer gang in LAPD, I know first-hand the corruption and inhumanity of these law enforcement gangs. It’s  hypocrisy that sworn officers are not held accountable for their violence, yet criminalize members of our community. They have a stronghold over the Department because they are never disciplined.”

As a further expression of this sick double standard, when incarcerated members of our communities express affiliations with cultural symbols of Chicano and Black identity, this inevitably leads to being placed in a gang database. These gang databases are racial profiling, yet are wrongfully used as a tool to decide the futures of Black and Brown youth. Gang enhancements are not only used to extend sentencing, but also impact where a person is locked up when they are incarcerated, what programming they will be able to access inside, whether they will be able to get education and job training, and whether they will be eligible for early transitional housing when they are approaching being allowed to re-enter our communities. In a moment when newly-elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is facing opposition for his day-one mandate to end sentencing enhancements, it is essential now more than ever that we emphasize the harms of gang databases and gang enhancements, as well as the concurrent harms of violent deputy gangs. 

Michael Saavedra, Community Engagement Organizer with Dignity and Power NOW, says, “Gang databases and gang enhancements are racist tools to oppress and criminalize Black and Brown people. Incarceration based on racial identity goes back to the policing of Indigenous people in this County, and is part of a legacy of attempted genocide for specific ethnic groups.  That law enforcement officers can be known members of Deputy gangs, yet our communities can’t express pride for the Chicano flag, or their cultural literature, is the ultimate double standard. We need to end gang databases and sentencing enhancements, and also end the violence and terror of deputy gangs.”