Villanueva Cans Fourth Malibu Commander In 15 Months – Malibu Officials Livid About Being Kept In Dark
Written by 991KBU on February 19, 2020
For the fourth time … the new sheriff of Los Angeles County has yanked the captain in charge of the Malibu Lost Hills Station.
Matt Vander Horck was demoted Tuesday … and transferred to some undisclosed future job … by Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
This comes after crusading journalist Cece Woods took complaints from Malibu directly to her friend the sheriff … Alex Villanueva.
Woods promised on the web that heads would roll.
And before city officials really even knew what was happening … the top cop in Malibu had been fired.
At issue … the Malibu deputies’ response to a reported sexual assault in the condos on Civic Center Way on February Eighth.
KBUU News has learned from several sources that the deputies at the scene could not establish that a sexual assault had occurred …
They say the victim was severely intoxicated … and that the transient who walked into her condo touched her on her leg.
But the victim … and her neighbors … have a different view …
They view the intrusion of a strange man into the home of a vulnerable young woman as something that needed to be broadcast to the community right away.
That did not happen… until citizens brought the video pictures of the trespasser to the sheriff …. and Woods intervened to get the press release sent.
Malibu officials were never informed about the crime.
Malibu’s city manager … and the city managers of four other cities in the western district … were not consulted.
The cities have a contract that allows them to participate in hiring decisions for the local sheriff’s office … under the 8 million dollar a year payment that Malibu sends to the sheriff each year.
And under that contract … the city is supposed to have a say in who is sitting in the captains’ office at the local sheriff’s station.
The demotion and transfer Vander Horck is the fourth high-level Malibu sheriff’s commander to be removed within 15 months.
City Manager Reva Feldman. “We were informed that Capt. Check Becerra would be coming back.”
At City Hall … officials were taken by surprise by the whole incident.
They were not notified of the assault until more than a week after it happened.
They were not advised that the sheriff was demoting the captain whom they had supervisory powers over.
They were not consulted about the choice of Becerra as acting head of the local station.
And as they are finding out what happened, they are saying off the record that they are not happy that the sheriff is acting on the demands of a Malibu campaign booster … a friend of the sheriff’s … and not the elected city officials.
“We can’t even get in to talk to him,” one official told KBUU, in a background session.
Back to the incident that sparked the management shakeup.
Two sources close to the investigation tell KBUU News that the sex assault case was flawed by a lack of evidence, and by the victim’s apparent intoxication.
KBUU News has contacted the victim through an intermediary … she could not be reached for comment.
At the every least however … a transient entered the house of a woman uninvited … and news of this was not blasted out by the sheriff’s office.
Condo resident … and city council member … Jefferson Wagner said deputies believe the attacker was a transient finally who entered the condominium complex through a hole in a perimeter fence.
Also … sheriff’s deputies took 45 minutes to arrive.
And neighbors complain that they did not believe the victim or take her complaints seriously.
Condo residents were also unhappy that the deputies did not collect security video that captured shots of the trespasser, or warn residents that he was in their midst more than a week after the attack.
