Malibu Loses Effort To Protest Lack Of Civilian Oversight By LA Sheriff
Written by 991KBU on June 16, 2020
Malibu gets shot down … as it tries to campaign for local control of the sheriff’s office.
On Tuesday … Malibu lost an effort to have four sister cities in western L A County jointly protest the sheriff’s broken promises on local civilian control of the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff Station.
As you recall … the five member cities in the Los Virgenes-Malibu Council Of Governments have been not happy … not happy at all… at the revolving door of local police leadership.
And city mayors and city managers have been cut out of the selection process for the captaincy at the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station … which acts as the city police for Malibu … four other cities … and the unincorporated chunk of western L-A County.
COG executive director Terry Dipple said at today’s meeting that the sheriff had made commitments to the cities … which were not followed.
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“As you recall the COG looked at .. we had some meetings with Sheriff Villanueva in the past.
“Recently Capt. Becerra was appointed by the sheriff as the commander of the Lost Hills-Malibu Sheriff’s Station.
“And the process which was previously agreed to was not followed because of the emergency situation with COVID and the protests.”
Bbut now is not the time to rock the boat … according to the mayors of Calabasas … Westlake Village and Hidden Hills said the recent upheavals means now is the time to be quiet.
Westlake Village Mayor Kelly Honig:
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“The sheriff that we currently have an office in office has indicated two times that he’s not going to abide by this agreement.
“This is the situation that’s ongoing … and this is an elected official that has decided that this is not going to be part of his agenda.
“I’m not interested in aggravating this problem any further.”
The Westlake Village mayor said Villanueva controls how many cops are on the streets of her city … and she doesn’t want to aggravate him.
Her views were agreed to by Calabasas and Hidden Hills.
But not by Agoura Hills Mayor Illece Buckley Weber.
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“We like Capt. Becerra too.
“And this is nothing against the captain …
“But it’s important to make a record.
“Sheriff Villanueva told us what he was going to do …
“He made promises that we were going to be part of the interview process and then completely disregarded it.
“Not only that … we didn’t even get a formal letter until it was all over the news.
“That’s not good communications.
“That’s not okay.”
Especially rankling to the mayors of Agoura Hills and Malibu …
Five different sheriff’s captains have been in charge at the Malibu-Lost Hills sheriffs Station over the past three years.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva has been appointing and demoting captains without consulting with the five cities.
Malibu Mayor Karen farrer also said it was nothing personal against Becerra … who by the way was on the zoom conference call.
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“This has nothing to do with Chuck, and I agree with everyone that Chuck has been doing a great job, and Malibu in particular is happy and grateful for everything that he has been doing with our county recently.
“What this is is about is the bypassing the agreed-upon process.
“And that process was agreed on with this particular group twice recently … and then was ignored.”
Malibu Mayor Karen Farrer said the sheriff had told the mayors that it was an emergency … but she knows of no emergency powers clause that allowed the sheriff to violate an agreement he made with the cities.
And Agoura Hills Mayor Illece Buckley Weber added that the appointment was made as an emergency … after the riots and protests had largely subsided.
In the end … the regional council of governments left it up to Agoura Hills and Malibu … to pursue this on their own.
THURSDAY JUNE 18 CORRECTION: Due to a computer voice-to-text programming error, Terry Dipple’s name was transcribed incorrectly as Dibble and not caught by the copy editor.
