State AG Investigating Why Villanueva Filed False Criminal Report About County Executive: LA Times
Written by 991KBU on October 7, 2020
L A County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is now the subject of a criminal investigation … opened by the LA County District Attorney … for filing a false police report.
The D-A says it is reviewing allegations that Villanueva falsely reported a crime … This gets a bit confusing … but what basically happened is the sheriff didn’t like ti when the Board of Supervisors began looking into abuses within the sheriff’s domain.
Villanueva reacted by hurling charges that the county’s top bureaucrat had broken the law … by constructing an investigation at the same time that she sat as an unpaid member of the board of directors of united Way.
Villanueva tool the extraordinary and …and some may say revenge seeking move … of filing a complaint with the California Attorney General … accusing the bureaucrat of breaking the law.
The state A-G investigated and said nothing unusual happened … it was no conflict of interest and certainly not a crime.
And now .… the Board of Supervisors is in turn demanding a criminal probe of Villanueva.
The board’s lawyer wrote a letter … obtained by The Los Angeles Times … to top county prosecutor Jackie Lacey … asking for a criminal probe into the sheriff.
And the county attorney general says she has a conflict of interest … so she is referring the whole matter back to the state A-G.
It’s against the law … a felony … for a law enforcement official to file a false criminal charge … and the board says Villanueva knew his accusations were false.
What does this all mean?
A sheriff who is accusing the Board fo Supervisors of criminal acts by attempting civilian oversight of his office.
And a sheriff who now stands accused of filing a trumped up charge … against the very county official who oversees county government.
And a paralysis at the county government … as important questions about civilian oversight of a sheriff’s department that some say has run out of control.
