the current

Category: Alex Villanueva 2026

  • Hypocrisy Alert: Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove’s Plea for LASD Funding Ignores Her Defund Allies, and Family Profiteering

    Hypocrisy Alert: Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove’s Plea for LASD Funding Ignores Her Defund Allies, and Family Profiteering

    On January 8, 2026, Congress members Derek T. Tran and Sydney Kamlager-Dove sent a letter to Los Angeles County officials urging swift resolution of contract negotiations with the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. The message was urgent and polished: staffing shortages at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are dire, morale is fraying, and the region is barreling toward global pressure tests, the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics, that demand a strong, well-resourced police force.

    On the surface, it read like a long-overdue acknowledgment of reality. Dig one layer deeper and the letter collapses under the weight of its own contradictions – especially where Kamlager-Dove is concerned.

    The hypocrisy begins with the cc line. Among those copied was Holly Mitchell, a Los Angeles County Supervisor whose record on policing stands in direct opposition to the letter’s central thesis. Mitchell has spent years championing policies that siphon funds away from law enforcement. She supported Measure J, the ballot measure mandating that ten percent of the county’s unrestricted general fund be redirected from public safety into alternative programs. Then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva warned, repeatedly, that the move would hollow out the department, worsen understaffing, and degrade response times. Those warnings weren’t theoretical. They describe the crisis Kamlager-Dove now claims to be alarmed by.

     

    Mitchell’s influence didn’t stop at budget cuts. The Board of Supervisors advanced a 2022 charter amendment granting itself authority to remove an elected sheriff “for cause,” a direct assault on the independence of the office. That campaign of pressure and constraint defined Villanueva’s tenure and left the department weaker, not safer. It is precisely the environment that produced the attrition, recruitment failures, and morale collapse cited in the January letter.

    This isn’t a casual political disagreement. It’s personal, and well documented. Kamlager-Dove began her career as Mitchell’s district director. She succeeded Mitchell in Sacramento, inheriting the same Assembly and Senate seats, and later ascended to Congress along the same political ladder. Kamlager-Dove has publicly referred to Mitchell as “family.” In early 2024, her leadership PAC donated $1,000 to Mitchell’s reelection campaign. Yet in this carefully crafted appeal for deputy funding, Kamlager-Dove offers no public challenge to Mitchell’s defunding record, only a quiet cc, as if proximity absolves contradiction.

    Then there is the money.

    Kamlager-Dove’s husband, Austin Dove, is a civil-rights attorney whose firm, Grace Legal Group, has built a lucrative practice suing the very sheriff’s department his wife now claims to champion. In 2025, Dove secured a $25 million settlement from Los Angeles County in the Isaias Cervantes case, one of the largest police-misconduct payouts in U.S. history. The settlement was approved by the Board of Supervisors, with Mitchell quietly seconding it. There was no public disclosure of her familial-political relationship to the plaintiff’s attorney.

    That payout didn’t materialize in a vacuum. County funds drained into massive settlements are funds not spent on recruitment, retention, training, or equipment. They are dollars that directly exacerbate the staffing crisis Kamlager-Dove decries, while simultaneously enriching her household. The conflict is glaring, and it is impossible to square with calls for “dignity and respect” for deputies.

    The pattern doesn’t end there. Dove has reportedly surfaced in other high-profile matters tied to LASD controversies, while Kamlager-Dove’s political spending has flowed, at notably convenient moments. toward figures connected to oversight and enforcement, including donations involving the family of Rob Bonta. Each piece alone might be brushed off as coincidence. Together, they form a picture of a closed loop where political alliances, legal action, and public funds circulate among the same insiders.

    Which brings us back to the letter.

    And while Sheriff Luna continues to play games with critical staffing data, obscuring just how dismal conditions inside the department have become in an effort to mask four years of failed leadership and a department in free fall, the real story of horrific working conditions is being told to The Current Report directly by deputies on the inside.

    As county officials circulate polished dashboards and selective talking points, the internal numbers reveal a far darker reality, one the department itself can no longer hide. LASD is losing roughly twice as many deputies as it recruits, with approximately 200 recruits entering the pipeline each year while more than 400 deputies retire or walk out. This is not a temporary shortage, it is a structural collapse, with more than 3,300 sworn positions vacant, slots the department cannot fill at any pace that keeps up with attrition. Deputies are still leaving at a rate of nearly 20 per week, either quitting outright or lateraling to agencies that do not grind their workforce into dust. Entire stations are now operating in crisis mode, Marina del Rey Station, for example, has been reduced to just 18 deputies total to cover all three shifts for an entire week. Mandatory overtime has spiraled out of control, with deputies routinely required to work 88 extra hours per month on top of regular shifts, after the county quietly raised the overtime cap to 120 hours instead of fixing staffing. Institutional knowledge is being hollowed out in real time, and without immediate course correction, the department many officials now claim to support may not even survive intact through the 2028 Olympics. These are the true numbers, confirmed through active deputy communications, not the whitewashed statistics being pushed through official LASD channels.

     

    LA County needs a strong sheriff’s department, particularly with the world about to descend on Los Angeles for the World Cup and the olympics that will surely strain every public safety resource. But credibility matters. You cannot decry understaffing while empowering defunders. You cannot mourn morale while your household profits from dismantling the institution you claim to support. And you cannot posture as a defender of law enforcement while refusing to confront the closest architect of its decline.

    This letter isn’t an olive branch. It’s a PR stunt stripped of any accountability whatsoever, crafted for optics knowing the damage done to the largest, and most prestigious Sheriff’s Department in the country that has been in existence for over 175 years.

    If Congresswoman Kamlager-Dove wants to be taken seriously on public safety, she should start where the damage began: the Board of Supervisors, and her closest ally on it she refers to as “family”.

    Until then, the words in that letter will continue to ring hollow, echoing through the ongoing exodus from LASD, the unfilled deputy positions, and the empty patrol cars, all of it foreseeable, all of it avoidable, and all of it made inevitable by the same people now pretending to be alarmed.

  • Another Tragedy, Another Whitewash

    Another Tragedy, Another Whitewash

    It’s sad to see how often a false narrative is used to obscure who is responsible when things go really bad.  Politicians find solutions for problems that don’t exist, they destroy what does work, and then when it blows up in their face, they appoint a special blue-ribbon committee to declare it wasn’t their fault.  For over forty years the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has had an Emergency Operations Bureau (EOB), one that is staffed 24/7 with highly trained and experienced emergency management professionals under the authority of the sheriff.

    Since the fires that destroyed Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the Los Angeles Times has devoted article after article trying to decide who was responsible for the tragic outcome or was it entirely a “perfect storm” incapable of being mitigated by man.  Here’s the obvious: the responsibility for the failure of emergency management in the Eaton fire rests with the board of supervisors, the sheriff, and the fire chief, period. Here’s why:

    In 2020, with much celebration, the board of supervisors announced with glee the removal of the sheriff as the county’s director of emergency management. This role was held by the sheriff for over 40 years, but the board, in their infinite wisdom, used the excuse of the Woolsey fire to place the responsibility in the hands of the county CEO, Fesia Davenport.  She answers only to the board of supervisors. Reading the after-action report on the Woolsey fire, nary a sentence was dedicated to any failures on the part of the sheriff at the time, Jim McDonnell.  This proves the board move was a corrupt one from the onset.

    What did Davenport do with this new responsibility? Delegate it to the appointed head of the county’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM).  The head of EOM, Kevin McGowan, also known as Pee Wee Herman in county circles, has never inspired confidence in his leadership abilities.  As the saying goes, you can delegate authority, but not responsibility. Not a single article written in mainstream media has ever mentioned this. Why? The tragedy of Eaton is a failure of leadership, plain and simple, something the media has decided to obscure on behalf of the political establishment.

    Under Sheriff Luna, the LASD’s multiple Incident Management Teams (IMT) were depleted, key personnel retired without replacements, and they never received training.  This meant the skeleton crew available at the onset of the fires lacked the institutional knowledge and technical know-how to address the Potentially Dangerous Situation predicted by the National Weather Service five days PRIOR to the fires blowing sparks.  Deputies on the ground were left on their own to figure out how to evacuate as many people as possible as the flames roared around them.

    Satellite map of the Eaton Fire.

    Fire Chief Marrone never picked up the phone to call the inept Luna, who was on a paid union junket in Carlsbad, and tell the clueless sheriff that they needed to respond to the Emergency Operations Center and figure out a plan of action for this historic event. Two years of record rain followed by 8 months of record heat and no rain, then throwing in hurricane force winds, should have been a clue to any competent leader that it was time to prepare. That meeting that never happened should have also included LA city’s fire chief and police chief as well.  In fact, that is foundational to the national framework for emergency management, known as the Incident Command System (ICS).  One of the strengths of ICS is the Unified Command, where leaders from relevant disciplines have a meeting of the minds and decide on what is the best course of action.  Again, this never happened until it was too late and pretty much irrelevant to the outcome.

    Prior board of supervisors, who all understood the limitations of their knowledge of emergency management, always delegated that authority to the sheriff, who by law is the only one who can direct the actions of law enforcement. Evacuations are the responsibility of law enforcement and no one else. Fighting fires is the responsibility of fire departments. Two basic and critical functions that were left rudderless at the worst time possible.

    Bottom line: the board of supervisors destabilized emergency management on a political vendetta, then paid the McChrystal Group $2 million to whitewash their involvement. Sheriff Luna failed in the one job he had – evacuating people out of harm’s way. Moral of the story: management by committee never works in an emergency.  The county’s OEM needs to be disbanded forthwith, and personnel reassigned to the sheriff’s EOB, a central point for both technical expertise, real world experience, and 24/7 capabilities.  OEM was designed to serve the political interests of the board of supervisors and simply is incapable of directing first responders in emergencies.  You have to have a clear idea of who is in charge, a plan of action, and people ready to execute it.

    The Eaton Fire is a tragedy by any measure. The loss of human life was preventable and inexcusable. It’s time for the elected leaders who failed us in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades to do the honorable thing: resign.

  • So the Left Chants

    So the Left Chants

    The video of a fool on a megaphone chanting and leading a cheer over Charlie Kirk’s assassination truly encapsulates how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone as a nation presumably governed by the rule of law. Political violence has always been a part of our nation’s history, going as far back as Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 into tragedies within our lifetimes such as JFK, RFK, and MLK.  All of those assassinations occurred prior to the advent of social media, so the reactions of the public at large were relatively unquantifiable save for what the traditional media at the times reported on.

    Fast forward to Wednesday’s tragic events and the reactions to it were captured and disseminated like wildfire across multiple platforms.  Tik Tok had the video described above and someone shared it on X, leading to millions of views within a few hours.  Downey city councilman Mario Trujillo put out a post that read: “No one mourns the wicked” with the date September 10, 2025 underneath it.  An uproar ensued, causing the polarizing councilman and Gascon disciple to take it down and replace it with a bland condemnation of political violence.  He never apologized for his post, curiously, and neither did the Democratic congressional leaders who protested the House Speaker’s efforts at organizing a moment of silence in recognition of Kirk’s passing.

    Responsible political leaders across the spectrum condemned Kirk’s assassination, yet certain local leaders in Los Angeles remained conspicuously silent.  While President Trump ordered the White House flag to half-staff, Mayor Bass took the opposite approach, ordering city flags to remain at full staff.  To her credit, she did offer a straightforward condemnation of the tragedy the day it occurred, as did Governor Newsom and former vice president Kamala Harris. Supervisor Hilda Solis was silent, offering instead a reflection on the death of LA Times reporter Ruben Salazar more than a half-century ago.  It took Sheriff Luna a full two days before he received permission from the board of supervisors to say anything.

    Politicians scrambling aside, I’ve seen deplorable chants before.  In 2020, when two Latino Transit Services Bureau deputies were ambushed and shot in the head, video surfaced of local black residents laughing and bragging: “they got aired!”  When the deputies were transferred to St. Francis Medical Center a group of Black Lives Matter protestors, some carrying African flags, formed a small line in front of the emergency room entrance and chanted “We hope they die!”

    The murder of Charlie Kirk hit close to home for me, as I’ve had the occasion to confront protestors, haters, and paid activists chanting all sorts of obscenities to my face.  Even Melina Abdullah, a cofounder of Black Lives Matter, gave me a hearty “Fuck You Alex” at the top of her lungs as I walked by enroute to a Civilian Oversight Commission hearing.  Unequivocally condemning Kirk’s murder, a deliberate act of political violence, has somehow become a litmus test for the far left to attribute to Kirk’s mourners whatever imaginary beliefs they’ve attached to Kirk himself throughout his public life.

    One of the best infographics I’ve seen stated that liberals demonize humans and humanize demons.  Truer words have never been spoken.  I’ve been called a tattooed gang member, a criminal, someone worthy of imprisoning for life, preferably in El Salvador, and a corrupt and failed sheriff among many other negative attributes.  My family and I have received death threats on multiple occasions, including one from Texas that went as far as threatening my wife, my son, and my granddaughters.

    Bottom line is there are nut jobs out there, willing to believe whatever they are spoon fed 24/7, who are willing to take action, including violence, to support their beliefs.  I’ve had my home visited by Antifa, with a carload of bats and golf clubs they fortunately never got to deploy.  This same group doxed my name and home address in 2020, with large banners stretched across eleven different freeway overpasses.  Nary a mention on local media outlets or the LA Times, lest it would draw any sympathy my way, apparently.

    Calling deputies gang members is a form of hate speech that has led to violence, and the county has spent a considerable amount of energy convincing everyone that not only deputy gangs exist, but that they also run the Sheriff’s Department.  From the Board of Supervisors, the Civilian Oversight Commission, and the Office of the Inspector General, their continual use of their positions and official titles has been lent to create this false perception, evidence to the contrary be damned.  To date not a single deputy gang member has been identified, let alone arrested, tried, convicted, or terminated.  That’s a record of futility that stretches back almost a decade, yet activists to this day still insist they exist.

    It’s time to reclaim civility, agree to disagree peacefully, while being able to debate vigorously on all the issues that affect our communities.  This should be done without fear or restraint.  What happened to Charlie Kirk is a dark moment in our nation’s history.  We most honor him, not because we agree on everything he stood for, but that he was willing to speak up publicly and civilly for what he believed in. His assassination is not who we are and should never be what we strive to be, a beacon of hope and freedom for all.

  • Sheriff Luna: A Profile in Failure

    Sheriff Luna: A Profile in Failure

    After announcing my candidacy for sheriff last month, I took some time to review basic facts comparing my first year on the job as sheriff versus Luna’s first year on the job. This is very important since Luna campaigned on “chaos and dysfunction” and bragged about how his relationship with the board would somehow make everything better. The results are in, and the results are really, really bad for team Luna.

    I went to the lasd.org website, went straight to the transparency window I pushed to create, and looked at two sets of data: crime rates and arrest rates. Common sense tells us that when crime is going up, a lack of commensurate arrests can be both contributing to it and illustrative of the department’s efforts in the areas we patrol. Of the county’s 4,000 square miles, the LASD jurisdiction covers over 75% of it – roughly 3,115 square miles.

    Looking at crime statistics, comparing 2019 (my first full year on the job) to 2023 (Luna’s first full year on the job) and the difference was startling. There was a whopping 17.5% increase in Part 1 crimes, which includes all violent crime. My first year saw a decrease of 6.2% in Part 1 crimes from my predecessor Jim McDonnell’s last year in office (2018). Looking at three specific crime categories, the numbers were dismal. Under Luna, homicides increased by 46%, grand theft auto (GTA) increased by 68%, and aggravated assaults increased by 23%.

    Turning towards arrest statistics, the picture is even worse for Luna. Focusing on three of the busiest stations in the county, Lancaster, East LA, and Century, the figures are appalling. East LA saw a 48% drop in arrests, Lancaster saw a 52% drop in arrests, and Century Station saw a staggering 66% drop in arrests. These figures demonstrate that the LASD as an organization has been compromised by the failed leadership of Robert Luna, and the county’s residents are now suffering as a consequence of his failed efforts.

    These figures demonstrate decisively that the relationship between the sheriff and the men and women working on the front lines delivering public safety is extremely important. While building relationships with the board of supervisors is important, it is no substitute for a healthy relationship with the workforce, one built on trust and mutual respect. Nonetheless, as sheriff my goal is to be able to work shoulder to shoulder with the community, our personnel, and yes, the board of supervisors, to ensure we are all doing everything possible to keep everyone who calls Los Angeles home safe.

    Arrest Drops Under Luna – Steep declines at East LA (-48%), Lancaster (-52%), Century (-66%). Under Villanueva, crime went down. Under Luna, crime is up, and arrests are down.

    Crime Increases Under Luna: Sharp spikes in Homicides, GTA, and assaults.

    Part 1 Crime Change: Villanueva (-6.2%) vs. Luna (+17.5%)

    From Growth to Collapse: LASD Staffing 2018–2025

    1. Under McDonnell: Deputies fell from 9,250 to 9,200.
    2. Under Villanueva: Staffing surged to 10,000 until the Board’s hiring freeze stalled
    3. Under Luna: Staffing collapsed from 9,100 to 8,000 in just two

    Villanueva rebuilt LASD. Luna shrunk it. This collapse in staffing means fewer patrols, slower response times, and greater danger for both deputies and the public. Help is on the way!

     

  • Understanding the Threat of LASD’S Staffing Crisis

    Understanding the Threat of LASD’S Staffing Crisis

    The “Defund the Police” craze of 2020 is now five years in the rearview mirror, but the impact of that movement is still reverberating today in Los Angeles County.  As I’ve said often, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department remains the most understaffed law enforcement agency in the entire nation.  That was true in 2018, when there were 9,200 sworn within the LASD, and even after I hired over a thousand deputies to bring the number up to 9,986 – the highest ever recorded for the agency – in April of 2020, right before defunding became an obsession.

    When the “Summer of Love” hit in 2020, along with the pandemic, we had sufficient staffing to weather violent protests AND pandemic quarantines.  LASD deputies, working side by side with local police departments and the National Guard, thwarted efforts to destroy Beverly Hill’s Rodeo Drive, the Fairfax District, the Citadel in Commerce, and other commercial districts across the county.  The pandemic forced the closure of the Superior Court system at the time, which allowed us to replace those lost to quarantine from our Court Services Division.  Bottom line, having enough boots on the ground worked, period. We did not become another Seattle or Minneapolis.

    Fast forward to 2025, under the Luna administration, the LASD has collapsed silently as the local media looks studiously the other way.  With over 4,000 vacancies, sworn staffing levels are now below 8,000 – a figure not seen since the early 1980’s.  As a point of reference, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, in 2018 the national average per capita was 2.41 cops per 1,000 residents.  In California that figure was 2.0 per 1,000 residents, while the LASD was at a frightening 0.9 per 1,000 residents.  As we speak, our number has slipped to an unfathomable 0.7 deputies per 1,000 residents.  That number represents a direct threat to public safety.

    Perhaps having only 0.7 deputies per 1,000 residents has been the goal all along for the board of supervisors and the far-left activist crowd chanting for the outright elimination of law enforcement, prisons, and county jails.  In real terms this is why there were insufficient deputies available in January to effect timely evacuations and we tragically lost 31 lives in the firestorms.  Deputies are falling asleep at the wheel after enduring back to back double shifts and shouldering an unsustainable overtime burden.  Under Sheriff Luna the LASD is on pace to spend half a billion dollars on overtime, a record amount that telegraphs his failed leadership.

    Simply put, the good people of Los Angeles County and the LASD cannot survive another Luna administration.  We have to get back to the business of fighting crime and saving people’s lives, and the only way to do that is to be fully staffed and prepared for natural disasters, crime, and the upcoming World Cup, Super Bowl, and 2028 Olympics.  The first step is to hire 2,000 deputies in the next two years, something I have done before and if given the opportunity will do again.

     

  • A New Wave of Dissent Inside LASD – ALADS Under Fire, Deputies Say Union Leadership Has Failed Them

    A New Wave of Dissent Inside LASD – ALADS Under Fire, Deputies Say Union Leadership Has Failed Them

    The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) is facing its most serious reckoning in decades. What started as a trickle of anonymous letters from frustrated rank-and-file deputies has now erupted into a full-scale meltdown of leadership credibility.

    The latest open letter, published and circulated widely on social media, rips into ALADS leadership for what deputies describe as weak, tone-deaf, and complicit bargaining with Los Angeles County officials.

    The anonymous deputy, writing under the blunt header “An Open Letter to ALADS From a Deputy Who’s Had Enough,” accuses the union of failing its members at every turn. “Let’s not sugarcoat it. ALADS is failing us. Period,” the letter begins, calling out the most recent “update” from union leaders as little more than fluff designed to pacify angry members.

    EMPTY WINS, REAL LOSSES

    The letter contrasts ALADS’ so-called progress with the concrete victories achieved by other law enforcement unions. Inglewood PD secured a 15 percent raise this year, with more increases locked in for the next three years. Riverside County deputies are already seeing 19 percent raises. LAPD officers walked away with a contract worth nearly a billion dollars, with built-in recruitment and retention incentives. Even Anaheim PD, a department far smaller than LASD, landed 30 percent cadet raises and a package of longevity and hiring bonuses.

    Meanwhile, ALADS’ message to deputies? That they had “refused to take a zero.” The anonymous deputy dismissed this as an insult: “Congratulations. That should have been the bare minimum from day one. You’re celebrating surviving the first round while everyone else is winning championships.”

    THE COST OF COMPLICITY

    The deputy also points to a deeper betrayal. While the Board of Supervisors pleads poverty, they simultaneously approved a half-billion-dollar renovation of the county’s glass tower headquarters. That money alone, the letter notes, could have funded raises and new recruits. “They know it. You know it. But nobody’s willing to say it in the room,” the deputy wrote.

    The criticism doesn’t stop at economics. The letter accuses ALADS of enabling dangerous conditions: ignoring the staffing crisis, rampant overtime abuse, and unchecked attrition. “This department is crumbling. The numbers don’t lie. Hiring is nonexistent. Attrition is at a crisis point. Morale is so low it’s in the dirt. And yet, ALADS still thinks the status quo is good enough.”

    A PATTER OF REVOLT

    This is not the first time deputies have taken matters into their own hands. As The Current Report has documented, the “Just a Deputy” letters that began circulating in 2023, and have become a barometer of discontent inside LASD. Those letters highlighted skyrocketing suicides, internal corruption, and deep resentment toward Sheriff Robert Luna’s leadership. Each one landed like a bombshell, exposing fractures ALADS and the County could no longer ignore.

    The latest letter represents an escalation: not just airing grievances but calling ALADS complicit. “You’re not even ineffective – you’re complicit,” the deputy charged.

    THE BREAKING POINT

    For deputies, the message is clear: they no longer trust ALADS to fight for them. “We want action. We want results. We want you to act like you actually represent us. Or step aside and let someone else who isn’t scared to fight take your place.”

    As attrition worsens, morale continues to crater, and deputies continue to shoulder unsafe workloads, the union’s credibility crisis deepens. The anonymous letter ends with a damning conclusion:

    “You’re not protecting us. You’re placating the county while the rest of us bleed.”

    With ALADS facing revolt from within and rising public scrutiny, the question now is not whether deputies are angry—it’s how much longer ALADS leadership can cling to power before rank-and-file pressure forces a reckoning.