Antelope Valley Press
By. Julie Drake

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Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, talked rising crime rates, homelessness, funding for law enforcement, District Attorney George Gascón and illegal marijuana cultivation sites during a Wednesday afternoon virtual discussion hosted by Garcia.

“This is a bipartisan issue,” Garcia said. “Yes, I happen to be a Republican and the sheriff happens to be a Democrat. But the reality is that our public safety and collective security at all levels, whether it’s national security, all the way to neighborhood and local security, knows no party lines.”

Outrage over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in May 2020, prompted nationwide efforts to defund law enforcement agencies.

According to Villanueva, that led to the three DEFs — defund, defame and defang — against law enforcement agencies.

“And now the results, they speak for themselves,” Villanueva said. “We saw a massive increase in violent crime in every major city that experimented with defunding.”

As some jurisdictions, including the City of Los Angeles, scaled back defunding efforts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was the only one to double down, Villanueva said.

“Over the last two years the Board of Supervisors has gone down a path of privatizing a lot of county functions,” Villanueva said.

That replaces well-paying government jobs with nonprofit service providers who have no accountability, the sheriff said.

“All very well-connected to the Board of Supervisors with massive six-figure salaries,” Villanueva added. “They’re hiring kids for 15 bucks an hour to hand out water to the homeless, for example.”

The next step is to replace deputies with “ambassadors.”

“The whole notion is that somehow that cops are evil and need to be eliminated from society for the sake of the community,” Villanueva said. “And that narrative is absolutely false, and it was driven by opportunists.”

Villanueva added some politicians have buyer’s remorse.

The conversation continues at the federal level, Garcia said.

Garcia sits on the Appropriations Committee and the Commerce and Justice subcommittee, which funds the Department of Justice.

“Many that have reversed and sort of now rejected this defund the police movement, we still are having conversations at the federal level about defunding the police during these appropriations hearings,” Garcia said. “They’re making it so that local law enforcement agencies have to sign up for certain conditions in order to be eligible for grants that are actually contradictory to law and order and helping police officers do their job.”

Garcia asked Villanueva how defunding police efforts impacted his department.

The LA County Sheriff’s Department has always been underfunded by the Board of Supervisors, Villanueva said.

“They use that underfunding to control the department,” he said.

Villanueva, who is up for re-election this year, started his term in office $101 million in the hole due to underfunding by the Board of Supervisors.

He used health care costs for retirees as a example.

“They take it out of my budget knowing that I can’t control it,” Villanueva said. “When the costs increase and they don’t provide for the cost increase, that means I’m defunded.”

The county also does not cover the cost of the department’s three consent decrees. The Board also removed 1,281 budgeted positions.

“Now we’re struggling because we have only 71% of our patrol station personnel is available,” Villanueva said. “So that means they got to do 100% with only 71% .”

Sheriff’s deputies at the Santa Clarita, Lancaster and Palmdale stations are logging 70 to 100 hours of overtime per month, Garcia said.

The county also imposed a hiring freeze, so Villanueva cannot replace the senior investigators who retire. With a hiring freeze, those senior employees cannot train or mentor the new generation.

There is a 25% vacancy rate among investigators he cannot replace, Villanueva said.

He cited Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis in particular.

“We do have an ally in Kathryn Barger, who’s a pro-law enforcement, pro-security partner in this,” Garcia said. “What can we do as citizens; what can the average citizen do to help your cause?”

Villanueva suggested people to speak their mind and tell the Board of Supervisors that they do not support defunding law enforcement.

“They need to refund and defend law enforcement,” Villanueva said. “They need to unfreeze the hiring right now on the sheriff’s department.”

Villanueva added the department will post contact information for all five supervisors on their social media pages.

Garcia pledged to do the same.

“This isn’t a call to protest, this isn’t a call to do anything outside of legal limits,” Garcia said. “This is a call to call people who have been elected by we the people and hold them accountable for these policies that are actually putting us in harm’s way.”