County sheriffs, unlike police officers, are elected officials who have sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, have similar but different duties, and are not under the control of partisan politicians with a malignant agenda.

Therefore, it is alarming that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, all progressive communist democrats, except for one conservative, is attempting a naked power grab by voting to create a ballot measure to oust the duly elected Sheriff from office and appoint a replacement.

LA County Board of Supervisors Voted on Ballot Measure to Oust Elected Sheriff From Office

The Board of Supervisors voted to draft the ballot measure 4-1 in order to potentially have the power to remove not only Sheriff Villanueva but also appoint a Sheriff of their choosing. The one Supervisor who did not vote in favor of this was Kathryn Barger, the lone, common sense, centrist Republican. The same four people who voted for this measure also voted to defund the police. Barger was the lone person who refused to defund the police. Now, the Supervisors want to take down the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department by ousting Villanueva.

Supervisor Barger said this about the vote today:

“This proposed Charter Amendment sets a dangerous precedent and creates a slippery slope for the Board of Supervisors to override the will of the voters. The Sheriff of Los Angeles County, as in all other counties across California, is a constitutionally elected officer, democratically elected every four years. Considering that the current Sheriff is less than four months away from their election, the timing of this action seems highly political.”

“If the goal of this Board is ‘Promoting Accountability and Community Safety Through Check and Balances,’ then this action should include all County elected officials – the Assessor, the District Attorney and the Supervisors themselves. A Charter Amendment focused on only one office undermines the credibility of the Board and its underlying intentions.”   <Source>   

How you get rid of a corrupt, incompetent, or malfeasant sheriff is already defined in law…

As a charter county, Los Angeles has express constitutional power to amend its charter to provide removal procedures for elected county officers like its Sheriff. Charter counties have two primary options for removing their sheriffs: recall by the voters and removal by the county governing body. But because the state constitution requires all sheriffs to be elected, a charter county's board of supervisors cannot convert the Sheriff into an appointed position. Nor can a board of supervisors interfere with a sheriff's independent investigative function; consequently, a board's direct-removal powers can be exercised only for cause, such as official misconduct. <Source>

What is disturbing about this ballot proposal is not that the County Board of Supervisors can remove a sitting sheriff, but they have the power to appoint one of their choosing – likely a fellow progressive communist democrat willing to pursue their socialist agenda and quash dissent in the county.

Malignant ballot measures…

Los Angeles voters just delivered a huge win for the defund the police movement

LA’s “Yes on J” campaign flipped the message from defunding cops to investing in everything else. It worked brilliantly.

Los Angeles voters have approved Measure J, also known as “Reimagine LA County,” which requires that 10 percent of the city’s unrestricted general funds — estimated between $360 million and $900 million per year — be invested in social services and alternatives to incarceration, not prisons and policing.

In practice, that is exactly what Measure J is likely to do. The measure’s language does not explicitly require that the funds for social services and incarceration alternatives must be diverted from law enforcement and the prison system. Nevertheless, in an August board meeting, acting county chief executive Fesia Davenport said that the Sheriff’s Department — which accounts for $2 billion of the existing local budget — would likely be impacted.

The fact that Measure J echoes demands to defund the police isn’t an accident. The charge to support the initiative was led by the Re-Imagine L.A. County coalition: a collection of almost 100 local racial and criminal justice organizations, including Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, progressive political groups, and local unions — many of which had been at the forefront of the successful organizing effort to stop LA County’s $2.2 billion jail expansion plan in 2019. <Source>

Bottom line…

Because the incumbent Sheriff faces an election in four months, where the will of the people will be expressed, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is telegraphing that they will not respect that vote and replace Sheriff Villanueva on a trumped-up charge (much like those levied against Donald Trump) soon after the election.

Secondarily, county resources are being used to disparage a single candidate for office to interfere with a legitimate election by publicizing the Sheriff's alleged poor performance --whether true or not.

We are so screwed, considering that the County of Los Angeles is devolving into a cesspool of corruption, chaos, crime, disrepair, and seediness as funds are prioritized for ineffective and wasteful social programs rather than public safety and infrastructure.

-- steve