Hundreds of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have anonymously admitted to being offered a role in secretive "cliques" or "deputy gangs" within stations, according to a new study.
Of the more than 1,600 deputies who participated in the RAND Institute study, 16 percent said they had been asked at least once to join a subgroup of their station. A quarter of them said the invitation to join happened in the last five years. The deputies were never directly asked if they were current members of the secretive groups.
The anticipated study, titled "Understanding Subgroups Within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department," comes after decades of rumors, and was commissioned by the office of the L.A. County Counsel.
"For decades, groups of LASD deputies have organized themselves into secret subgroups, some of which have allegedly committed illegal acts or violated departmental policy," the study's authors wrote.
"Although the LASD has acknowledged that these groups exist, their purpose and actions within the department have remained unclear," it said. The report fund a variety of subgroups: "Some are drinking groups," and some "encourage a culture of aggressive policing," according to the researchers.
Community stakeholders told researchers that the cliques harass residents, cover up for fellow deputies and target former inmates, in particular people of color. Lead researcher Sam Peterson said subgroups are more likely to form at "fast" stations, meaning stations in areas with higher levels of violent crime.
"Part of the reason these groups form is to identify deputies who the group perceives to be doing the real work in these areas and to exclude people who aren’t doing that," he said.
L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis criticized the sheriff’s department for lack of action on the cliques.
"It is unfortunate that due to LASD leadership’s inability and frankly, unwillingness to consistently hold deputies and their respective supervisors accountable, there exists a diminishing relationship between the department and residents," she said.
Solis added that the county has had to pay almost $55 million dollars since 1990 in settlements related to claims involving deputy gangs and its members.
The RAND report followed on the heels of another investigation into LASD cliques. The Loyola Law School Center for Juvenile Law and Policy published its findings in January of this year and listed 18 subgroups, some dating back to the 1970s.
"The evidence that deputy gangs exist, when viewed in its totality in a single report, is overwhelming," said chief author Sean Kennedy, who is a member of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission.
"These deputy gangs foster a culture of violence and escalate uses of force against community members, including fatal shootings. The institutional failure to address these deputy gangs in any meaningful way has deprived the community of equal justice under the law," he said.
Though the Loyola report’s findings pointed to a long history of secret groups within the LASD, the so-called Executioners were brought to the wider public’s attention through a whistleblower that alleged the group runs a number of stations.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents parts of South L.A., Inglewood and Torrance in Congress, wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in July requesting a federal investigation into the Executioners.
"Deputies at the LASD Compton Station reportedly 'chase ink,' a slang term for a deputy who attempts to win favor with the Executioners by committing violent acts in hopes of receiving the group tattoo denoting gang membership," she wrote.
"The gang allegedly sets illegal arrest quotas, threatens and harasses fellow deputies, and holds parties after shootings, called '998 parties,' which are in part a celebration that a new deputy will be inked by the gang," Waters reported.
Research presented in the RAND study found that several of the groups were actively adding members at the time the survey was conducted. There are more than 10,000 sworn deputies and 8,000 civilian staff in the LASD, making it the largest sheriff’s department in the world, according to L.A. County.
The sheriff's department has not yet released a statement on the RAND study.
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