LA County Sheriff Wants 1,100 More Deputies

As part of a public hearing Wednesday, May 10, on Los Angeles County’s proposed $43 billion budget, Sheriff Robert Luna asked for funding to recruit 1,100 deputies, double up on captains at problem Sheriff’s stations, purchase a jail management system and supply new Tasers to deputies on patrol.

The requests appear to be over and above the $4 billion allocated in L.A. County CEO Fesia Davenport’s recommended 2023-2024 fiscal year budget. It already includes a $135 million increase in the Sheriff’s Department budget and $6.6 million to restart the department’s Office of Constitutional Policing, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports.

Instead of one per station as per usual, Luna wants to place two captains at the East Los Angeles Station and two captains at the Compton Station. Under his plan, one captain would focus on administrative duties and the other would practice community engagement. The managerial doubling up would help the stations come into compliance with the Department’s standards, he said.

In addressing county jails that are tangled in lawsuits due to overcrowding and face a Department of Justice consent decree that ordered the county to improve jail conditions and halt excessive force, Luna wants to turn to technology. He wants to install a digital monitoring system to track the whereabouts of inmates and jail deputies, and said he was shocked the county did not have such a system

If he fails to improve the county jails, Luna said federal or state receivership “appears to be a very real possibility.”