Factually! with Adam Conover - Criminal Gangs Run the Sheriff's Department with Jessica Pishko

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

When it comes to police reform, one of the most glaring and urgent issues is the unchecked power of sheriff departments. Once elected, sheriffs face almost no oversight and are nearly impossible to remove from office. This lack of accountability has led to widespread corruption, with some departments acting as though they’re above the law. Even more disturbing is the existence of actual police gangs, like those found within the LA County Sheriff’s Department, operating with impunity under this broken system. This week, Adam sits down with lawyer and journalist Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, to explore how sheriffs went from being iconic figures in the American imagination to becoming some of the most corrupt and dangerous forces in the country. Find Jessica's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Explore themes of friendship, loss, and hope with Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Find what piques your imagination. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible

trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show again. This week we're talking about law enforcement. You know, there's a really weird thing about law enforcement in America. We have a structure that almost no other country does. In many parts of this country, you'll have a police department,

the leader of which is appointed by the mayor, right? But then you will separately also have a sheriff's department, which does basically the same thing, except that the sheriff is an elected official who's accountable to no one but himself or herself But really mostly himself That's strange, right? It's strange that we have two departments that are structured differently that do basically the same thing Why is that? Also consider this, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is famous for being the largest sheriff's department in the country,

but it's also famous for its rich tradition of scandal, corruption, and violence. One recent sheriff, Lee Baca, was convicted of trying to cover up the rampant and horrific abuse in LA County jails, and after 16 years in office, he left in disgrace and was eventually sentenced to six months in prison. Well, so this is an elected office, right?

So the people get a say. And in 2018, the people of Los Angeles elected a new sheriff, Alex Villanueva, on a platform of cleaning up the sheriff's department. Surely this time things would be different, right? Unfortunately not. Villanueva added jet fuel to the trash fire at the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

He was involved in a coverup of inmate mistreatment, he incessantly attacked the press, and he even raided the home of an LA County supervisor who was a critic of the department, literally using his law enforcement powers to try to silence another elected official who was exercising their valid oversight function.

That's fucking insane. The LA Times called Villanueva a loose, dangerous, misfiring cannon aimed at his perceived enemies. And if all that sounds like Villanueva was acting more like, I don't know, a gang boss than an elected official, well, you're goddamn right. Because for decades, the LA Sheriff's Department has been rife with literal criminal gangs. Groups of deputies in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, law enforcement officers have formed gangs

with their own initiations, tattoos, often based on their race. They're known for their dumb names like the Bandidos, the Compton Executioners, and the Linwood Vikings, but more importantly, they are known for abuse, corruption and murder. They basically operate as an extra legal shadow government within law enforcement, enforcing their own twisted rules

of how the sheriff's department should operate, completely separate from what the public might want or need. I mean, this is just fucking bonkers. It's not the sort of thing that you think should exist in a country like America, where we respect the rule of law, where we have a democracy that is supposed to serve all of the people, right?

And yet it does, not just in Los Angeles, but in sheriff's departments across the country. It just seems as though there is something special about sheriff's departments and the people who lead them that cause them to be more violent, more abusive, and more corrupt than normal police, which already have plenty of their own problems. So what is it about sheriffs

that make them such a pernicious force in America today? Are they just cops in cowboy hats, or are they something much worse? Well, on the show today, we have an incredible guest who is going to answer that question for us. But before we get into it, I just wanna remind you, if you wanna support the show, you can do so on Patreon. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free.

Don't forget to watch my new stand-up special, Unmedicated, out now at dropout.tv. Use the code ADAM33 for 33% off your first year subscription. And if you like stand-up comedy, come see me on the road. I'm doing my brand new hour of stand-up. If you have seen me on the road before, you have not seen this material come out. Coming up soon. I'm headed to Austin, Texas, Batavia, in Illinois, San Francisco, California, Toronto, Ontario, Chicago, Boston,

and East Providence, Rhode Island, all places that have their own sheriffs who I hope are not going to bust my head when I show up in that city to perform standup comedy, head to AdamConover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now, let's get to this week's episode. Here today to talk about the dire problem that sheriffs pose to American society and democracy, my guest is Jessica Pischko.

She's a journalist, a lawyer, and the author of the new book, The Highest Law in the Land, How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy. Please welcome Jessica Pischko. Jessica, thank you so much for being on the show today. how the unchecked power of sheriffs threatens democracy. Please welcome Jessica Pischko. Jessica, thank you so much for being on the show today. Happy to be here. So I just want to start first of all, I often don't think about the fact that in the city

where I live, Los Angeles, we have two kinds of law enforcement. We have a police department and we have a sheriff's department, which do basically the same thing. Only one is elected and one is not. And that's true for many, many jurisdictions around America. Why the hell is that the case, first of all?

Like, what is the point of having two law enforcement, like top law enforcement officials, one of whom's appointed, one of whom's elected? The sheriffs would say that they came first. That's their claim to fame. The sheriff came from England, where it was called the Shire Reeves. So this is your sheriff of Nottingham

who went to town, collected taxes. Nobody liked him, right? Delivered the orders of the king. He was so mean to all those animals in the Disney movie. He really was. He was a bad guy. And the story became that when people came, white people came to the United States,

started forming the colonies. Over time, you know, the United States, when it was young, was very proud of being a democracy. And so they thought, oh, we want to make all these offices democratically elected. There really were no city police. There were very few cities. There were sometimes slave catchers or posses,

but they just didn't have formal police, which is hard to picture because we have so many law enforcement today. When Andrew Jackson became president, so this is the 1830s, he had this idea that he would make all local offices, including sheriffs, should be elected. There was this great wave of electing everybody. This is how we got elected county boards and elected school boards and sheriffs and all sorts of stuff.

And then this idea, as the United States began to acquire more territory to the West went with it. Now, it was also time there was a lot of war. We had a lot of, there were a lot of wars against Native Americans. Native Americans were being moved westward to different places. We also were fighting the Mexicans. We were taking over parts of what was Mexico. And so as a result, there were a lot of mostly men going last to, was sort of like

decommissioned military. They had a very militia style way of thinking and those guys basically became sheriffs and or members of sheriff's posse. So in California, they would call their law enforcement, the vigilance committee, which was just top dudes met in the saloon, sit around with the sheriff and say, Hey, I think we ought to go, you know, we, this guy is really causing us a problem. I think we need to get a posse and go after him. This is like straight out of a wild west movie.

It is. That's the Wild West style. It's literally true. It is. Except probably sometimes they're just roughing up somebody they didn't like or somebody who they didn't like the looks of, I would guess. Yes, so most of the time, right? The people that they were fighting,

so you were thinking they're fighting Native Americans, they're fighting a lot of people who are Mexican because of course it was Mexico. So people who were Mexican were living in that part of the United States. Overtime, it became a huge problem. They did it like what we would call houseless people, but they called hobos. So people would go westward.

They didn't have homes. They were a bunch of single men who had set up encampments outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco in particular. Um, nobody, the sort of bedded charge, the posses did not like that. So they would send like posses out regularly to kind of make sure these, uh, guys outside of town were not causing trouble. How did we get the modern sheriff of today? to kind of make sure these guys outside of town were not causing trouble. How did we get the modern sheriff of today?

Like the guy with the badge and the, a picture of my head, the modern sheriff. Where did that, how did we get to that? So over time, policing changed a lot, right? Like people got guns, we got judges in courts, and sheriffs began to use their jail more. So the other thing sheriffs do is run the jail, which in a place like Los Angeles is what, 30,000 people?

That's like a, it's like a small city. Some places it's real small, maybe a dozen people. And keeping people in the jail was one of the sheriff's main jobs. And it was fee for service. So let's say there was, sometimes this would happen. Maybe there was an enslaved person who was captured. They would take that person to the sheriff

and say, sheriff, you're in charge. Hold this individual until their, its labor picks them up. When the enslaver picked him up, they would pay the sheriff a fee, like thank you very much. Or if they were never picked up, the sheriff would sell that person at an auction

and keep the proceeds. You're describing like a tow truck yard for people. Yes. It really was. We're gonna impound your slave, your enslaved person, and you can pick them up later and you'll have to pay us a fee. Yes, that's exactly what it was like. I mean, it really was like the people were objects and

shares were motivated to keep people alive because they wanted their fee. Right. So if you don't deliver the person and you know, original condition, you would not get your full fee. Oh my God. And it's a, it's a horrible thing. There's a dent on this guy that wasn't there before. I'm sorry.

This is like very dark humor. Please keep going. Oh, it is very dark, right? And then after the civil war reconstruction, sheriffs began to use the people of their jail. They leased them out. So this was called convict leasing, which a lot of people might've heard about.

They basically leased the people in their jail out to labor. So to factories or farms, mines, getting tar in the Everglades, which always stuck in my head because it was particularly miserable. As a task. Yeah, to be in the Everglades. And there's been stories about that happening today.

I mean, there's prisoners, I forget if it was Alabama, which state it was, who are, these are folks in prison, not in a jail, but who are being leased out to McDonald's to work at McDonald's. Then when their shift is over, they go back to prison. More Perfect Union just did a big investigative report on this. So as police become professionalized and modernized,

the sheriffs do as well. And they just what? They just keep hanging around in these jurisdictions. They what? They just keep hanging around in these jurisdictions. They do. They just keep hanging around in these jurisdictions. Now you have to think about the fact that 80% of the counties in the United States are rural or mostly rural.

That's a lot of counties. So that means even though most people, so like as generally speaking, 80% of people live in like 20% of the counties, that's like kind of a rough shorthand. So most people are moving to cities and living in cities. And I don't wanna say like city police didn't have their issues, right?

They thought like they have their own sort of story, but sheriff's continued to have a lot of power, particularly in these like large swaths of places where there were fewer people. And in certain places, sheriffs had a lot of power in the South and the West in particular. Some cities in the Northeast have other types of law enforcement. They have a constabulary, which is something more like a night watchman. Other places of the Northeast had slightly different kinds of law enforcement,

which is why you hear all about it. But yeah, the sheriff's rebate and a lot of it, honestly, is because they run jail. So 85 percent of jails in the country are run by an elected sheriff. That is at this point the bulk of what they do. But they do a lot of policing, especially in places, again, that are more rural or suburban. In the case of Los Angeles County, of course,

it's a bit different because the Los Angeles department is so large and they have so many cities that they police, right? So they're basically cities when they couldn't afford a police department, which is still true in a lot of places like, places in Louisiana, places in the West, like, sheriffs also do a lot of this work, again, fee for service. So basically you pay the sheriff to be your police. You say, okay, here's what you get, like one guy in a car for X,

and they actually pay like per guy in a car. Well, it is, the recurring theme of fee for service is really interesting that you've got people paying the sheriff historically to sort of impound people. And then you've got cities paying the sheriff's department. Hey, we can't afford our own, but we can contract it out to the county that we're a part of. But it's almost like,

that's literally sort of what a militia is, like an armed group that you can contract with or not. That's a very strange state of affairs. But also the fact that this is an elected position is very strange because you, I think, often think of law enforcement as being uncountable to the civilian government, right? To use a military analogy to a mayor

or to a governor or et cetera, but that's not really the case with elected sheriffs. So what's the problem with the sheriff's role being elected? But the main problem with it, I mean, look, it depends on what you think is a problem, I guess. Sheriffs don't think it's a problem, they think it's great. Of course. So they could claim, you know, they claim legitimacy because they're elected. So they say, well, I was elected. And so what I do is what the people elected me to do. And if they don't like it, they can just vote me out, right? That's a great way to

kind of pass the buck and say, like, I'm just doing what the people said they wanted. I mean the issue with it as you rightly point out is one, elections are only every four years, and two, I think people don't quite know what the sheriffs are doing, like what you're voting for, and that's because a lot of what sheriffs do to be quite honest is not something that people see. So like if the sheriff is serving people, you know, those little gross meat pies for meals, like the mystery meat lobs, you don't really... People might not know that because maybe they haven't been

in jail or don't have loved ones in jail. And the people who do know that might be people who have been in jail, and those are not people that get a lot of attention, right? People might not listen. So, like, I don't think people are thinking about the fact that that's what they're voting for. The other issue is, of course, if a sheriff decides to, like, go off the rails, and we see this now, right, the sheriffs are increasingly political.

Like, the politics on the national level is trickling down. So folks aren't really voting for sheriff based on like, I like this guy, he seems like a good dude, he goes to my church, whatever. They're voting for it because, you know, he supports Trump. Or he does not support Trump. So it's getting, it's sort of creating the situation with like their highly politicized figures

who will say, you know, this is whatever, Biden's border policy, it's the fault of Joe Biden and that's why we have immigration or something like that. So that's a big problem. The police in general have become politicized and even here in Los Angeles, the LAPD will do things that have political power to them. The officers will go to neighborhood meetings and say,

oh, your local elected official is too tough on homelessness and that's why there's a problem. So you need to get someone new in. I've been in meetings where I've heard this happen. You also have police doing you know, doing, basically taking labor actions without announcing that's what it is in order to try to get more money for the police department, et cetera.

But that's a little bit of, those are more subtle political activities. When you're talking about the sheriffs, you know, there's a much bigger difference. I mean, Alex Villanueva, who was the sheriff of Los Angeles, I'm sure you're very familiar with him, as he's one of the most egregious examples of an abusive sheriff, I think, Alex Villanueva, who was the sheriff of Los Angeles, I'm sure you're very familiar with him, as he's one of the most egregious examples of an abusive sheriff, I think, in America.

You probably know some that are even worse, but this is the one where I live. This man was just objectively corrupt, but could not be removed by the county supervisors, who are the people who supervise the entire county of Los Angeles. If the chief of police was that corrupt, well, the mayor could just kick him out.

But when the sheriff is that corrupt, there's nothing that can be done until he serves out his term. A, that's one problem. And B, the guy was going on Tucker Carlson, like every night, going like, this is Joe Biden's fault or whatever. And running as though he was

a Republican congressman or something like that. And I think we've all learned to accept that when we're talking about the legislature or even a governor or the president, that there's those partisan differences. But I think that most people feel that law enforcement shouldn't be a partisan state of affairs, right? That it should be something a little bit more

dispassionate, I don't know. Well, it does seem, I was gonna say, Alex Old Wave I know well, because he gave my book a not rave review. He was. Ah! Ah! Ah!

What? Your book critiquing the office of sheriff, the one of the most power mad sheriffs in America, didn't like the book. Where did he write this review? He said it, you know, he still does an Instagram live. He still thinks he's writing for office. So he held it up and said that I quote,

trash him and every other Sheriff known to man. I mean, that's a pretty good advertisement. You should put that on the cover. I was good. I was impressed. He read it. I, you know, I had a feeling he was one of those guys who looked

at the index for his name. So, you know, he's like, where am I? Where am I? Where? That's what I do. I'm a name searcher too. I search my own name. People know.

But yeah, I get that. I mean, yeah, he was kicked out of office. We have a new sheriff now, but he was not reelected. But yes, he continually has almost been like running, running, running. He's very much like Trump in that he refuses to accept defeat electorally. He's just like always continuing to be at it

and like speaking to his constituents. Right. Yeah, I mean, what do you write about his special case in the book or are there even worse examples of abuse by sheriffs? Well, I don't wanna say the sheriffs are worse or better, but what he did was really common. Now, the reason why Alex Villanueva

I think was more noticeable is that one, Los Angeles is big, and two, Los Angeles is diverse, right? Like, you have a lot of people who are more liberal leaning, and they look at that and they say, that's not cool. Like, you can't create a special task force and arrest people who criticize you, right? That's something he did. And that's why I think it's more pernicious in a way, because all the things he did are things that sheriffs are doing, but they're not getting either as much attention or pushback. So all the tactics are the same. So for example, just refusing to do what people say, you know, do this, you can't hire this guy, this guy was no good.

Well, whatever, I'm gonna do it, what are you gonna do about it, right? People kind of shrug and they're like, they sort of don't always know how to handle it, I think. And more, which is like what sheriffs do is they use the fact that they're police to harass their opponents. So it is unfortunately relatively common to do things

like look up numbers of ex-girlfriends and harass them. Harass politicians they don't like, harass people at the county commission they don't like. And beyond that, I think it's the abuses of the people either that they're policing or that they have in their jail too. That's, you know, Alex will do it, but maybe didn't do it directly,

but I think we all saw that his deputies, who were forming gangs, you know, felt emboldened and entitled to go around. I mean, they shot people, they were beating people up in jail. He had kind of just like a attitude of, well, you guys could go do whatever. I'm not gonna, I'm on your side.

I'm not gonna do anything about it. And because they're elected, sheriffs have a lot more impunity. Like again, if you're the chief of police, well, you do have to answer to the mayor at least. You have a lot more impunity than most appointed officials because you're seen as the head of law enforcement and you probably have a commanding position

with the police unions, which are politically powerful, et cetera. But at the very least you have a boss, but the sheriff literally does not have a boss. Like nobody can tell the sheriff what to do because they're sort of the top of their own pyramid, right? And so they can, it makes it right for abuse like that. Like if someone says, like you say,

this sheriff, this deputy abused a lot of people, they should not be hired back, the sheriff can do it and no one can tell them not to. No one can investigate, no one can, I mean, there's some oversight powers by other electeds, but nobody is, nobody can say, hey, you're fired, right? And that's maybe a problem. nobody can say, hey, you're fired. Right. And that's maybe a problem. No one can say, Hey, you're fired.

And I would say like, look, there are things that sheriffs do. Like some of this stuff is not legal, but the problem is that they generally get a lot of leeway, right? Like people give them a really long leash to do whatever they want. No, all that stuff like Goya,oya Tucker Carlson or all these sheriffs who appear on Fox or Newsmax, that's all legal, right? This is the legal stuff. And the other problem is in general being kind of an excessively violent

police, also not really illegal, right? That's a, that's a legal thing. Now, of course you had Baca who did have to go to jail, right? So he did enough. The preceding sheriff. Right, the preceding sheriff. Was so corrupt and doing so many illegal things and abusing people, he actually went to jail.

Villanueva was the guy who was elected by, I voted for the guy, people elected him because he thought, we all thought that he would be, he'd clean the place up. He was the new guy. He was the outsider and he was worse by many measures. But, but yes. So they can do enough things where they can eventually be,

go to prison themselves. Yeah. I mean, I want to be clear, you know, like if you look at someone like Joe Arpaio, I mean, Joe Arpaio did, right? He got sued by the Department of Justice. He was supposed to go to prison until he got pardoned. So, I mean, like, there are instances where some of these sheriffs do get in trouble.

I mean, the problem is, of course, like, one, everyone knows it's always hard to prosecute police generally, and it's sort of extra hard with it's a sheriff. And again, all this political activity, like saying, even lying. During COVID, we had a lot of sheriffs who refused to enforce COVID rules. They didn't want to close businesses. They would spread like rumors about vaccines. So there were some sheriffs who would just post like random things about like vaccines or their opinions about, you know, COVID, which is, that's all perfectly legal.

Like they're allowed to post their opinion, you know, extremely well versed opinions about health and vaccines. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned the deputy gangs. This is a big problem again here in Los Angeles. I know in other parts of the country as well, where at least here for many, many decades,

there have been just straight up criminal gangs in the LA sheriff's department. We're talking about an entire station will be run by, or sheriff's whatever headquarters, a particular region, will be run by or sheriff's whatever headquarters, a particular region will be run by a gang that has a name. They have induction ceremonies. They have tattoos that they give each other. They, some of them receive special tattoos when they kill members of the public for the first time. And those gangs, you know, they intimidate people.

I mean, you know more than me, I'm just trying to set the table here. It's like shocking when you read about it. Now there's plenty of abuse in the regular police departments as well, but what is it about sheriff's deputies that caused them to form these gangs and behave differently from other police?

I do think that there's a trend by which I would say, one, sheriffs themselves tend to be more corrupt than police, like just in terms of taking money, kind of gun, some have done things like badges for donations, they'll sell off like auxiliary deputy badges and stuff. Sheriffs have a lot more control over what they do with their office. So if they wanna have a posse,

they can have a posse if they feel like it, no one can stop them. And same in most places, sheriffs get to hire and fire their deputies. Now it's not true in California because you do have deputy unions. But what we did see was, right, Alex Odleva could hire his loyal friends back.

And that's something a lot of sheriffs do, right? They hire their, I mean, in smaller places, they hire their cousins, you know, their brother-in-law, whatever that guy that nobody else likes. They hire them and put them in their office and say, all right, you're my deputy now, and you could do what I say because they have that power and they get to pick, you know, who's my second in command? Who's gonna run this, you know, who's gonna be in charge of this thing?

I mean, and they, some of the people they pick are, yeah, it could be pretty wild. I mean, even again, Alex won the wave of a big department. I mean, he hired back a guy who had been fired for domestic abuse. I mean, he was not fit. It was plain, he was not fit. It was plain he was not fit.

But this is relatively common. They hire, they don't check, they don't have to check backgrounds if they don't feel like it. A lot of them say that, oh, I don't have time, I'm busy, whatever. So that kind of creates like, you know, in smaller departments, kind of like a mini gang.

The New York Times reported on a sheriff's department in Mississippi where they had basically a gang that they called themselves the Goon Squad. They went around abusing people and they texted each other. They were very proud of it. And I think, well, two things happened. One is that unfortunately,

people who don't go along with the program, if they're smart, they leave because why wouldn't you, right? If you're in a place where it's being run by a deputy gang, you leave. I think less. Yeah. You wouldn't fight the deputy gang. That would be like a death sentence. You'd be like, this is horrible.

The best thing I can do is get the fuck out of here and maybe tell somebody after I leave what the hell's going on there in there. Yeah. It's genuinely scary because they will, I mean, they could be real bullies. I mean, they'll do stuff. I mean, just the most horrific stuff. They could beat the shit out of you.

They have guns. They can kill with impunity. You're talking, I mean, I just wanna be really clear what we're talking about. We're talking about a gang like any other gang, except this gang is people with badges who don't go to jail or prison when they commit any kind of crime? You know like there's the the country is rife with stories of police killing people who they shouldn't being corrupt

We all know cops are never prosecuted and this is a group of them You're talking like a couple dozen people who are like when they come up to you And they say if you talk we will murder you You know that they will do it. And they will never be punished because they're the fucking cops. Like it's the most I'm sorry, I'm tripping out on it a little bit. It's like one of the most obviously egregiously corrupt practices in American government today is these deputy gangs.

And they have been almost impossible to root out. I mean, succession after succession of sheriff has been unable to get rid of them. They just say, oh, we're working on this problem of getting rid of the clicks. They won't even call them gangs. They'll call them clicks. And so like what, what is it that makes it impossible, seemingly for our city governments to get rid of these things? Cause it's, it was one of those things that makes you go, is America not a civilized society that we have corrupt gangs,

like running our law enforcement. It's insane. I'm not always clear that we are a civilized society sometimes. But I do look in LA, I think the particular problem is that LA is far. Like if you're an Antelope Valley, you're really far from like the main LASD headquarters. And so why would they can just do like, that's what happens, right?

They go out there, they just do what they want. And who's gonna tell them not to, right? They don't have like, you would have to send like mean principle over to tell them to stop. They're not gonna stop and nobody who's motivated to do it also. Like if you, I mean, this is, if you are law enforcement, if you break up the gangs, what will happen is one,

they'll all hate you and they'll just be like, we're gonna vote this guy out. I mean, they will like that. You cannot underestimate the power of deputies and their supporters to vote out sheriffs. When in a lot of places when people get sick of their sheriff, it's the deputies were like, I don't like this guy.

He's not letting us, you're not letting us do gang stuff. He's going to go. And so they just do their own political campaign and everyone listens to them because they're the deputies or the deputy union, and they say, we're supporting this person and that person that we're supporting, uh, Mr. Gang Guy for sheriff and everybody votes for that person. Of course they'd never say that out loud, but person, that we're supporting Mr. Gang Guy for sheriff, and everybody votes for that person. Of course, they never say that out loud,

but that's what they're really doing. And that's who Alex Villanueva was. He was the, he was like Mr. Deputy. There was a really funny New Yorker article about him that basically portrayed him as, he was the guy who wasn't like really allowed to join the gang. He was like the low guy on the totem pole.

Everyone was like, oh, this guy's kind of a punk. So he ends up running for sheriff later because he wants to impress all the guys who he wanted to be in the gang with. And they're like, okay, well now we'll let him in because he'll be like our guy at the top or whatever. That's basically his personality. Yeah, that's exactly right.

He wasn't the cool dude. He was the guy no one liked that much. And then he became sheriff and then, yeah, what did he do? He wanted to be popular. So he's like, yeah, y'all do what you want. I'm not gonna, you know, I just got a tough guy around and it looks good. I mean, another Southern California share similar

is Chad Bianco in Riverside, who, I don't know if you've heard about him. He's the oath keeper one. He didn't win. He ran and lost, but then the deputy in the deputy union decided they were stick of the sheriff. They're like, okay, we're going to go with Chad Bianco. You're going to be our guy.

And then he won. And then, you know, when chefs when they do stuff, like they get people, new uniforms, new cars, you've, like, you know, like, hey, I'm gonna get you new stuff, it'll be cool. It's like a patronage position. Like this is, I mean, this literally sounds like 19th century shit. It sounds like when you hear about stories

about like fire departments in New York, how they used to like get into fights over who could put the fire out. Or like the Tammany Hall days, where it's like someone gets elected and they buy everybody new cars. This is, it's such incredible corruption. We're talking about abuse of the public,

abuse of inmates, often sexual abuse of inmates. We're talking about bribery and graft. We're talking about literal gangs that are violent in our law enforcement. You say that, who is gonna do it? Nobody really wants to deal with the problem. I wanna deal with the problem. I don't have the power to,

but I would go to the Antelope Valley or I would try to put together some kind of government committee to do so, right? But this prob, like there are a lot of people who want to solve this problem and yet it seems to be intractable. I understand we don't have sort of the, the, the, the political will at the moment. Um, but it's a little bit baffling to me. I mean, even in, you know, every time we have a sheriff's election here in LA, the people who care about this end up saying, well, my God,

there's two candidates for sheriff and both of them suck because they're both former deputies, which means they're both were formerly in gangs. That's like, that's a, that's a, I would vote for you for sheriff Adams. If you run, I say you go ahead and run and we'll see. I mean, look, what I was, you know, when I was reporting the book, I was like, what do I do? And I talked to someone and they're like,

well, you could just fire everyone who's in a gang. They haven't done that yet. And I was like, well, that's a good point. Maybe they should just try that. So a simple method might be to fire everyone who's in a gang. But to do that, you would need a sheriff who didn't want to keep the gangs around, which so far all of them do.

That's so, I mean, as I said, they want to, I mean, they want to keep power and they want, it's hard, I mean, look, I don't, you normally say to be fair when it comes to sheriffs, but to be fair, when you're elected sheriff, you go into an office, like all the deputies are looking at you, like, I don't know about this guy, especially if you're elected as like a reform-minded sheriff, you go into an office, like all the deputies are looking at you like, I don't know about this guy. Especially if you're elected as like a reform minded sheriff,

you go in, they're like, I don't like this dude. I'm gonna, you know, throw away some paper. I mean, this is there are sheriffs who literally do this. They'll trash the office, throw stuff away, trash the evidence room. They're like, have fun, you know, doing this or they'll, you know, they don't do their paperwork right. It's, it kind of feels like, you know, oh, the sheriff is the boss. But if you have a lot of deputies who hate you, I, I can understand that it doesn't feel like you're the boss. Now, what I would say is you signed up to be a sheriff. You ran for office. so you know what you're getting into. I mean, look, I am a person who says

we shouldn't even have these sheriff's offices. So someone asked me how to reform, I forgot, someone asked me at one point, how to reform the LA Sheriff's Department. And I said, well, you'd have to get a sheriff candidate in who's willing to dissolve the whole thing. And I was like get a Sheriff candidate and who's willing to dissolve the whole thing. And I was like, until someone tells me they're willing to dissolve the whole thing,

I'm not buying any of their ideas. So actually, if I run for Sheriff, instead of just running on it and saying, I wanna run on breaking up the deputy gangs, I've never been in law enforcement in my life, but these deputy gangs are a real issue and we need to break them up, and that's what I'm running on,

and I'll also try to keep crime down. What I should actually say is, I'm running for sheriff, and I want to dissolve the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and I want to eliminate it. I think that'd be a good idea. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for a sheriff,

maybe not dissolve the whole thing, but I'm always waiting for sheriffs to say, I'm gonna downsize. I'm gonna downsize this department substantially. Well, and that, so it might be hard to run on that because, well, the odd thing is the public still has this default deference to law enforcement, right? If you say that to the public,

if you say to the public, as has been said many times, there's horribly corrupt deputy gangs rife in the department. It's basically an organized crime syndicate. Like that is, that we need to get rid of. The public then turns to the deputies. They just go, nah, we're good guys. We're trying to stop crime.

And the public ends up voting for the people, you know? Like, because the public has this sort of built in, you know, deference is, how much is that a problem when it comes to reform? I think, look, I mean, people, one, just have a lot of deference to police. When police say, we're the only thing that's gonna stop crime,

people tend to believe them. People need very little to believe police, They're always saying, well, you need us around to reduce crime, and then they commit crime, and then they still say, you need us around to reduce crime, and they're still around. They commit some crimes, you need us, and they're like, well, I think one is that too. Honestly, honestly, I think people think like, look, sure, us arrest bad people and put them in jail. They are like, jails are full of bad people. And they are arresting them and putting them in jail. And I don't want to do that. I had one chest told me asked me something like,

what do you want to do with people in jail? Do you want them in your house? And I said, well, maybe. I was like, if they're a good cook, I don't know. I was like, what's that supposed to mean? Yeah, maybe they're fine. A lot of people in jail haven't been convicted yet. A lot of them are serving shorter sentences.

A lot of them are genuinely sick. Like they have trouble with substitutes. They have health. I mean, a lot, you know, these are vulnerable people. We just said to guys with like steel toe boots and guns and sort of are like, go have in LA in particular, that's where deputies start. So they start in the jail. They tell them like, Hey, this is where you're going to learn about bad guys. So they start in the jail. They tell them like, hey, this is where you're gonna learn about bad guys. So they're like, you're learning about bad guys. And that's where they form their gangs.

Because look, I don't think anyone joins a sheriff's office thinking they're gonna work at the jail. I mean, that's like delivering people their mail and their laundry and like getting people their meds and like like young men joining the office or not like I'm really excited to like go push the laundry card They don't want they want to go like drive their car around and shoot big guns or whatever so You know what they tell them is like hey, we'll form a little gang and you beat some guys up.

It'll be fun. And then that's how they get up, move ahead, right? You have to sort of kiss up to who's there. And like I said, people, honestly, people who don't like it, they quit, which for which I don't blame them. It's a cruel and abusive system. So the psychology is really interesting

because it's almost as though you start as a corrections officer and then you graduate and you get to become the The sort of cop who has the most impunity of anybody Like most corrections officers They just got to go to the prison every day But oh if you go to the prison and you bust some heads like we tell you to then you get bumped up to Supercop basically that's very that's very different than either normal corrections officers or normal police officers.

And by the way, I'm with you that, look, there's a certain number of people in society who maybe need to be separated from the rest of society. There's folks out there who are difficult cases, but the majority of people in our jails and prisons are substance users, people who have committed crimes of poverty, people who have committed crimes of poverty, people who just got roughed up.

And then literally just, again, people who are being persecuted by criminal law enforcement officers who are in gangs, right? And are just like having fun abusing people. I wish it were, people are probably listening to this thinking I am overstating it. But like, you can look up, there's a meme here in Los Angeles, Google LASD gangs, and you will find so much incredibly shocking information.

There's a wonderful local reporter here named Cerise Castle who's done a bunch of work on it. You have as well. It's like difficult to overstate how deep this problem is and how acute it is. Is there anybody in a state who could step up and do something about this? What about the governors of our states presumably might have some sort of power? I guess eventually the feds could get involved when it gets bad enough, right?

That's what happened to Lee Baca. Yeah, that's what happened to Lee Baca. So we have a few, I mean, the problem is of course, like one, it's kind of insufficient because sometimes as the lawyer, I used to joke that, you know, being an asshole is not a crime. So, you know, being an annoying, being a political sheriff who goes on Tucker Carl's,

it's not a crime. The DOJ can't prosecute for it. Can't prosecute you for it. In some places, the governor has some limited power. Some places have a recall, right? I know people are talking in California about some recalls and California actually the attorney general technically has quite a lot of power.

But he has opened, the attorney general technically has quite a lot of power. But he has opened the attorney general has open investigation. I mean, the problem is always one and investigation comes after it already happened. Like a bad thing happens and then they investigate and then, you know, eight years later, the investigation ends and they're like, here's what we're going to do. And nobody remembers this. I feel like people don't remember. Yeah, they're probably.

And a lot of times, a lot of times the penalty is monetary. It'll be, you know, the victim will sue. Right. And then they'll win some multimillion dollar judgment against the sheriff's department and they'll get the money. But then the sheriff's department, well, they're not the ones who has to pay the money. The taxpayers pay the money.

And so you also have this problem where the sheriff's department, well, they're not the ones who have to pay the money, the taxpayers pay the money. And so you also have this problem where the sheriff's departments and the police departments end up draining the city budget to pay for all of the people that they're beating up, but it doesn't stop any of it. It just ends up being, oh, all this money's flowing out the door to the victims of this brutality. Right.

I mean, they don't really suffer personally. They rarely even suffer politically, right? Nothing bad. As you retire, go off, like nobody bothers you. I think the other thing about the lawsuits is, you know, the people who are harmed have to come forward and sue. And that's in a lot of places, like if you're in, you know, rural Mississippi, that's hard.

Like, they, you know, just, and their deputies, they take advantage of people without a lot of power. I was thinking, even if you look at deputy gangs, you know, on the street, the people they've killed, they're like 18 year olds, 20 year olds. They're like young teens, skateboarders. They're people without a lot of political power. And that's not, you know, that's on purpose because they're kind of picking people who just don't have the, you know, they don't know, it's hard to sue and it's hard to come forward.

Like it lots of places I've talked to, you know, especially like women who've been sexually assaulted by law enforcement. It's very hard to come forward and say, I'm going to sue a lot of times they have other, you know, they've been arrested before. They have substance use issues. They're trying to get their kids back in custody. And they're like, well, I, if I do this sheriff, one, I might lose and nothing will happen. And then what will happen?

They're going to come after me in my house and I, you know, I mean, it's going to cause all this trouble for me. And I just want to be left alone. I just want to go drive my car and not be harassed and get my kids back and all this stuff. I mean, some places like Washington State is trying to do a system where you can submit like an anonymous complaint, and then they go investigate. So the idea is like the state investigators bear the burden

of looking into issues of abuse to prevent sort of the most vulnerable people from having to like, yeah, you put your life on line. A lot of people then end up, I've just seen they leave town, the sheriff gets reelected and they're like, who believes this woman? She's, you know, she uses drugs, she's, you know, she has all these problems. They could point out to these people, they have,

they're like, look at this woman, has all these problems. Do you believe her or do you believe me? People like the sheriff and then he's like, cool. You know, like it's very, I feel like it's just extremely hard. Los Angeles is very fortunate in that they have a lot of, you have a lot of advocates there, like good advocates and good reporters.

So people know, like- Less every day, but we do have some good reporters still. Yeah. Yes. Like people know that there's gangs. Like a lot of places, people just, they know who live there, but people outside don't know. Right.

They just, you know, it's just all the people who live there every day have to kind of live their life and then deal with sheriff or law enforcement. And again, a lot of these chefs get reelected. Alex will do the exception, like a one hit wonder, but sheriff serve longer terms than appointed police chiefs. I mean, they get, those guys, some of these guys get elected like 10, 20, 40 years.

I mean, and then you have the ones where like there's kids or relatives get elected. So it's like a, like he's the sheriff. A dynasty. Yeah, like it's a literal king, like a little kingdom. There's one sheriff who I interviewed, he kept comparing himself to a night. Like he's very chivalrous, chivalrous and like a night and the posse is like his nights, like

they're going on a crusade. And then, you know, the, like he's, it's like this night, you can understand like this feeling, like they have a feeling like, Oh, it's this nightly dynasty. I can like pass along to my, you know, and I understand why an elected sheriff would, you know, Villanueva didn't do this. He was just sort of like out and out a criminal in public. But, you know, most sheriffs, I think, present the very respectable face.

I am, you know, gonna be deferential and I'm law enforcement and et cetera, because that presents a good face, you know, over the corruption and the gangs and everything else to the rest of government. But it really does strike me that like, as you say, here in LA, we do know about the gangs. It's pretty common knowledge.

You know, the newspapers will occasionally write, you know, deputy gang exists and abused people. And I think there was a story where people like, there were some reporters found the tattoo artist who was doing the tattoos for the gangs. And he was like, yes, there are gangs. And here's what the tattoo looked like and shit like that. People are aware of it.

You have to imagine that every person at a high level of government, the mayor, the governor, the county executives, they all know. And yet no one can do anything about it. So it sounds like the problem is power that the structure of the sheriff's department is such that the elected sheriff and the deputies that work under him or her are so powerful, just like nobody, nobody can do shit about it. Like everyone wants it to change,

but everyone's sitting there going, I can't make this change by myself, right? So is that power a function of the structure of the office itself, you know? I think yes. I mean, and first I wanna say, there's like this natural deference to law enforcement. Like, you know, I call it the law enforcement

baronial class where like cops get goodies, which is like they could shoot people and it's fine. They can like steal stuff and it's fine. They speed. I mean, I know this is like a sort of underreported issue, but like cops drive. Just bonkers and speeding and hitting people. Right. I mean, this is stuff that is like, people are very concerned, you know,

about like traffic safety. It's very irresponsible to just sort of be like speeding around and hitting people. Yes. That's just my aside from like bad behavior, right? That doesn't have like, to me, doesn't seem like it has a clear payoff in terms of like solving crime.

We like to think they're out like solving tough crimes, but they're just like hitting pedestrians. Um, so there's first, there's that. I mean, I actually asked, uh, someone I know in city government once I was like, Hey, you know, when you watch on TV and there's like homicide detectives and they're out there solving crimes. Yeah. With a pad and they're going like, oh yeah, what happened here?

Like on Law and Order, I was like, is that real? Does that actually happen at all? Are there, you know, or is it literally just people driving around, hitting pedestrians, and then locking up the closest person, right? I'm being a little bit hyperbolic, but when you look at the gap between our mental image of the police and the reality,

it could not be further apart. But please continue with your point. Oh, so I think there's first that, right? And I agree with you that we wanna think they're studiously examining evidence or whatever, but there are some people that do that, but not as many as there are driving around. And the second thing is like the sheriff has a lot of power because he has the jail and

the police, right? And so what happens is he kind of controls like input and then what happens to that input if you think about it. And that's very rare among law enforcement. So the jail is, you know, again, going back to this idea of fee for service, the jail is a big money maker, right? So they get to lease cells to ICE for immigration detention. But more than that, they have, you have to buy stuff for a jail. You have like construction, you have HVAC, you have, you know, clothing and laundry and food. And

so all this stuff, and you have all the people in the jail, which sheriffs tend to use at many places as sort of like their own personal workforce. Like it is not unheard of for sheriffs to use people in the jail to like set up their election barbecue or hand out can lane flyers or fix the church roof. Right. This is like the kind of stuff they do. And so that kind of power, like the contracts that you get to dole out in your jail,

and then all the guns that you buy and all the cars that you buy. So you end up having just like, in some places the sheriff's office is like a major employer. It's like, what are the biggest businesses? They use that as a way to keep the power, because they'll say, oh, I'm going to give you this contract, I'll give this place the contract.

There was some sheriff in Arkansas who hired his friend, the local doctor to be the doctor for the jail. He's like, he's my friend. I like him. He's cool. Here's this contract. You get paid to take care of these people in the jail. He's like, he's my friend. I like him. He's cool. Here's this contract. You get paid to take care of these people in the jail. And he was giving the people in the jail ivermectin for COVID. But he was doing it without telling them. He's like, here's your vitamin. And it's, you know, and eventually some people incarcerate the jail. Like, what are you giving me? Why is this? So, but it was like his bud. He's like, oh, it's my bud. And he like gives me a discount. He gives me like a 10% discount. Nothing happened to the sheriff and the doctor kept his contract. They just told him to stop doing, to stop giving people evermectin. But like, it kind of, you know, like there is this, again, this also explains why, you know, sheriffs are still like 90% white men. And some of this is because of this sort of like historical patronage system, right?

Like sheriffs get to pick who their second in command is, who might succeed them, right? They groom their successors. And then when their successors are groomed, they're like, oh, guess what, buddy? You get my best buddy here will take over. He's going to run and I endorse him. Even if it's not like their literal son, it's still like they've groomed the people in the department to do things their way.

That is one of the reasons why it keeps the office like really, I mean, it keeps things really consistent, right, even just in terms of like demographics, right? Cause they're like, well, I'm a white guy and I like other white guys, so I'm sure he's gonna do a very good job. I will just promote these people. Wow.

And they're also spreading power and patronage around through all of this money that they control. They're literally using the inmates to help themselves get reelected, passing out campaign flyers. I mean, again, so sometimes I have, I think I had a guest on recently who said something along the lines of,

hey, we're lucky to live in the United States. At least we don't have out and out like graft and bribery like they do in many countries, where law enforcement will just, you know, make you like grease their palm in order to, you know, get something done. And I'm like, it seems like, at least in sheriff's departments, we're pretty fucking close as a systemic

source of corruption and abuse in our society. And so you argue, let's come back to this, for dissolving sheriff's offices as a institution? Is that right? How do we handle this problem? Look, I worked on the book and I thought a lot about different solutions. I wanna say, it wasn't like trying to be glib

or just, it wasn't like an idea that I was like, oh, this is obviously the, I know best and this is what we should do. But in the course of working on the book and looking at these sheriffs and talking to people whose loved ones had died, I just, and then thinking a lot about the history, where sheriffs came from, what they did, genocide, malicious, all these things they did.

I just thought, why do we have this? I really was like, why do we have this? We have guys and today, I mean, there was a sheriff who was like selling badges for money, like cash money in an envelope, like here, here, you know, like they are doing like they are doing this stuff and they are hurting right there hurting people. I mean, maybe some, I guess your defensive Tammany hall might be like Tammany hall protected their own. That was right. The Tammany hall defense was like, I gave out cars, but also you all got like chicken on, didn't they get like a chicken on Thanksgiving and a sure. And it was protecting the power of certain ethnic groups in the city.

And blah, blah, blah. They, they could have this whole self justification. Sure. So they, I mean, not to say it's good, but to say, at least they were giving people like meals aren't even doing that. So I'm like, well, what's the justification? Like, who are they protecting other than really themselves? And not protecting the people in the jail who seem like the most vulnerable people.

But then when you look at the history, you see why. Like they are kind of like, as you said, like it is sort of like a lot of, like they see it as just like a warehouse of people that they kind of have to keep alive, maybe. And then that's it, right? Like they don't have to have anything to do with them ever again.

Not that I think every single person who works there thinks that, but it is what it feels like. And so you just start to think like, why do we have these jails? Why do they have, why are they allowed to warehouse people like this? Why do we have these guys who can commit so much graft, who seem not to care a whole lot about the people.

Alex Villanueva, just to go back to his example, he'll say, oh, they elected me. I'm elected. But why do you care so little about the people you're policing? Do you care a little? People are saying they don't like it, or this might be. And you're like, well, like, do they not count? Are they not people? Is that, I mean, it sort of feels like that's what they're saying. Like these aren't people, we're protecting our own. Yeah. And so it was very hard, like it was just very hard for me to feel like it was worth,

like why, what are we pretending? It was almost like, what are we pretending to do? We're pretending like this is going to work one day, you know, and I, yeah, I guess that was like my genuinely to like, in terms of reform, you know, we, I thought a lot about like the struggle people had to reform, like genuinely people tried to reform, like in a lot of places people tried to elect black sheriffs, it would like try to elect black sheriffs. It was like, right.

Black communities wanted black sheriffs. They thought, oh, well they'll protect us from like the Klan, which seems really reasonable. They're like, I'm an elect, we're going to elect a sheriff who will, who will protect us from crime, which is being committed by the old sheriff and his friends. And, and you know, like we'll do, we'll prevent lynchings. Like we could do this stuff. And the problem is whenever a sheriff is elected who chose try to do different,

it's like they encounter like 20 times the obstacles, right? Like it's like you're climbing the wall and then the wall grows like 50 feet higher. And it's like, just kidding. Now you're gonna have to do like extra stuff. You can't just- The problem is the system. It's not one person.

Right. The system is just set up such that it's very, it's like allergic to change. As you point out, right? Like, you start to change and they're like, no, no, no, we can't, we can't do that. We're gonna have to figure something else out in some way, shape or form,

whether it's like the state legislates. A lot of sheriffs ran for office saying they wouldn't cooperate with ICE. Right. This happened a lot after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. And they did like communities of immigrants put their, you know, butts on the line and they went out and they elected a sheriff who was not going to deport like their friends and family. And that was really like, one, I want to honor is like,

that was really important to them. Like people worked really hard to do that. You know, people like lived and died to get better people elected. But then in North Carolina, for example, they passed, they are about to override the governor's veto to pass a state law that says, Oh, all sheriffs have to cooperate with ICE. We're sorry. So, you know, sheriffs are like, we're very important, et cetera.

We do what we want. And then when someone wants to do something different, all the other sheriffs, this is the state sheriffs association, which has a lot of, they have a lot of power in all states. But that's like all the sheriffs gang up and lobby. They're all like, this is the mega gang. Yeah, they're like, the sheriff's gang up and lobby.

They're all like, yeah, they're like, we don't like these guys who said they're gonna like not cooperate with ICE. We wanna make them do it. And that California is what you do. They have a state sheriff association, they go and they lobby and they're like, you can't make us do stuff.

Why? How can you make us do things in every state? And you know, because you elect a sheriff at every county, so a place like Texas, so Texas has like 250 counties, has a lot of counties. Some of them have like 200 people in it. They're not like cows, but they have a sheriff. And so we get 250 sheriffs in a room with their hats,

because it's Texas, and they lobby the legislature. People are like, whoa, like, oh, these sheriffs are real. They're all opposing this law and it must be bad, but they don't think about the fact that like, most of those sheriffs are not representing like the major cities, right? So let's say there's three or four major cities. It's everybody else.

And so sheriffs have this way, kind of like the electoral college. It looks like a lot of people love the sheriff and the sheriff, what the sheriff does, but it's not like the people. It's just like a gang of sheriffs. I mean, this really seems to be one of the areas where in the world around us, you know, you're brought up being told in the world around us, you know, you're brought up being told that the world makes sense, you know, that we have the systems that we do

because it makes the most sense to have them. Just like you say, sheriffs are like, oh, we're around first and we have different duties and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when you actually learn the truth, oh, hold on a second, this is one of the most corrupt bodies in American politics, seems to serve no particular purpose.

You know, people talk about abolish the police. I don't know about abolish all the police. That's a different argument. But it does seem like we should abolish sheriff's departments. And based on your argument, right. And at the very least, you know, have law enforcement under appointed control rather than elected the control of an elected official. That would seem to be a reasonable change to make,

at least a discussion we should have. And yet we cannot even seem to begin to have that discussion because of the power of the office, because of the deference that the public pays to law enforcement, because of centuries of, you know, American culture giving deference to law enforcement, because of these sort of mega gangs of state sheriff's associations that are able to lobby

against any sort of change. It seems like the entrenched power of the office is just enormous. So is there any hope for change in these departments? Is there any glimmer on the horizon that you see? So I do always wanna not feel like I'm giving people only bad news. Me too, me too, Jessica.

I wanna feel like I'm trying to, I want people to have hope. And this is what I'll say, like, when I looked at it, I was really inspired by community groups, just grassroots groups of people who worked really hard and did get changed. So, you know, like Joe Arpaio did get voted out of office. He did get prosecuted. And that happened because Latino leaders

and community members were like, we're not gonna do it. They stood in front of the bus. They interviewed people about their experience. They kept track. They did like work like a bunch of, you know, people on the ground did work and made it so uncomfortable. Right? You have to make the discomfort so high that you get change, right? Change isn't going to happen just because like someone is like wise and smart and going to do it. Cause the thing is the system does work.

Like I guess what are the points I thought in the book began to think as I wrote the book was that the system is working exactly like it's supposed to was it is supposed to work that way. We just, it just doesn't work for a whole lot of people. It is working as it's supposed to. And the way it's supposed to work is bad. It was designed to work poorly for the benefit of a few, rather than the benefit of everybody,

which is how we would prefer a system be designed, but it is not a broken system. It is designed to be this shitty. Yeah. Yeah, but I believe in the power of people. Like the change won't come because, I mean, look, electing a different sheriff is hard, people work really hard,

but also like the power of people just to make it uncomfortable. Like how do we make what the sheriff is doing so uncomfortable that they have to listen to us? Because I'll tell you what, like right-wing militias call their sheriff and say like, hey bro,'re going to go protest this. I heard some Black Lives Matters are protesting.

We're going to go and we're going to bring our guns, and we're going to stand around. Is that cool with you? The sheriff is like, I guess. Sometimes they're like, yeah, man, you're awesome. Sometimes they're like, but they see them as their constituents. I feel like people have to make the sheriff see like you are their constituents and you're going to make it real hard unless they change.

And you have to give them a problem. So I really like this answer because it comes back to organizing, right? Because what are the sheriffs and what are the gangs? They're very well organized. You know, they have power and they exert it. The public has power as well. And even if, you know, you don't have a good person to vote for,

even if the mayor or the governor is not gonna stand up, average people can. And if we change the climate enough so that sheriffs feel it is politically necessary to act differently, then perhaps that would be the beginning of a change. Like the power that the public has to change its sentiment, it's a big job in this case because of that public deference

and love of law enforcement, but I mean, it can happen if we keep raising the word about how corrupt sheriff's departments really are. Yes, I think so. I mean, look, like I said, the change didn't happen. I mean, sometimes I think about the fact that, you know, the civil rights movement didn't, desegregation of schools didn't happen until someone sent the military, you know, they had to send the army, right? died because they wanted segregated schools so bad. So these things are hard. Like there is a fight. I guess that's one of the things I began to think was like, yeah, it is a fight. And I believe that people can fight.

Like I see brave people doing it and I believe they can, but I think they have to realize it's not, it's not sort of like, Oh, I'm just going to like vote for this better person. Like it's a fight. Yep. Thank you for this better person. Like it's a fight. Yep. Thank you for ending with that point. It is a fight. It will always be a fight. And a fight like that is always worth waging, even if we don't live to see the end of it. And so I thank you for coming on to tell us about it and for raising our awareness of this really serious issue.

The book is called, if you want to learn more, The Highest Law in the Land. You can of course pick up a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Where else can people find your work, Jessica? So I have a sub stack. It's sheriffs.substack.com. Pretty easy to find. There's only, not only sheriff's sub stack,

some sheriff's mad about that somewhere. You've got that URL. I wanted, some sheriff's like I wanted to have my own stuff sub stack. I want to be sure of that sub stack.com Someone's I was like someone out there's real bad about Too late and on social media, I'm just fish Jessess P ish. So that's where people can generally find me. Thank you so much for coming on, Jessica. It's been a thrill to have you. Yeah, thank you.

Well, thank you so much to Jessica for coming on the show. If you wanna support the show and all the amazing conversations we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name in the credits of the podcast and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues.

This week, I want to thank Game Grumps. That's right, Game Grumps. Thank you so much for supporting the show. I'm a big fan of yours as well. We also have Paul McCollum, Rick J. Nash, Bertie Cote, GD, Silja, Howard and Kevin, Faith Merican, Michael Luter, Cam, Darren Kay and Angeline Montoya. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover if you'd like to join them. Once again, if you want to come see me do stand-up comedy in Denver, Chicago, Providence, Rhode Island, bunch of other great cities, head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates.

I want to thank my producers, Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman, everybody here at Headcome for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week on Factually, Baby. I don't know anything That was a Headgum Podcast. Hey! Hey everyone, I'm Dan LaCotta. And I'm Nick Nani.

We are the hosts of Chicken Padme John now on HeadGum. It's the very first podcast for and about Italian Americans. That's right. Well, if you're not Italian American, you can listen to, I guess. I suppose we can let you in, cut you a deal. We're talking about all sorts of crazy topics on this. Who's a better cook? Nana or mama? Who you got in that fight? Nana or mama? I mean, I can't say bad about Nana or else she smacked me across head. We got some great guests on the show. We got Wayne Diamond. We got Edie Modica.

We got Mike Hanford. And our wife, Sevriel. So subscribe to Chicken Parmesan on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Thursday.