Sheriff’s ‘hit squad’ targets Villanueva supporters, lawsuit by East L.A. lieutenant claims
A lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sued Sheriff Robert Luna this week for allegedly orchestrating a “hit squad” of top officials to harass employees who supported Luna’s predecessor, Alex Villanueva, in the run-up to the 2022 election.
In a complaint filed Monday, Lt. Shawn O’Donnell and his attorneys accused “Luna and his loyalists” of race-based discrimination and whistleblower retaliation. A few days after the sheriff took office, the suit says, Luna revoked O’Donnell’s transfer into a coveted role in the Narcotics Bureau of the Detective Division and kept him instead at the East Los Angeles station. In the year since, O’Donnell says, he’s been denied promotion opportunities, moved to another station and forced to work in undesirable shifts.
“The emerging pattern of retaliation and discrimination is in stark contrast to the values and promises that were expected to guide this new administration,” Christopher Harmon, the attorney representing O’Donnell, told The Times in an email Wednesday.
Sheriff Robert Luna has been in office nearly a year. His tenure is calmer than his controversial predecessor’s, but critics question his track record. He talks to The Times.
The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that it “stands firm on creating a fair and equitable” work environment.
“Any act of retaliation, harassment, and discrimination will not be tolerated and is a violation of the Department’s policy and core values,” the statement said.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, does not specify a dollar figure that O’Donnell and his legal team are seeking.
Hints of O’Donnell’s displeasure with the department came to the fore earlier this year, when The Times obtained a memo he authored accusing then-East L.A. station Capt. Pilar Chavez of making racist comments about an “angry” Black sergeant who she allegedly schemed to avoid promoting. After The Times published a story about the eight-page memo, Chavez — who is also a defendant in the lawsuit — was transferred to Court Services West Bureau. She could not be reached for comment this week and has not responded to previous inquiries.
Under Villanueva, O’Donnell worked in the Office of the Sheriff, serving as the department’s liaison to the Civilian Oversight Commission and Office of Inspector General. When the former sheriff launched his reelection campaign, O’Donnell openly supported him, attending campaign events, volunteering with the campaign and endorsing him on social media.
That fall, O’Donnell said, he found out that he was slated for a transfer from the troubled East L.A. Station into the Narcotics Bureau. A few days before the move was officially scheduled to take effect in mid-December, O’Donnell said he went in for a bureau tour and was assigned a desk there.
But four days after that visit — and less than a week after Luna took office — O’Donnell said a top official called to tell him that his transfer had been canceled.
When the list of lieutenants who’d been transferred or promoted came out not long after that, the suit says, O’Donnell found that he and his girlfriend were the only people whose names had been removed. His girlfriend, Lt. Evelyn Vega, also filed suit this week with similar allegations about a “hit squad” and a revoked promotion.
An L.A. County sheriff’s deputies union recently elected to its board a veteran lawman with a controversial tattoo who was involved in two shootings that cost the county $4 million.
Over the course of the next several months, O’Donnell and Vega both filed grievances and other complaints. In January, O’Donnell said he was forced to move off the day shift following a tense conversation in which Chavez allegedly warned him he “would need protection” in the station parking lot if he took another lieutenant’s spot on the schedule.
A few weeks later, O’Donnell was moved to Industry Station, though he continued to pursue his complaints against administration officials. Some of the key allegations raised in his memo reviewed by The Times stemmed from Sgt. Reginald Hoffman’s efforts to bring to light gang activity at the station, both by testifying as a whistleblower and by later filing suit.
According to the memo, Chavez allegedly told O’Donnell that Hoffman had “nothing coming to him at East Los Angeles station” and that she’d already given her preferred detective sergeant candidates a boost by telling them which questions she planned to ask during their interviews.
“Captain Chavez stated they were Hispanic and they were the ones she could trust out of the sergeants who wanted the position,” O’Donnell wrote. “She also told me there was no way she was going to allow Sergeant Hoffman to get the position because he was an angry black guy who filed a claim.”
According to O’Donnell, the captain also took issue with Hoffman’s decision to testify anonymously to the Civilian Oversight Commission about alleged deputy gang activity at the East L.A. station.
In the end, Hoffman did not get the job and he later filed suit alleging that he’d been denied promotions and subjected to racial discrimination and whistleblower retaliation by Latino members of deputy gangs and their allies at the East L.A. station.
Unlike O’Donnell, Hoffman did not name either the current or the former sheriff as a defendant in his lawsuit. However, he faulted Villanueva for allegedly retaliating against him, and claimed that the practice of targeting whistleblowers “continues unabated” under the current administration.
Chavez was transferred in May, but O’Donnell’s attorney criticized the department for not taking immediate action when officials learned of the memo in March, calling the response a “serious oversight in addressing discrimination within the department.”
“The LASD’s inaction until the media exposure by the L.A. Times is inexplicable,” Harmon said. “This delay in response left Lt. O’Donnell unprotected.”
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