Some Election Day decisions are difficult. Picking the new Los Angeles County sheriff is not one of them. Jim McDonnell is clearly the superior candidate.
He has plenty of local law-enforcement experience, champions accountability – including financial accountability – and seems to be on a mission to restore public trust and department pride. He even retains a touch of his Boston accent, imparting the sense that he is a tough but fair Beantown cop.
His opponent, Paul Tanaka, was the undersheriff but was pushed out by then-Sheriff Lee Baca. He apparently is the subject of a federal investigation and his name has been associated with various scandals in the department. At a time when the department needs an outside reformer, Tanaka represents the insider faction that needs reforming.
It appears Tanaka’s campaign is barely breathing. His website is almost barren of content. The calendar says there are “no events yet,” and on his news page there is but one posting since the June 3 primary election. He never did respond to our requests for an endorsement interview.
In a way, that’s too bad. Voters may be inclined to vote against Tanaka and ignore the credentials of his opponent.
Consider that McDonnell is a careerlong law enforcement official, beginning in 1981 as a graduate of the Los Angeles Police Academy. He rose through the ranks and served as the second in command in the Los Angeles Police Department. He played a part in reforming the department after the Rampart corruption scandal.
He left the department in 2010 to become the police chief in Long Beach, where he learned how to be the top cop. “Running your own department is different,” he told us. “You are responsible for everything.”
That background puts him in an unusually good position of being an outsider who’s well-known locally. He’s never worked in the county Sheriff’s Department but has worked all around it.
An outsider is needed for the department to help clean up its scandals and get to the next level. As McDonnell put it, “I didn’t think we needed an outsider” when Bill Bratton became police chief in Los Angeles in 2002. But ultimately he saw the need for the proverbial fresh breath. “He asked questions we hadn’t.”
None of this is to suggest McDonnell is unaware of the challenges in the Sheriff’s Department. He served on the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, which identified problems in the county jail system and recommended 63 reforms to reduce the brutality by sheriff’s deputies against inmates.
In meeting with us, McDonnell emphasized that he wants to institute accountability in the department. And that includes financial accountability. With a $3 billion budget, the Sheriff’s Department needs a real chief financial officer, not just a sworn deputy who’s good with numbers. “It’s treating policing like a business,” he said.
He said he will strive to restore public trust as well as pride and morale within the department. Both goals are sorely needed.
This is easy. Jim McDonnell for Los Angeles County sheriff.
Matthew A. Toledo, Publisher and Chief Executive
Charles Crumpley, Editor
