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NO THUGS/NO MASKS - If any term could go alongside Eureka (Greek for “I have found it!”) on the official seal of California, it might be this: Resilience.
Amidst an onslaught of abductions of L.A. residents by masked men brandishing weapons and chasing arbitrary arrest quotas by the Trump Administration, L.A. County Supervisors on Tuesday, July 1, unanimously approved legal action to force transparency and challenge thuggery. And state Senator Sasha Renee Perez, representing Alhambra, Pasadena, and Glendale, is moving legislation, SB 805, to end use of masks by law enforcement and bounty hunters in the state and to compel all law-enforcement agents to wear identification.
But Californians’ grit and resilience are apparent in two other places: In the sheriff department of our most populous county, here in L.A. And in state courts.
The same week millions of Americans saw video of federal agents urinating on school property in Pico Rivera, L.A. county sheriff Robert Luna released a new video designed to help Angelenos distinguish between sheriff deputies and other agents or impostors who might be caught with their pants down impersonating an officer.
Sheriff Luna also delivered one of the most striking affirmations of integrity in public safety and pushback against outside interference, including by federal agents, that many Angelenos have ever heard from law enforcement.
The sheriff spoke carefully, with conviction and moral clarity, in a July 2 interview with Larry Mantle on the LAist (KPCC) program “AirTalk.” The morning news-talk program counts hundreds of thousands of daily listeners, often surpassing a million, and claims to be “Southern California’s largest conversation.”
“This is unprecedented. … I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sheriff Luna said of nearly 5,000 Army, Marine, and federalized National Guard troops stationed in L.A. on orders of President Trump. The sheriff took a dim view of actions by ICE agents and others to arrest Angelenos without due process, sparking confusion, anguish, and distrust.
“The agents are typically grabbing folks, arresting them … then they’re taking off. Then they’re leaving us with the angry crowd,” the sheriff explained. “We are doing everything we can to communicate to our community.”
Sheriff Luna, himself the product of an immigrant family in East L.A., added, “We know we work in an immigrant community. We respect our immigrant community. … You cannot have safety, a good quality of life, without that public trust. … It has taken decades to develop this public trust. And I see it being eroded just over the last several weeks.”
How is trust being eroded? “It’s very concerning to me because of the methodology that I observe being used,” Sheriff Luna told AirTalk listeners.
“Some of the tactics that I see being used are things that we in law enforcement learned not to do 20 years ago! But here we are.”
The Sheriff indicated that actions by some federal agents he has observed may violate not only conscience, but also the Constitution. “There has to be constitutionality to what’s occurring. There has to be humanity to what’s occurring. And we’re not really witnessing that right now.”
The sheriff summarized, “Masked individuals taking people off the street … You almost feel like you’re in a third-world country. And we can’t have that.
“The community,” he concluded, “needs to feel secure. They need to be able to trust law enforcement, that whoever came is clearly a law-enforcement officer or a federal officer, is clearly identified in one way or another. Whether it’s a name plate or a number that associates that individual. So that there is a path to complain or file a complaint when they believe there was some kind of misconduct. That is crucial to public trust in law enforcement.”
In a development of similar consequence to the timely, compelling communication by Sheriff Luna, a state appeals court on June 26 unanimously threw out a flimsy bid to criminally punish Diana Teran. She is an advocate for police accountability and former adviser to the L.A. District Attorney.
Like a bad winter forecast, passed along without checking the facts, the case against Teran seemed to blow in out of the blue. Despite the shoddy basis for bringing it, the case had the effect of chilling efforts throughout California at detecting, reporting, and counteracting abusive practices by badge-wearers.
"The legislature never intended this statute — which is principally aimed at computer hacking and tampering — to be used to criminally prosecute disclosure of purely public information that happened to be stored on a computer," stated judge Carl Moor in the unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel of the appeals court in favor of Teran.
Even in L.A. County, the icy conditions of the Teran case could be felt. Sheriff Luna highlighted the Teran case in March while resisting 3 subpoenas to provide documents, for purposes of transparency and accountability, in 3 cases involving use of force by sheriff deputies.
In one case, involving Emmett Brock, a deputy pleaded guilty in December 2024 to federal charges of depriving Brock of his civil rights during a vehicle pursuit and vicious beating in February 2023.
The deputy, Joseph Benza, implicated in wrongdoing in the pursuit and beating of Brock, was fired by the L.A. Sheriff Department by early January 2025. In addition to the courage of Brock to push back against brutality and win a factual declaration of innocence in state court and a federal conviction of a deputy for grotesque violations of constitutional rights, the case is noteworthy for another reason: The press release by the Department of Justice from late 2024 announcing the conviction of Benza has been erased from the DOJ Web site. [Check the link to DOJ release, now dead, near the top of this article. ]
Why? Brock is a transgender teacher. Merely stating his identity truthfully, which was relevant to the case, appears to run afoul of ruthless censorship by the Trump Administration of official documents that validate the existence of transgender people and any effort to recognize and protect their human rights in America.
The assault on integrity and public trust in law enforcement is not happening merely with truncheons, masks, and unmarked vans. It’s happening with the abuse of political and prosecutorial power and even via the bully pulpit of government. Resilience to challenge and overcome such abuse must be publicized and replicated. That’s why, this Independence Day weekend, all Californians can celebrate the vindication of Diana Teran and the clarity of Sheriff Robert Luna, both steps forward to protect public safety.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)
