It was simply previous 12:30 a.m. on June 9 when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a housebreaking in progress at a house in Lynwood.
Upon arrival, in line with the division’s incident abstract, they noticed Federico Rodriguez, 45, via a window, holding what gave the impression to be a pair of scissors.
Listening to screams inside, deputies pressured a door open and entered the house, the place they discovered Rodriguez repeatedly stabbing a lady. Sgt. Marcos Esquivel instantly drew his handgun, footage from his body-worn digicam confirmed, and fired a number of pictures that killed Rodriguez.
The incident was the fifth of six deadly shootings by deputies that the sheriff’s division has reported thus far this yr.
The lady Rodriguez was stabbing survived. However regardless of the apparently life-saving actions of the deputies, two days later the case grew to become a degree of controversy in a broader dispute between the division and L.A. County’s Workplace of Inspector Common, which investigates misconduct and the usage of lethal power by legislation enforcement.
The inspector normal’s workplace despatched a letter on June 11 to the County Board of Supervisors elevating considerations that officers have been blocked from scenes of shootings by deputies and deaths in county jails.
Inspector Common Max Huntsman mentioned his workplace interprets the state legislation that led to its creation over a decade in the past as giving him and his employees the authority to conduct significant on-site investigations, with state laws authorised in 2020 strengthening that energy.
Inspector Common Max Huntsman listens to testimony within the Robinson Courtroom at Loyola Regulation Faculty in 2024.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
Huntsman mentioned permitting his employees to tour scenes of shootings and obtain data immediately from murder detectives and different sheriff’s division personnel whereas the useless our bodies have but to be eliminated is important for correct oversight.
However the sheriff’s division has repeatedly denied or restricted entry, Huntsman mentioned. The June 11 letter introduced the “indefinite suspension of Workplace of Inspector Common common rollouts to deputy-involved shootings and in-custody deaths.”
Huntsman mentioned the choice to halt the rollouts was a response to a persistent lack of transparency by the sheriff’s division.
“The aim of going there’s to conduct an unbiased investigation. If all we’re doing is standing round being fed what they need us to know, that’s not an unbiased investigation,” he instructed The Instances. “We’re not going to fake to be doing it once we solely get to peek underneath the curtain.”
On the Civilian Oversight Fee assembly on July 17, Sheriff Robert Luna mentioned his division “will now have a course of in place” to permit officers responding to taking pictures scenes to contact an assistant sheriff to make sure “a bit of extra oversight” over the method.
An inside view of the Altadena Sheriff Station in January.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
Luna referred to as Huntsman’s June 11 letter “alarming,” however disputed what number of occasions officers had been turned away, saying he was solely conscious of it occurring “as soon as — not less than within the final 5 years.”
Commissioner Jamon Hicks inquired additional, asking whether or not the division might be incorrect concerning the variety of occasions entry has been restricted or denied, provided that the inspector normal’s workplace alleges it has been a recurring problem.
“It might be, and I’d like to see the data,” Luna mentioned. “I’ve been supplied none of that to this point.”
Huntsman instructed The Instances that officers from his workplace had been “prohibited from coming into” Rodriguez’s house on July 9, as had been members of the district legal professional’s workplace and the sheriff’s division’s Inside Affairs Bureau. It was not less than the seventh time the sheriff’s division had improperly restricted entry since 2020, he mentioned.
In a press release, the sheriff’s division mentioned the “declare that the OIG was denied entry on June 9 at a [deputy-involved shooting] scene in Lynwood is inaccurate.”
“An OIG consultant was on scene and was given the identical briefing, together with the involved Division Chief, Inside Affairs Bureau, Civil Litigation Bureau, Coaching Bureau, and the Los Angeles County District Legal professional’s Workplace,” the assertion mentioned.
An exterior view of the hiring banner outdoors the Altadena Sheriff Station in January.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
The assertion went on to say that the division is “solely conscious of 1 incident on February 27, 2025,” by which the OIG was denied entry to a deputy-involved taking pictures scene.
“The Sheriff’s Division stays firmly dedicated to transparency in legislation enforcement and continues to work intently and cooperatively with all oversight our bodies,” the assertion mentioned.
Through the July 17 assembly, Dara Williams, chief deputy of the Workplace of Inspector Common, mentioned the workplace’s personnel typically arrive at taking pictures scenes hours after deputies have pulled the set off due to the logistical challenges of touring throughout the county. Sheriff’s division murder detectives usually current preliminary findings and supply excursions of the scenes.
However on a number of events, the watchdogs have been denied entry completely, leaving them to rely solely on no matter data the sheriff’s division chooses to launch, Williams mentioned.
Hans Johnson, the Civilian Oversight Fee’s newly elected chair, mentioned investigators can’t do their jobs correctly with out with the ability to scrutinize murder scenes.
“We depend on you, partly, as eyes and ears locally and in these high-value and really troubling circumstances of fatalities and deaths,” he mentioned on the July 17 assembly.
Williams mentioned the sheriff’s division has additionally been “painfully sluggish” responding to requests for extra data and information following homicides by deputies. She mentioned that in a single notably egregious instance, “we served a subpoena in October of final yr and we’re nonetheless ready for paperwork and solutions.”
Responding to Huntsman’s letter on June 16, Luna wrote to the Board of Supervisors that the division’s Workplace of Constitutional Policing “has assisted the OIG by offering Division data to 49 of 53 cases” since January. “Suffice it to say,” he added later within the letter, “strong communications happen between the OIG and the Division. Any assertion on the contrary is fake.”
Luna mentioned typically entry might be restricted to protect proof, however Williams mentioned she doesn’t “suppose it’s truthful to say that we had been excluded” for that purpose.
Williams instructed the fee she was not allowed to tour a scene earlier this yr that Huntsman later instructed The Instances was a Feb. 27 incident in Rosemead.
The sheriff’s division’s incident abstract said that Deputy Gregory Chico shot Susan Lu, 56, after she refused instructions to drop a meat cleaver and raised the blade “towards deputies.” Lu was taken to a hospital and declared useless later that day.
In his June 16 letter, Luna wrote that “the OIG, Inside Affairs Bureau (IAB), different Division items, and executives had been denied entry … resulting from considerations relating to proof preservation, given the confined space and complexity of the scene format.”
Williams instructed the fee “there was a slim hallway however the precise incident happened in a bed room, so I don’t know why we couldn’t have walked down that slim hallway to only view into the bed room” the place the murder happened.
“The underside line,” she added later, “is we don’t wish to mislead the general public to offer them the concept that is really efficient oversight as a result of, as soon as once more, we’re simply getting the data from the division.”
