Former Sheriff Reveals What's Behind Los Angeles' Homelessness | Alex Villanueva

Homelessness is on the rise in Los Angeles. Five people a day die in the streets of LA, in the gutter like a dog. Five a day, which is mind-boggling, but it's consistent. Despite the amount of funds being poured into the issue, there seems to be no end in sight. The homeless industrial complex is alive and well. The amount of money that's pouring into the non-profits is just incredible. There's no governance, there's no oversight, there's no accountability on the results. They just keep shoveling money at them and the problem keeps getting worse and worse. From 2011 to 2021, the homeless count went from 39,000 to over 80,000. It doubled in size and they spent six and a half billion dollars a year. My guest today is former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who managed to clean up Venice Beach. Today, he'll give us his insider perspective on the difficulties with cleaning up homelessness and why he's not giving up. We achieved an incredible amount of progress in four years, but that progress is threatening to a corrupt administration. That's why I'm now sitting here as a former sheriff, not the current. I'm Siamak Khorrami. Welcome to California Insider. Thank you. Love to be back. We want to talk to you about L.A. and L.A. is facing a crisis of homelessness and rising crime and you actually have been, you were the sheriff of L.A. and you actually decided to go in and deal with the homelessness situation, especially in Venice Beach. Why did you get involved? We want to talk to you about what L.A. is facing, what's the future of L.A., but before we get into that, why did you get involved with Venice Beach? Well, as a sheriff, I'm responsible for the safety of the entire county, not just parts of the county that the politicians think is okay, but I'm responsible for the entire county. And when a local municipality refuses to address chaos and disorder on the streets that is actually costing people's lives, their livelihood, businesses closing, tourists running away, that's bad for the economy of L.A. county. And tourism is an $18 billion a year industry for L.A. county, one of the leading contributors to our gross domestic product. And the city of L.A. decided, well, let's not do anything because we don't want to offend anybody. So the homeless during the pandemic was just out of control. So I heard a lot of stories about how bad it was in Venice. So we went to do a visit in June of 2020 and it was as bad as they said it was. You know, there was wall-to-wall tents covering the entire boardwalk. There was no tourist. About half the stores or more were already shuttered. The performers were no longer there. The people that were on the boardwalk were running scared just to get through as quickly as possible. And that was a bad scene and we could not, you know, sustain that. And I don't know why the city of L.A. and the mayor decided it was okay to lose a major, you know, generator of the economy, of taxes, a base that supports the city government. They're just going to let it rot. And I said, no, let's not do that. We can clean this thing up. Now, was it risky for you to do this? Because this kind of went a little bit out of your realm of things, right? Was it a difficult thing to do? Out of the normal beaten path of previous sheriffs. But if you look at historically what the sheriff's job is and responsibilities, according to the state constitution, is very well within the wheelhouse of what the sheriff is supposed to do. It's just the politicians got so comfortable with not ever being held accountable by anybody else. So they freaked out. Oh my God, someone else can actually get in here and change things around? Yeah, we can. Because five people a day die in the streets of L.A., in the gutter like a dog. Five a day. Is it from drugs, from overdosing? Overdosing on drugs from illnesses that are treatable. But if you're not being treated, like for example, you're insulin dependent, type one, without insulin, you die. That's what happens. Because these people are not in a state of mind to actually accept and seek medical care for a problem. So it goes untreated, they die. They overdose, they die. Or they do both and they die. And I think in 2020, 2021, they registered, I think, over 1,800 deaths of that type on the street, which is mind-boggling, but it's consistent. If you don't pay attention, people are going to die. So the people, the activists, they want to get in a way, don't touch them, you're criminalizing poverty or this or that. Yet they have no answer. And their solution is just to let people die on the street. That's not a solution. So what do you think LA would look like in the coming years with the changes we have made? Well, what's happening is, I know the count is increasing. I think they just finished the homeless count on Thursday, a three-day count. And from what we understand, the count is getting bigger, not smaller. Because there's a perception in the entire nation that if you're homeless and you like to use drugs, go to LA. Until that train stops, it doesn't matter what you do locally in LA, you can't defeat 49 other states sending all their homeless, their derelicts, their drug addicts to LA to get the same thing. Get cheap drugs, no criminal consequences for consuming it, and you get fed. I mean, it's a great deal. Hey, you may even get permanent housing as a drug addict, just for being a drug addict. In that, all you're doing is you're enabling the dependency and you're normalizing that deviancy. That is a very poor predictor for the future of LA. Today's episode is sponsored by Birch Gold. 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With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, and countless five-star reviews, you can trust Birch Gold to protect your future. Visit birchgold.com slash california today. Now let's go back to the episode. Now when you did the Venice speech, when you started talking about homelessness, you got more vocal about the Board of Supervisors. Yes. What happened then? What was it like? Well, Sheila Kuehl, oh my God, he doesn't know his jurisdiction. Then I brought out the government code section 26-600-601-602. It says, yeah, the sheriff has the authority to do all these things. They just never used it in the past. But the authority is there. And as soon as I brought that out, then they started not talking about jurisdiction anymore. That quieted down. But then it came all about, well, he has problems in his own jurisdictions. You know, why is he over there? Well, if I'm going to go to the economic engine of the county, I think that's the first place I'm going to go because I want to keep the county afloat. That should be their responsibility. They should have been, hey, thank you. And let's work together. They had no desire whatsoever. Did you kind of, at the point that you started getting involved, did you feel like nobody else cares or you kind of left it? The people cared. The people in the community cared. I mean, I did 104 town halls in four years. I was all over the county talking to people directly. Not politicians, talking to people. And they assume that, oh, if I talk to the politicians, that's how I have access to people. No, I actually talk straight to the people. Like, I don't need to listen to a city councilman from L.A. or for assembly person or a political group or some sort. I'm just going to actually talk to the people that live there, the ones that are impacted by bad policies. And they gave me an earful. That's what I needed to know. And that's what freaked out the establishment, that they just go around them. Why do you think the establishment is not doing anything about it? Because these are problems that affects the people and eventually people will probably get fed up. Well, they're not doing anything about it because the homeless industrial complex is alive and well. And look at the career arc of Holly Mitchell, supervisor, Karen Bass, mayor. Community organizers. Now they're running nonprofits. Now they're receiving contracts from the county, from the city. And now they're in public office. That, those two in particular, a prime example of it. And that's the wave of the future. You got a whole community of people that are in the 501c3s, the nonprofits, and boards of directors, CEOs. The amount of money that's pouring into the nonprofits is just incredible. There's no governance. There's no oversight. There's no accountability on the results. They just keep shoveling money at them. And the problem keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, if you give money, enough money and resources, and the people are honestly doing the job and cured whatever it was, and that problem is gone, the money stops. How many of these people are going to argue to end their career, end their job? They're not. It's going to continue. So you think this has become a system for people to get in and get involved and actually build a career and build a path to politics? The top 10 CEOs of nonprofits, $800,000 a year. They're making more than twice what I was making as sheriff. And the size of my operation dwarfed all of them, probably combined. But that tells you the influence, the money involved. From 2011 to 2021, LA County spent $6.5 billion on homeless initiatives. The count, the homeless count went from 39,000 to over 80,000. It doubled in size and they spent $6.5 billion a year. But it's hard to believe this, right? That people have nonprofits. They're trying to help the homeless and not do that. Do you think it's possible for people to go to Korea to do that work? Well, they have a career that perpetuates itself. If we get rid of the homeless, it ends a lot of careers. How many people are going to volunteer to end their career? What they should recognize is that it should be a temporary thing, all hands on deck. Let's fix the problem and then move on to other things that are going to be permanent. We're always going to need teachers. We're always going to need nurses. We're always going to need cops. Those are the ones that services at the county, the city level, they have to provide and doctors. Those social workers, for example, Department of Children and Family Services, those type of services are always going to be needed. But the nonprofits, they need to be flexible enough to recognize that there's a time when you're done, stand down, move on to something else. But the incentives there is to keep and get bigger and bigger, bigger budgets. So you don't think the homelessness problem is going anywhere? Not at all. In fact, it's going to get worse. How bad? Well, it's engulfing every corner of life in L.A. County. You got two thirds of the homeless in the city of L.A., other third is in the county. It's just spread out more so it doesn't look as obvious. Then you got the riverbeds, you got at the foothills, you got all these different areas, you got on the beaches, all these places, you got downtown corridor, all the homeless. We cleared out Venice Beach. We cleared out Olvera Street, Placito Olvera. We cleaned out San Vicente in front of the VA Center. The whole thing cleaned up, every end of shelter. And now that we're no longer doing that, I know Olvera Street, it's all coming back. All the tents are all surrounding it again. Lack of attention. The mayor just brought the state of emergency. She brought the state of emergency. Some critics are saying, why didn't Garcetti do this if this was going to solve the problem? So what are your thoughts on that? Do you think this is going to go anywhere? I asked the board to declare a state of emergency 18 months ago, in 2021. I asked the governor to do the same thing. Crickets from both of them, nothing. And they said, oh, our programs are working fine. We don't need that. So she shows up, state of emergency. Everybody's, oh my God, what a wonderful idea. I mean, it's so political. I mean, if it helps. And the idea was to actually tap into federal resources. But with the urgency to resolve this thing in 90 days, let's build up the emergency shelter. Let's get rid of end shelter. We're on your way out of here. We could do that. But this approach, all it is, all it's doing right now is just their housing first mentality is an absolute failure. It's failed miserably. And yet they insist on it. They can't let go of that housing first thing. You can't build your way out of the homeless crisis. Is it because nonprofits make money from the housing? Nonprofits make money, one. You can't build fast enough, two. And number three, it only encourages a greater influx of people from out of state. Those three things, housing first, actually enables them. So why are we continuing on that? No, build me mental health institutions where I can house people with mental health disorders. Build me substance abuse treatment centers where we can house people. Now we're talking. Get everybody off the street. Because when you get people off the street and into shelter or tell them hit the road, now we're starting to change the drug sales. We're starting to change a lot of things that are happening at the same time with the presence of all the homeless on the streets. We're disrupting all that. So it has a lot of positive benefits. But the politicians in charge right now don't want to talk about that because they don't want law enforcement to be involved at all. Now you try to go against the policies that are dominant in L.A. And these are your own party members. You're a Democrat too, right? Yes. How is it like? Well, I was told early on by an L.A. City Council person whose name will remain anonymous. He said, well, you can be a reformer or you can be reelected. That was his. And you know what? He was right. And I chose to be a reformer. If my goal is to be reelected, I would have not achieved what I achieved when I was in office. We wouldn't have gotten the body-worn cameras. We wouldn't have got ICE out of the jails. We wouldn't have enacted all of the policies that made the department more transparent, more accountable. None of that would occur because I would just go along to get along with the board and the department would have continued falling apart. We hired 1,100 deputies my first year in office. In one year, 1,100 deputies. And we were on pace to do it the second year, two years in a row. So what we had, we hired locally. Hometown heroes needed, are you in? That was our slogan. And we only hired L.A. County, which is great because now we're helping rise the employment rate of county residents. They're people who were born and raised in L.A. County who are part of the community. Instead of hiring somebody from Nebraska, it's our own kids that look like us, that represent us. It was the best of both worlds. Now, that's gone because now they're desperate. They're going to hire anybody who has a pulse. And you're going to see the cycle of corruption repeat itself again. So you came under a lot of criticism by the local media, right? Can you tell us more how it felt like and what was it like? Well, now the criticism is not aging very well because I've been going back now. In fact, yesterday I looked back like the whole thing about deputy gangs. It was a political campaign designed by the Board of Supervisors to convince the public that there's gangs running amok on the Sheriff's Department with no evidence to support it whatsoever. All they had to do is say it's well documented. And so they paid for a report from the RAND Corporation. They paid a lot of money for this report. And the RAND Corporation had the opportunity to dispel the notion, say, no, it's a perception only and it's diminishing. They chose not to. They deliberately chose not to compare my administration to previous administrations. Then you had the Oversight Commission, Sean Kennedy. He takes Loyola Marymount students in law school and they write a report, 50 years of deputy gangs. And they keep pushing this deputy gang narrative and pushing it. And where are the facts? Oh, you know, they point to a lawsuit. Oh, this lawsuit says this. That lawsuit says that. But now, fast forward two years, the lawsuits are falling apart. They're getting thrown out of court for lack of evidence. People under, in depositions, Max Huntsman, the inspector general, on a deposition admits that he does not know a single gang member and there's no evidence in the gang. Yet there he was for four years screaming to anybody who would listen about deputy gangs. Oversight Commission, they hold this mock trial. They call it a hearing. And Channel 4, and this is embarrassing, Colleen Williams, I used to admire her. Not anymore. Because I went yesterday on YouTube, I looked at an interview they did on her or a special report about a year and a half ago. Eric Leonard is an investigative reporter on Colleen Williams. And she says, well, court documents show. What court document? It was something generated by the inspector general. And she described it as a court document to give it the imprint of legitimacy. Oh, it's a court document. Somehow it's some legal filing. It's absolutely nothing. It's internally generated documentation from the inspector general who was trying to accuse me that somehow before I took office, I was already trying to hide deputy gangs. So what if there is, there might be, this is a big force, 11,000 people, right? There's cliques, there's subgroups in every organization on demand. They're social creatures. But to go from being a clique or a subgroup into they exist to commit crime, that leap. Oh, they have matching tattoos. Yeah. So do all the Marines. So do all the Rangers. So do NFL football players. So do fraternities. Heck, George W. Bush, Skull and Dagger Society, Yale, whatever that was. These are all groups. Are they engaged in criminal activity is a question. Yes or no. And they could never answer that question because they know the answer was no. These are deputies that on their average day in work, they're out there saving lives, writing reports, taking bad guys to jail. And there's no issue. But they give the impression that, oh my God, this station has more shootings and they have a tattoo. They must be gang members. See, that's a leap of logic. And yet when they were called to testify in court under oath, no one could say anything. They had no evidence. That's why the whole thing has fallen apart. The main player in Art Hernandez versus the County of LA, that's the lawsuit on the Bandidos in East LA. Which was in a documentary that Al Jazeera did. Yeah, that one. Yeah. Has no information to support anything. Denies knowing anything about any gang. The whole basis of his lawsuit, under oath, he said, I have no information. So the whole foundation of everything got thrown out. Robert Limon, she sues alleging that we lied or we did some cover up. OK, now testify under oath about what you claim on your lawsuit. Doesn't show up. Every single case when it comes time to, OK, let's see what the goods are. So a court can weigh it. No one wants to do it. Why? Because the whole thing was made up from the very beginning. It was made up for a political purpose. And it's embarrassing. I mean, it was effective. Was it made up to get you out? Yes. It was specifically to get me out of office. Because when Jim McDonald was in office, the same people were employed. 50 years of gang, supposed, according to Sean Kennedy. Why was it not a crisis under Jim McDonald, who did nothing about it? Why did it become a crisis on my watch? There's a question. And now that Luna's in office, all of a sudden the crisis disappeared. The special hearings from the Oversight Commission have ended. So where is it? Where is the information? Do you think it's because you were vocal about the board and other political orientation? They knew I was independently elected as sheriff. And I'm a firm believer in the rule of law. And we had a public corruption unit that has now been disbanded. That was a goal to the board of supervisors. They want to get rid of accountability, criminal accountability. Did you think it would be this tough dealing with the leaders in LA? I didn't know they were that dirty. I knew there was some corruption, but the level of corruption is breathtaking. Remember, the board of supervisors, that includes Mark Ridley Thomas, indicted on 20 counts. They conspired to use every resource at their disposal to discredit the sheriff's department, delegitimize the department in the eyes of the voting public, and paint me as some corrupt, sinister person who could not be trusted. Oh, they were effective at it because it doesn't take a whole lot to sway the public opinion. And that message was hammered again and again and again. But now, in hindsight, going back, where's the evidence? They have nothing. I survived two criminal grand juries put on by George Gascon. Two. Nothing. I survived the Department of Justice. They did a pattern and practice investigation of the sheriff's department. They've been at it for two years now. They haven't found a single thing. All of this scrutiny from the department. I inherited a budget $101 million in the hole. I left it $74 million in the surplus. And the Times denouncing my mismanagement of funds. Really, I mean, they threw everything in the kitchen sink at me to sink me. But in reality, we achieved an incredible amount of progress in four years. But that progress is threatening to a corrupt administration. That's why I'm now sitting here as a former sheriff, not the current. So what were they trying to, what were they looking for when they did these investigations? Well, you got to realize that the Board of Supervisors, there's a saying in Spanish, El ladrón juzga por su condición. The thief judges by his condition. They're dirty politicians. They assumed I must be dirty. So let's find it. And they couldn't. Because I'm not. I'm honest. In fact, my nickname in patrol was Flecha. Arrow, as straight as an arrow. Call a spade a spade. If we have the info to make the arrest, we do. If we don't, oh well, guy walks away. That's how the system is supposed to work. So the Board of Supervisors lobbied Javier Becerra when he was the attorney general for California. They lobbied him all the way up to the day, his last day in office. He threw them a political favorite announced investigation of the Sheriff's Department. And who was his main person? Max Huntsman. The same person who has been working on behalf of the Board of Supervisors. So it's embarrassing. I mean, the level of dishonesty and the lack of a counterpoint to this. Because when you do an investigation, you have to start with, you know, proving the negative. There may not be any criminal, right? But they start with the assumption that there is criminal activity. We're just going to find it. So by doing that, you just taint the entire process. And that's what they did from the very beginning. And by that time, the media has covered it. And the media is in every lawsuit that was filed. They're screaming headlines. Another lawsuit filed. But when the lawsuits get thrown out, crickets. They don't discuss anything. I got six in a row now. I've been counting them. They're falling like clockwork because there's nothing to support them. And they were all designed to inflict political harm. They weren't designed because someone was aggrieved in some way. And they're seeking redress. No. How do we harm the Sheriff's re-election chances? That is their basis. How did you keep going? It seems like you're a Democrat. And you have your fellow Democrats that are on these positions. And by saying that, politics is politics, like different political actions. But how did you keep going being in this? Well, I'm a Democrat, but I'm the Democrat of the vintage of JFK and FDR. People that were courageous leaders in challenging times, who aimed high and achieved very lofty things. Go to the moon. You know, save the world from World War II. You know, from, you know, Nazi and all that stuff. Those are big leaders in big days. And that's the party that I admired. And the party of today, especially here in California and LA, is just a corrupt shadow of its former self. It's embarrassing. But we need a vibrant Democratic party, just like we need a vibrant Republican party. I need both parties to be alive and well. Because in the public sphere, in a good governance model, I need to have liberal voices. I need to have conservative voices. I need them arguing and coming together to solve the big issues of the day, like crime, like homelessness. If I only have a one-party show, like we have here in California, that's the result you get. Everything is falling apart because no one is pointing the obvious. Hey, emperor has no clothes. That's not working. Let's do something different. Those voices are censored. They don't exist. We need to bring those voices back. And I'll give you a good example. It's kind of like district attorney. District attorney prosecutes the public defender or counsel, you know, defends the interests of the person, the accused. But that's how our, you know, the whole idea, our concept of liberty and equal justice. And justice is blind because we have people arguing the pros and cons. And in a court of law, we get a just decision. Well, in the political sphere, we should have that same argument. But here in California, it's gone. There's only one argument, and it's how far to the left can you go? And it's bizarre. No, we need to have a healthy two-party system. We need to have independences too. We need a moderates. They need to exist. These extremes don't help anyone. How do you keep going with all this? Because history is on my side. The truth is on my side. You know, the good Lord, you know, keep my good graces or keep being his good graces, you know, do the right thing. It doesn't matter what the result is. As long as you're doing the right thing, that's all that matters. And if that makes dirty politicians nervous, well, that means we're doing the right thing. Now, for some of our people, some people in the state are frustrated, and they see all of these things happening. And what gives you the motivation? You're fighting, right? You're going against your own traditional party, you know, and you're kind of taking your own stance in the middle of all this. What do you tell others that are in the state that might not be happy with the status quo or in LA? Well, when I was campaigning for reelection, I went to so many households, spoke to so many groups of people that are frustrated, that are just tired of politics as usual. And now I hear politicians and I can tune in right away. And I can hear their language, listen to it, and I can tell right away they're full of shit. They're going through little buzzwords and talking points, and they mean absolutely nothing, because they won't change anything on the ground. They're too afraid to, because they want to get reelected. They don't want to be a reformer. We need people in office to be reformers. We need people, voters, to abandon, keep doing all one party line, or whoever the incumbent is. Stop that nonsense. Vote for the person, not the party. And that means if you're a Democrat, find a Republican that you can support. If you're a Republican, find a Democrat that you can support. But we got to make California purple again, not this deep shade of blue that is not helping at all. Do you have any other thoughts for our audience? Well, I just want them to stay informed and ask the hard questions. And if people, politicians can't answer those hard questions, kick them out. If they can't sit in a town hall and ask unscripted questions from an audience, they do not belong in public office. If they can't debate their opponents, they do not belong in public office. They're hiding. And you got to be able to find the posers, the people that are hiding behind their official, you know, persona. Get rid of them. Trust me, get rid of them as soon as you can. Alex Villanueva, former sheriff of Los Angeles County, it was great to have you on California Insider. Oh, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. We want to ask you to sign up to our California Insider email list. You will receive exclusive updates on our upcoming documentary and get the latest inside stories on everything that's happening in California. Go to InsiderCA.com and sign up. Thank you for watching. Please click the icon on the left to subscribe to our channel. We bring you the most pressing issues California is facing with straightforward and in-depth interviews. See you in the next video.