A well-liked L.A. sheriff touted reforms in a troubled system. Then a younger FBI agent confirmed up

When Leah Marx started visiting Males’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles in 2010, it didn’t instantly increase alarm among the many individuals who ran it. More often than not, jailers simply checked out her federal ID and let her in with out asking why she was there. In the event that they did, she mentioned she was investigating a human trafficking case. It was a good-sounding story. Plausible. Excellent to discourage additional questions.

Marx was in her late 20s, simply past her rookie 12 months on the FBI. She had been sitting at her desk when her supervisor handed her a letter from an inmate alleging jailers have been brutalizing folks of their custody. It was totally different from different letters. It had particulars.

Now she and her FBI colleagues have been on the jail conducting secret interviews, attempting to separate truth from rumor. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Division ran the jails. With a every day inhabitants of 14,000 inmates or extra, it was the nation’s largest jail system, and had been identified for years as a cauldron of violence and dysfunction.

The company was within the fingers of a would-be reformer, Sheriff Lee Baca. He’d promised transparency. He’d received reward for his bold inmate training program. However tales continued of violent and corrupt jailers, of deputy gangs, of an institutional tradition so entrenched it resisted all efforts to root it out.

Marx appeared an inconceivable federal agent (at first, even to herself). She had been getting a grasp’s diploma in social work when somebody steered she attempt the FBI. She didn’t know they employed folks like her.

She was new to L.A., and dwelling alone together with her canine. As she gathered inmate tales, she made it a degree to emphasise that their expenses have been irrelevant to her.

“I believe they began to consider that I used to be there to really hear what was happening,” she informed The Occasions.

Inmates have been telling her variations of the identical story. A jailer would assault an inmate whereas yelling “Cease resisting,” then cost the inmate with assault on a police officer.

As she weighed the credibility of inmates in opposition to jailers, Marx was knowledgeable by a painful episode in her household historical past. Rising up in Wisconsin, she knew solely the outlines of a tragedy too painful for the household to debate — her grandmother and uncle had way back died in a home hearth in California.

In highschool, she discovered that the hearth had been deliberately set, that the suspected arsonist labored on the native police division. He’d benefited from the air of impunity his place afforded.

“Somebody’s place doesn’t dictate whether or not they’re extra truthful or much less truthful than anybody else,” Marx would recall. “You don’t get instantaneous credibility as a result of your place or your function.”

On the jail, she discovered an inmate keen to assist — Anthony Brown, a financial institution robber ready to be transported to state jail on a 423-year jail sentence.

He informed her a few jailer who had provided to convey him a contraband cellphone for the best worth, and she or he orchestrated a sting in summer time 2011. An spy handed over the cash, and the jailer delivered the cellphone to Brown.

The cellphone was supposed to assist Brown doc what he noticed. And it gave the FBI leverage to launch an bold operation. The FBI would lease out a warehouse mentioned to be full of medicine, and use the compromised jailer to recruit corrupt colleagues to moonlight as guards.

However the plan was useless earlier than it might even get off the bottom. Nor did Brown get something helpful along with his cellphone through the week and a half that he had it. On Aug. 8, 2011, deputies discovered the cellphone in his cell, stashed in a Doritos bag.

Baca didn’t discuss like different lawmen. He usually gave the impression of a social employee, or a panelist at a self-improvement seminar. “I are usually one that claims, ‘All proper, fixed progress, fixed creativity,’” he would say. “All humanity issues.”

Baca had been raised by his grandparents in a Mexican American household in L.A. He dug ditches, washed automobiles and hauled barley sacks. He joined the Sheriff’s Division at age 23 in 1965, acquired a PhD from USC and labored his manner as much as grow to be one of many state’s highest-ranking Latino legislation officers.

When he took over the Sheriff’s Division in 1998, he promised a brand new age of legislation enforcement on the huge, scandal-plagued company. By the summer time of 2011, he was virtually 70 and had run the division for 13 years. Voters had reelected him 3 times.

When it grew to become clear that the FBI had been secretly investigating his jails for a very long time, the person who preached reform and accountability confronted an unprecedented take a look at. He might cooperate totally with the federal investigation. As a substitute, he determined to go to struggle.

His division turned Marx’s informant right into a ghost, shuttling him between amenities beneath a sequence of pretend names, as Marx tried doggedly to search out him. Even a federal writ failed to supply him. When Marx lastly discovered him 18 days later, at Lancaster State Jail, he met her with hostile silence — he believed the FBI had left him for useless.

Baca, livid in regards to the intrusion onto his turf, informed the native FOX 11 morning present “Good Day L.A.” that the feds had damaged the legislation by planting a cellphone on one in all his inmates.

“Who polices the police?” a number requested.

“We police ourselves,” Baca replied.

Whilst he spoke, his division had a surveillance group on Marx. That afternoon in September 2011, as she approached her condominium, two sheriff’s sergeants have been ready for her.

“I’m within the strategy of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant for you,” mentioned Sgt. Scott Craig. He had his jacket off, and his gun was exhibiting.

Marx interpreted it as an try to intimidate her. She informed him to name the FBI.

“And the primary thought I had is that if they have been keen to return to my home and do that, what else are they able to?” she mentioned.

Baca confronted U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte, who had accredited the jail investigation. In accordance with Birotte’s trial testimony later, Baca erupted angrily, “I’m the goddamn sheriff. These are my goddamn jails. You need to gun up in right here? Is that what you need?” Birotte took the phrase to imply, “Would you like our companies to go to struggle?”

Contained in the FBI, there was an ongoing debate about whether or not to incorporate Baca within the jail investigation. He was a helpful legislation enforcement ally. His deputies labored with the feds on many process forces. However the incident outdoors Marx’s condominium largely ended that debate.

“If that isn’t a transparent indication that we can’t work with them, I don’t know what’s,” mentioned Carlos Narro, who was the FBI’s public corruption supervisor in L.A. on the time.

The sheriff had catastrophically misjudged his adversary. As a substitute of quashing the probe, his heavy-handed techniques had solely fueled it. Was it doable to broaden the case past civil rights violations to an obstruction of justice case? How precisely was Brown made to fade contained in the jail system?

James Sexton had some solutions. The son of a Southern sheriff, he had joined the LASD hoping to make his identify. He was only some months into his job as a custody deputy on the downtown jail in 2009 when he discovered the value of nonconformity. A theft suspect sucker-punched him, he says, and his colleagues ostracized him for failing to retaliate with a beating.

Nonetheless, Sexton’s tech prowess and different expertise started to win him some consideration, and finally earned him a job with an elite intelligence unit. In August 2011, his experience with the jail laptop system made him helpful. The brass had an uncommon request. They needed him to make an informant disappear.

“We have been going to make it troublesome for different legislation enforcement companies to search out him on the pc,” he mentioned. “After which all of them checked out me.”

Sexton had discovered the value of defiance. He helped to alter Brown’s identify. The aliases included John Rodriguez, Kevin King, Chris Johnson and Robin Banks.

When sheriff’s officers determined to unload Brown on the state jail system, Sexton wrote an e mail notifying his bosses.

“Gents,” Sexton wrote, “I’m going to deal with reserving our pal again beneath his true alias.”

The e-mail would grow to be a vital piece of proof. In it, Sexton coined the time period that will grow to be inseparable from the entire scheme. The topic line: Operation Pandora’s Field.

Sexton thought the Brown episode was behind him. However in early 2012, he mentioned, he was scared. He had reported misconduct on an unrelated case, involving one other jailer’s doable affiliation with a skinhead gang.

He knew he would by no means be trusted once more. Co-workers have been calling him a rat.

He determined to grow to be an informant for Leah Marx. He was shocked at how little she acted like a cop. “I acquired a social employee,” he mentioned. “You gotta love the calculation of the FBI. She is straightforward to speak to. I ought to have been smarter.”

Sexton talked to the FBI dozens of instances. He informed a federal grand jury how he had manipulated the jail computer systems to cover Brown from his federal handlers. This admission would damage him severely. In December 2013, he was indicted, one in all 18 present or former sworn members charged with civil rights violations, corruption, inmate abuse or obstruction. Amongst them have been the 2 sergeants who had confronted Marx outdoors her dwelling.

At trial, Sexton’s lawyer portrayed him as an “overeager child” attempting to assist the FBI, a low-ranking jailer who exaggerated his significance within the scheme. The lawyer in contrast him to Walter Mitty, the character with the boring workplace job who escapes into elaborate imaginative worlds — a protection Sexton hated. He was convicted and acquired an 18-month time period. He was thrown into solitary confinement. He counted the times by plucking enamel off a comb.

After 4 months in jail, Sexton appeared earlier than a federal choose and mentioned, “I stand earlier than you as a damaged man.” The prosecutor agreed to let him go dwelling.

The sheriff was not a simple man to pin down. As he sat all the way down to face questions from the feds, his sentences traveled winding paths by means of imprecise precincts to fog-filled locations.

He bragged in regards to the hundreds of inmates who have been getting an training in his jails, because of applications he had established. “Nobody is a better believer in inmate rights than I’m,” he mentioned.

His solutions have been often long-winded, muddled and incoherent. Time and again, he denied having advance information of what his division had accomplished — from making Brown disappear, to threatening Marx with arrest.

The FBI had not requested his permission to infiltrate his jails as a result of it had not trusted him, however Baca appeared to search out this truth insupportable, if not incomprehensible. He appeared personally damage by it.

“There’s no proof of a malicious intent on my half to undermine the mission of the FBI,” Baca mentioned. “You wanna catch all of the crooked deputies I’ve; the truth is, it’s useful as a result of I don’t have sufficient price range to do all of it myself.”

For Baca, this interview — which prosecutors would painting as an internet of falsehoods — represented the fruits of a protracted sequence of misjudgments and self-inflicted wounds.

Baca had as soon as informed the ACLU, “I’ll by no means, ever resign. I intend to be sheriff so long as I dwell.” He had run unopposed on the final election, his fourth. However in January 2014, he stood outdoors the division’s Monterey Park headquarters, preventing emotion as he introduced his resignation. He had been sheriff for 15 years and had labored on the division for almost half a century.

In late 2016, the 74-year-old Baca went to trial. His supporters wore lapel pins within the form of a badge. His protection: He had been at the hours of darkness about what his subordinates have been doing to foil the feds. A few of Baca’s distinguished buddies, together with two former L.A. County district attorneys, testified to his law-abiding popularity. The jury deadlocked.

On the retrial, prosecutors referred to as convicted high-ranking co-conspirators to the stand. A former captain mentioned Baca had personally accredited the plan to ship sergeants to Marx’s home, including: “his recommendation to us was simply to not put handcuffs on her.”

In March 2017, Baca grew to become the tenth and highest-ranking participant within the obstruction scheme to be convicted. His lawyer pleaded with the choose, saying Baca had Alzheimer’s illness that amounted to its personal horrible punishment, “a sentence that may depart him a mere shell of his former self.” However the choose gave Baca three years, excoriating him for abusing the general public belief.

At 77, Baca turned himself right into a low-security facility outdoors El Paso. In accordance with a pleasant biography, he reorganized the jail library and renovated the jail pond, and cleared brush from the grounds. He impressed different inmates by his instance. He made buddies, he gave recommendation. He informed folks to utilize their time.

He went dwelling in 2021. Three years later, at age 82, he wandered away from dwelling in San Marino. He turned up six miles away at a Denny’s, badly confused.

If not for Baca’s choice to “gun up” in opposition to the feds, they most likely would have introduced a handful of civil rights circumstances in opposition to jailers — and Baca would have received reelection.

“All the large prosecutions we did was due to how they reacted,” says Brandon Fox, the previous prosecutor. “This was an existential menace to the Sheriff’s Division, but it surely was of their very own making due to what they did.”

Brown is in state jail serving his 423 years. He filed go well with claiming the Sheriff’s Division had successfully kidnapped him throughout these 18 days, and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors accredited a $1-million payout to settle the declare. Among the many ironies: He acquired nothing of worth on the cellphone that so enraged the sheriff, and prosecutors by no means referred to as him to testify at trial, figuring out the protection was prone to eviscerate him.

In the long run, 22 members of the Sheriff’s Division have been convicted on account of the probe initiated by particular agent Leah Marx. It appears possible her youth and inexperience helped her, that veteran brokers would have weighed the percentages and determined it wasn’t value pursuing.

“We don’t know what number of extra civil rights circumstances we might have introduced as a result of the division got here in and disrupted our investigation,” Marx says. “They tried to deliberately cease what we have been doing. And so, sadly, we don’t know the place it could’ve gone. And that’s a little bit irritating.”
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