And that’s why we had a previous sheriff who went to prison. “I think that the Sheriff's Department has always been difficult to penetrate and secretive at times.

Huntsman says if that is the case, then Villanueva should open the books and be fully transparent about the department’s records.

To call it a fraud, that might be a little bit of a stretch.” If we’re missing that target, I don’t think it’s going to be the grand conspiracy that the outgoing mayor of Compton wants it to be. He said, “We have to get close to 100%, either slightly above, slightly below. The forthcoming lawsuit is partially built on the claims made by a whistleblower.Īt a news conference last week, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that the department does keep track of time internally and that the response to a dispute over counting hours has been blown out of proportion. They’re doing desk duty or some other kind of work that isn’t appropriately counted.” “When in fact the people in them aren’t patrolling that area. “Ghost cars is an accounting trick used in law enforcement, the Sheriff’s Department in particular, in which cars are written down as patrolling an area,” says LA County Inspector General Max Huntsman. The legal claim alleges that the LASD is using “ghost cars” to fraudulently bill the city. Compton pays more than $22 million a year for the LASD to patrol the city streets, requiring deputies to spend a certain amount of time there. Last week, as a precursor to a lawsuit, the City of Compton filed a legal claim against the LA County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) for “rampant” fraud, alleging that the department routinely bills the city for patrols that don’t happen.

Ghost highway patrol car