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Crimes of the Times
Gunning Up: L.A. County’s Top Cop Versus the Feds
00:26:20
When Lee Baca took over the LA County Sheriff’s Department in 1998, he inherited a scandal-plagued agency. He built a reputation as a progressive reformer, and his jail-education programs were celebrated. But the feds notice that investigations into his agency always seem to evaporate when he gets involved. By 2011, he is 70 years old and has run the department for 13 years. Furious about the FBI’s probe into his jails, Baca has Leah Marx surveilled. Two of his sergeants appear at her apartment and threaten her with arrest. Allegations emerge about the beating of a jail visitor name Gabriel Carrillo. The feds have expanded their probe beyond civil rights violations. Can they make a case for obstruction of justice? How high does the misconduct go? Baca’s clash with the FBI revealed how deeply the department was in turmoil. Allegations of intimidation and the beating of visitor Gabriel Carrillo turned a civil rights probe into one of Los Angeles’ most significant corruption cases. H...
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- [00:04]
Christopher Goffard
Did you have any idea that they were watching you?
- [00:06]
Leah Marks
No. No.
- [00:07]
Scott Craig
Are you injured? Yes, I am. Were you injured? Up over my face.
- [00:11]
Leah Marks
And as I start walking to the door of my apartment, I see two individuals standing in the front. They both have sheriff's badges on.
- [00:18]
Brandon Fox
Every time I saw that video would get my blood boiling.
- [00:21]
Leah Marks
He had his gun showing, he had his badge showing. It appeared very intentional to me that this was meant to be a intimidation tact.
- [00:37]
Christopher Goffard
When Lee Baca took over the LA County Sheriff's Department in 1998, he promised a new age of law enforcement at the vast scandal plagued agency. He set out to improve the massive jail system under his command, which had long been a cauldron of fear and dysfunction. He built a reputation as a progressive reformer. He bragged that on any given day, 8,000 inmates were taking classes in his jailhouse education programs.
- [01:05]
Lee Baca
The purpose of a prison or a jail is to educate the people there. But what we've done is we've created this expectation for the public, which is a bad one, that we're here to seek revenge for the sake of the crimes they've committed. Close to half or more of the people in jail have not finished school. You have people who are coming from very difficult family lives and as children have been abused.
- [01:34]
Christopher Goffard
Baca had a different vocabulary from other lawmen. He often sounded like a social worker, and when the newspaper described him as one, he embraced it. Sometimes he spoke in the language of New Age and self improvement seminars.
- [01:48]
Lee Baca
I tend to be one that says, all right, constant growth, constant creativity, all humanity matters. The fact that your critics are your critics does not take you out of the obligation to protect them as well. I don't like all the high drama and the bad language and the bullying approach. I rather that we're more sophisticated in what we do.
- [02:14]
Christopher Goffard
Baca had been raised by his grandparents in a Mexican American family in la. He dug ditches, washed cars and hauled barley sacks. He joined the sheriff's department at age 23 in 1965, got a PhD from USC and worked his way through the ranks to become one of the highest ranking Latino law officers in the state.
- [02:35]
Lee Baca
I see life as a miracle. If you believe that life is a miracle, then you want everyone else's life to feel the same way to them. The thing that allowed for me to succeed was that I believed in what I was doing for the more noble reasons that it's done and not that I was just looking for power.
- [02:56]
Christopher Goffard
The job of LA sheriff was basically one of dynastic succession. There had been just A handful of sheriffs in 75 years over four controversial terms, it had been Sherman Block. The jails always seemed to be the source of his problems. Brawls between inmate gangs, vigilante jailers beating unruly inmates, bribes to pad food contracts. When he ran against block in 1998, Lee Baca was defying the power structure. Block's campaign mocked him as a man better suited to be a college professor than LA County's top cop. Even after Block fell in his bathtub and lay near death from a head injury, a who's who of L. A power players urged voters to keep him in office. But Block died just before Election Day, and Baca won handily.
- [03:49]
Lee Baca
When I go into the jails, I don't walk through the jails and look at the inmates through the bars. I always say, hey, how are you? How you holding up? Are you staying strong? Oh, yes, sir, I'm staying strong. I said, well, you got to stay strong. We're trying to get to the place where you can treat people with respect.
- [04:08]
Christopher Goffard
By the summer of 2011, Baca was 70 years old and had run the department for 13 years. It was the country's largest sheriff's department with a $2.4 billion budget. His deputies policed 42 of LA's 88 cities. Voters had reelected him three times, and he had weathered many scandals, including use of force probes at the jail by the aclu. Publicly, Vaca responded by saying all the right things.
- [04:39]
Lee Baca
The ACL has their job to do. It's to keep us on our toes, to keep me well aware that I'm not an island, and that just because I'm elected doesn't mean that I can do whatever I want.
- [04:52]
Christopher Goffard
But now the man who preached reform and accountability was facing an unprecedented test. He learned that the FBI had been secretly investigating his jails, that federal agents were gathering evidence of corruption and brutality. That they had somehow smuggled a cell phone into the hands of a bank robber in his custody. Sheriff Lee Baca was furious, and he had a choice. He could cooperate fully with the federal investigation. Instead, he decided to go to war. From the Los Angeles Times. This is Pandora's box. The Fall of LA's Sheriff. I'm Christopher Goffard. This is episode three, Gunning Up.
- [05:50]
Leah Marks
He was angry at me. We had a very good relationship up to that point.
- [05:55]
Christopher Goffard
FBI agent Leah marks had spent 18 days searching for her informant, Anthony Brown. The sheriff's officials had made him vanish in the jail system. And after Brown promised not to give the FBI any more help, they sent him to Lancaster State Prison to serve his life term for bank robbery. He met Agent Marks with hostile silence when she finally found him there.
- [06:18]
Leah Marks
He wouldn't even speak to me when I walked into the room. Of course, I had no idea what he had gone through. I had no idea what had happened to him during those, you know, three weeks. So I walked in and had to spend probably it was at least over an hour explaining to him what we had done on our side so that he knew that I wasn't just sitting there ignoring him.
- [06:42]
Christopher Goffard
Sheriff Lee Baca was furious about the FBI's intrusion onto his turf. His feud with the FBI was escalating. And for Leah Marks, it would become uncomfortably personal. A call came into the FBI's Wilshire Boulevard office threatening her with arrest.
- [07:00]
Scott Craig
This message is for Agent Liam Marks. My name is Scott Craig. I'm a sergeant with Los Angeles County Sheriffs. I work internal Criminal Investigations Bureau and I'm investigating a felony criminal complaint that I was assigned to last week in which you're named as the suspect. You amongst others. I wanted to offer you a professional courtesy, see if you wanted to meet and discuss or address the allegations that were made against you prior to me signing a declaration in support of an arrest warrant.
- [07:32]
Christopher Goffard
It's hard to overstate how unusual this was. A sheriff sergeant threatening to arrest an FBI agent for doing her job. Leah Marks actually did not get this message at the time though, because Sergeant Craig had the wrong extension. In late summer 2011, the Sheriff's Department assigned a special team to follow Marks. Here are entries from the logs which refer to her as the target. 0820. Target came out of apartment building via the main doors. She was wearing blue long sleeved blouse and black pants. She had a brown, white, medium sized dog on a leash. Dog relieved itself number two on front lawn of apartment complex 0827. Target exited apartment complex via front doors wearing the same clothes and entered her Buick Lacrosse 0847. Target arrived at federal building and parked in the east end of the parking lot. Did you have any idea that they were watching you?
- [08:32]
Scott Craig
No.
- [08:33]
Leah Marks
No. Everyone in the office jokes with me that I have the worst counter surveillance because they were following me for multiple days and I never knew.
- [08:42]
Christopher Goffard
The surveillance team was still watching her. On September 26, when Sheriff Baca appeared on the TV show Good Day LA and said he resented the FBI's tactics, he said it had been illegal for them to plant a cell phone on an inmate informant at his jail. He ran the jail, he said, and his responsibility had to be respected. The host asked, who police is the police? Baca's reply? We police ourselves. That afternoon, the sheriff's surveillance team was watching as Marks got home and parked in the street.
- [09:20]
Leah Marks
And as I start walking to the door of my apartment, I see two individuals standing in the front. They both have sheriff's badges on.
- [09:28]
Christopher Goffard
One of them was Scott Craig, the burly sergeant who'd left the message threatening her with arrest. With him was Sergeant Marisella Long.
- [09:36]
Scott Craig
Hi, I'm Sergeant Craig from the sheriff's department. You know that you're named suspect and a felony complaint? I'm in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant for you.
- [09:47]
Christopher Goffard
It's hard to hear, but Sergeant Craig is saying, you're a named suspect in a felony complaint. I'm in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant for you.
- [09:57]
Scott Craig
What we're gonna do to arrange for your arrest when we're ready to do.
- [10:00]
Christopher Goffard
That is we could either be good.
- [10:02]
Leah Marks
No, I would. You need to contact the FBI officer.
- [10:05]
Scott Craig
Okay, well, then you need to have somebody contact me and relay that.
- [10:08]
Leah Marks
I will absolutely have him call you.
- [10:10]
Christopher Goffard
Absolutely.
- [10:11]
Leah Marks
He had his gun showing. He had his badge showing. It appeared very intentional to me that this was meant to be a intimidation tactic. Think about how many times will somebody come up to you and tell you, we're going to arrest you in the future. It's just not something that's done at this point. I had spent, you know, a year and a half almost investigating this department. And the first thought I had is if they were willing to come to my house and do this, what else are they capable of? I lived by myself. I had no family in the area. I really didn't know I how far they were going to take it.
- [10:57]
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- [11:56]
Christopher Goffard
When Leah Marks called her supervisor to explain that two sheriff sergeants had just shown up at her apartment to threaten her with arrest, the supervisor thought, she must be kidding.
- [12:09]
Leah Marks
I said some words my mother would not be proud of to him and said, I am not joking. They are outside my apartment and this just happened. And he said, get in your car and immediately return to the office. I told him, I will not leave my dog here because I don't know what's going on.
- [12:28]
Carlos Naro
I said, bring your dog straight to the office. We're going to keep you here safe.
- [12:32]
Christopher Goffard
This is the supervisor, Carlos Naro.
- [12:34]
Carlos Naro
We had agents meet her in the parking lot. They guided her and her dog. I'll never forget the image of the dog running around the executive floor. And people are like, why is that dog running around the floor? She was nervous. She had to be nervous, but she didn't show it.
- [12:48]
Leah Marks
My mom, I had to call her that night and tell her what happened because I wanted to tell her if something happened and she got a collect call from a jail, she would know why I didn't tell my dad because I. I'm his baby. And that I don't think that would have gone over well. So I never, ever told him the specifics because I knew it would. It would be too hard for him. It didn't change me having to continue living by myself in my apartment. That was pretty scary. For a while.
- [13:26]
Christopher Goffard
A friend on the Bureau's SWAT team drove in loops around her block as counter surveillance. She was not the only one working the case. There was David Dolley, Jason Dalton, Wayne Plimpton, and others. But it was Leah Marks the sheriff's department went after.
- [13:41]
Leah Marks
I think it was. I was the single female. Personally, I think it was intentional that it was me versus the rest of them, but obviously I can't. That's just our personal take on it. If they're willing to do this kind of thing and try and intimidate and try and mess with an FBI agent who is doing their job, what is happening to other people that in the areas they patrol, in the jails elsewhere?
- [14:11]
Christopher Goffard
The day after his sergeants threatened to arrest Leah Marks, Sheriff Baca confronted two federal law enforcement officials who had approved the jail investigation. Local FBI boss Steve Martinez and U.S. attorney Andre Barat. Baca accused the feds of breaking the law by smuggling in the phone. Barat reminded him that it was not a crime if it happened within the scope of an investigation and that one of Baca's jailers had taken the bribe that made it possible in the first place, According to Barat's trial testimony. Later, Baca erupted angrily. I'm the goddamn sheriff. These are my goddamn jails. You want a gun up in here? Is that what you want? Barat took the phrasing to mean, do you want our agencies to go to war? The question hanging over this whole case, a question that has puzzled me from the very beginning, is what Lee Baca was realistically hoping to achieve by hiding an informant and targeting Marx. Did he think the federal government would just shrug and go away?
- [15:17]
Leah Marks
I think in the past there's been this thought that if the sheriff's department pushes hard enough, the FBI will just say, well, we need to maintain a positive working relationship, so let's just tone it down a little bit. And I think that that overall belief from the sheriff's department had them continue to push, thinking that we would just back down. And I think that's really the first time in a very long time that Sheriff Baca had kind of been forced to sit on the sidelines and not be able to make something go away if he wanted it to.
- [15:54]
Christopher Goffard
According to a confidential FBI memo obtained by the Times, there was, quote, a long history of criminal allegations against Baca that never went anywhere. These included claims that he had given out concealed weapons permits as a reward to campaign contributors and that his employees had pressured tow truck companies for political donations. Baca would deny wrongdoing and blame allegations on disgruntled employees. There were some voices in the FBI arguing it was a mistake to exclude him from the jail probe. Why risk alienating such a powerful law enforcement ally?
- [16:33]
Carlos Naro
That conversation, you know, constantly kept coming up and saying, hey, are we sure about this? And my response, I remember was they just approached an FBI agent, threatened to arrest her for doing her job. That is, if that isn't a clear indication that we cannot work with them, I don't know what is.
- [16:53]
Christopher Goffard
This is Carlos Narrow again. He was the FBI's Public Corruption Supervisor in LA. As this was happening, he wanted to know where the order to threaten marks had come from. Was it overzealous sergeants acting on their own?
- [17:07]
Carlos Naro
My purpose was to be nice to these guys so I can try to get from them and they can confirm that this order came from the higher ups.
- [17:16]
Christopher Goffard
The sheriff had catastrophically misjudged his adversary. If his intent was to quash the federal probe, his heavy handed tactics had only given it fuel and destroyed any possibility that the feds would join hands with him as a partner. Now the secret investigation was out in the open.
- [17:37]
Leah Marks
We wanted every incident report, personnel files of the deputies that we had on our radar. We just started asking for everything.
- [18:04]
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- [18:59]
Brandon Fox
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- [19:49]
Scott Craig
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- [19:52]
Brandon Fox
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- [20:02]
Scott Craig
It is Saturday, February 26, 2011. It's 1335 hours. Right now I'm out here visiting front. Present with me is Sergeant Barrett Gonzalez, 451413 and doing the taping is Deputy Ervin. Also present is Lt. Limone. What's your first name, partner? Gabriel. Gabriel, what's your last name? Kirill.
- [20:23]
Christopher Goffard
The LA Sheriff's Department's attempt to intimidate the FBI did not stop the federal probe into jail, corruption and brutality. One of the troubling incidents that came to their attention was the beating of Gabriel Carrillo.
- [20:36]
Scott Craig
Hey partner, have you had anything to Drink today? No, I haven't. You haven't used any drugs? Nope. Are you a gangster? No, I'm not. You are not? No. You didn't come here upset because your brother was in a force that's going to East LA Deputies? And you want to take it on these deputies as well? No, sir.
- [20:50]
Christopher Goffard
In a videotape of the interview you're hearing, Gabriel Carrillo is sitting on a bench with his hands cuffed behind his back as sheriff's deputies question him about a confrontation he's just had with their colleagues. His shirt is ripped and spattered with blood. His face is battered, his eyes are swollen, his nose is broken.
- [21:12]
Scott Craig
Okay, so what happened today? I have no idea, sir. You have no idea? No. So you know how all this blood and all these cuts got on your face? Uh, not really. Gabriel, this is Lieutenant Yock. Are you injured? Yes, I am. Where are you injured? All over my face. Where else are you injured? Your right side, My wrist. Your wrist? Which wrist? Both wrists. And which in your right side of your body you're injured? Thigh. Left thigh. What are you injured from? Hits. From whom? I don't know. I can't see.
- [21:43]
Christopher Goffard
Carillo was not an inmate at the downtown LA jail. He was there to visit his brother, who had been arrested two days earlier by anti gang deputies.
- [21:52]
Scott Craig
Where else are you in pain? Face. Okay. Have you gotten medical treatment yet? Yeah, I guess. Paramedics treated you. Did you call that treatment? Yes, sir. Okay, well, we're getting you some more treatment when we're done here, but I wanted to make sure that you're aware that the paramedics were here. Where else are you injured? That's it. I could think of him. Your face, you said both wrists. Your right side and your thigh. Both thighs? Yeah. And you got hits, but you don't know who from who? No. Lieutenant Lamont, anything you want to add? What'd you get hit with? People? I couldn't tell you, man. I was face zone. Like punches.
- [22:26]
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You think someone punched you?
- [22:28]
Scott Craig
You've been hit before, right? Not like this, but you've been punched before, so you could tell me if you got punched? I guess. Okay. Anything else? No. Hey, partner. Who are we here to visit today? My brother. And what's he in here for? I don't know. Something bogus.
- [22:47]
Christopher Goffard
Jailers found that Gabriel Carrillo had a cell phone which was against the rules for jail visitors, and a confrontation had ensued.
- [22:55]
Leah Marks
The story was that while they were processing Gabriel for the cell phone, they had one handcuff off his wrist to fingerprint him and he started wildly swinging the hand that had the handcuff attached and was going to harm the deputies. So they had to tackle him, punch him, and kick him, and spray him with OC spray so that he would stop fighting.
- [23:23]
Christopher Goffard
A supervisor claimed that Carrillo had injured deputies and spit on one of them. He was charged with battery. Leah Marks and her partners found a room and reenacted the incident in the way the jailers had described it and found it physically impossible.
- [23:39]
Leah Marks
At this point, I really believed that a lot of what the inmates were telling me was happening. But I think for the U.S. attorney's office, it was a turning point because this was something that was a little bit different than. Than an inmate. You know, Gabriel Carrillo did not have this lengthy criminal history. He wasn't a felon. He didn't fit that same type of quote, unquote, victim with baggage that some of these other folks did.
- [24:10]
Christopher Goffard
Prosecutor Brandon Fox joined the case in the summer of 2012. He watched a video of sheriff sergeants confronting Marks outside her apartment and found it appalling.
- [24:20]
Brandon Fox
She's a single female living in Los Angeles, a young woman living in Los Angeles, and they wait for her. That, to me, every time I saw that video would get my blood boiling because they had nothing on her. And another one that really got to me was, same guy, Sergeant Craig. This is a crazy fact. He goes to a judge to get a search warrant of the FBI, and it would force the FBI to turn over their entire investigation to the sheriff's department, including their undercover work that they had done. And they think that by going to the Superior court, they're going to get that search warrant. And the judge who testified a number of times in the trials laughed them out of the room.
- [25:05]
Christopher Goffard
Then there was the message Sergeant Craig left on an FBI voicemail and the remark Sergeant Maricela Long made when she did not realize she was being recorded.
- [25:16]
Brandon Fox
Then Marcel Long joking then to Scott Craig says, they're scared. They're scared. And what Scott Craig says is, you're still rolling. She accidentally recorded that part of it. The whole goal with this whole thing was to scare the FBI, back them off of their investigation. And to have any entity think that they can do that with the FBI is so egregious. And again, thinking back to, if you're treating the FBI this way, how are you treating anyone else? I just can't get over that.
- [25:49]
Christopher Goffard
Was it possible to expand the case beyond civil rights violations to an obstruction of justice case? How far up did it go? How did it happen that Anthony Brown vanished inside the jail system. How deeply involved was the sheriff himself?
- [26:07]
Brandon Fox
We were in the dark somewhat about whether there was an overriding conspiracy to obstruct justice. What was really happening? Nobody was really sure. And then we caught a couple of breaks with some people who came in and talked.
- [26:26]
Christopher Goffard
One of the breaks was the cooperation of James Sexton, the ambitious young jail deputy who had known enough about the jail computer system to make Anthony Brown vanish inside it and who had nicknamed the operation Pandora's Box. He had not given the order, but he had been instrumental in hiding Brown. He had returned to work thinking it was all behind him.
- [26:50]
Brandon Fox
I misplaced my faith in leadership and the department.
- [26:55]
Christopher Goffard
The sheriff's department in which Sexton had struggled to find a foothold, the place he had entered hoping to emulate his lawman father, was becoming an increasingly lonely and scary place for him. His choices would alienate him from friends and coworkers and department brass. He says he knew enough about the underbelly of the Sheriff's department culture to fear for his life.
- [27:20]
Brandon Fox
Nobody's going to walk up to you and say, we're going to kill you. That's not how that works. But you need to watch your back. You need to be careful. Nobody's gonna help you.
- [27:30]
Christopher Goffard
Eventually, this fear would lead him to the FBI. On the next episode of Pandora's Box, the fall of LA's sheriff.
- [27:47]
Brandon Fox
Everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor. They hate the person that steps up and says, this is what we were doing behind the curtain. This is what was going on inside the LA county jail. I became a man without a country.
- [28:22]
Christopher Goffard
Pandora's Box, the fall of LA's sheriff was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Gofford for the Los Angeles Times. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Our editor is Steve Clow. Thanks to Fernando Guerra for the use of his interview with Lee Baca. Thanks to LA Times Executive Editor Terry Tang, President and COO Chris Argenteri, and LA Times Studios President Anna Migzanian. Special thanks to LA Times colleagues past and present who have reported on the Sheriff's Department and its scandals, including Robert Federechi, Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin, Cindy Chang, Ben Poston, Aileen Chekmedian, Connor Sheets and Carrie Blakener.