By Los Angeles County Politics (LACP)
A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department gang detective is running to unseat incumbent Sheriff Robert Luna as a reformer and become the first Black sheriff in Los Angeles County.
Andre White, 34, an 11-year LASD veteran now deployed in the Operation Safe Streets division, grew up in Compton, which hasn’t had its own police department since 2000, when the city council disbanded it and contracted law enforcement to LASD.
In the quarter century since, the department’s Compton Station has recorded more deputy-involved shootings than any other contract city in the county. Black men between 18 and 30 have been the most frequent victims.
In 2021, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters called on the Department of Justice to investigate a deputy gang — known as the Executioners — alleged to be operating out of that same station.
“I believe we’ve lost touch of who we’re actually serving, and that’s the community,” White told LACP. “Our current and past leaders have just lost touch of reality, of what an everyday person is going through in Los Angeles County.”
White said he aims to reform LASD from the inside, starting with a cultural shift.
“It can no longer be just the deputies and the lower-level people that are held accountable,” he said. “I will ensure that each person wearing that badge in a leadership position is held accountable — from here on out.”
White’s argument isn’t only about culture. It’s about numbers — and a department he says is dangerously understaffed heading into the most demanding stretch in its history.
LASD currently has just over 6,000 deputies, he said, when it should have closer to 10,000. With the FIFA World Cup arriving in a matter of months, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympics in 2028, the department faces a staffing deficit it has not publicly acknowledged.
“We are going to be stretched thin 100 percent,” White said. “They probably won’t even come out and say that. But we are not ready for any of this.”
He pointed to recruitment failures driven in part by outdated policies — including a strict facial hair requirement he describes as needlessly militaristic and out of step with competing agencies actively poaching LASD’s prospective hires.
“We have a deficit of almost 2,000 deputies. We’re losing recruits because they would rather go to a department with a more relaxed uniform policy. We have to adapt.”
On the Olympics, White said he would draw on neighboring California departments — down to San Diego if necessary — rather than deploy federal officers on the street. He wants sworn personnel policing the Games trained in California law. Federal agencies, he said, have a role in intelligence and technology support, but boots on the ground should be local.
He was equally skeptical of Metro’s bid to launch its own police force, calling it counterproductive at the worst possible moment. “If LAPD can’t recruit, if we can’t recruit, and all these other smaller departments are having trouble — what makes you think they’re going to build a 1,000-man force overnight?”
White’s main criticism of Luna is simple: he’s not present — not in the department, and not in the community.
“Not present,” White said. “He’s been the sheriff going on four years now. I’ve met him, I think, three times — and he’s never come to my unit.”
Luna won the 2022 election decisively, defeating former Sheriff Alex Villanueva 60 percent to 40, and is seeking reelection on a stability argument as the county prepares for a cascade of major events.
But that argument has grown harder to sustain. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a civil lawsuit against LASD this year over conditions in the county jails. The department has shed roughly a quarter of its workforce. And the Eaton and Palisades fires stretched an already depleted operation to its limits — White said he worked 13 consecutive days during the fire response, logging nearly 20-hour shifts.
Also in the race is Villanueva, who has since re-registered as a Republican, Lt. Eric Strong, Lt. Oscar Martinez, retired Capt. Mike Bornman, and Brendan Corbett, a former assistant sheriff under Villanueva.
California’s June 2 nonpartisan primary sends the top two vote-getters to a November runoff, regardless of margin or party.
