'Woke-ism is on the ropes. Let's put it out of its misery': LA County sheriff Alex Villanueva says 'defunders' have destroyed once-great American cities and that his 'only goal is to make Los Angeles liveable again'
- Sheriff Alex Villanueva, 59, said 'wokeism' is on the ropes and called on voters to identify 'defunders' and vote them out of office
- He called out the LA County Board of Supervisors, which he said subscribe are from an 'elite political class'
- Homicides jumped 95 percent in 2021 from the previous year and grand theft auto is up 60 percent
- Blaming law enforcement for being a threat to the community is part of an 'alternative version of reality,' the sheriff said
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who is running for re-election in June, ripped into woke politicians for undermining public safety and making the city's subway system 'worse than Third World conditions.'
Villanueva, the first Democrat to be elected sheriff in LA in 138 years, called out the county Board of Supervisors, who he labeled '14 woke individuals' who are trying to defund his department in the middle of a major crime spree.
Los Angeles saw a 94 percent increase in homicide in 2021 from the year before, the sheriff said.
LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva called on voters to identify 'defunders' - politicians who supported the defund the police movement - and encouraged them to vote them out of office
'That's a number my Board of Supervisors still won't say,' he said at Saturday's forum with the sheriffs of San Bernadino and Riverside counties.
The county has also seen a 60 percent increase in grand theft auto.
The city has been plagued a spiking crime rate and homeless population. There's also been an increase in violent robberies by 'follow-home gangs' which scope out wealthy shopping districts and neighborhoods looking to carjack luxury cars or rob consumers of their just-purchased expensive goods.
'My only goal is to make LA liveable again,' he said.
Villanueva also laid the blame at District Attorney George Gascon.
'We can't have this alternative version of reality,' he told Fox News on Sunday. 'The fact is that people are dying on the street and it's not because of law enforcement. It's because of the absence of law enforcement and the absence of enforcing the rule of law with our progressive DA George Gascon.'
Los Angeles County District Attorney refused to enforce the law, according to Sheriff Alex Villanueva, decreasing the quality of life in the city
In the last year, violent robberies and smash-and-grab thefts have skyrocketed in Los Angeles. Robberies are up nearly 18 percent in the year-to-date compared to 2021, while those involving a firearm have surged by nearly 50 percent in the same time period
Gascon, who advocated for lax bail laws and refuses to prosecute certain crimes, is currently the target of a referendum to have him removed from office by Los Angeles residents fed up with the out-of-control crime in the city. They are currently gathering signatures and hope to oust him from office by the summer.
He rejected the 'false narrative' that cops create a threat to young black men, saying it is black and brown communities who suffer from the crime spike.
'They were trying to sell the idea that law enforcement was an existential threat to young men and I said 'bull sh**' Young men are an existential threat to young men because of the dumb things they do,' he said.
'We have a very elite political class, I call them the 'woke privileged crowd,' he told Fox News on Sunday. 'They're still insisting on defunding here in LA county. And they're still pushing that false narrative that we're some sort of existential threat.'
A group of at least 17 gangs targeting Los Angeles' wealthiest are responsible for the city's recent string of 'follow-home' robberies, cops said Tuesday, during a brief discussing the department's work to put an end to the coordinated strikes. Pictured are assailants accosting a victim in a 'follow home' strike in October
He went one step further and encouraged voters to find out which politicians promoted the defund movement and vote them out.
'Figure out who's running for office or who currently in office up re-election and if they have a track record of being a 'defunder,' make sure that everybody knows,' he told the crowd.
All these fancy terms, they didn't work, the results are in, it was an absolute failure,' he said. 'Lets' get people in elected office at the national level, state level, county level, city level, that are responsible and I don't care what party they come from but as long as they're going to vote for public safety and taking care of the community, we got to support them.'
Villanueva isn't the only Democrat who has punched back against his party's ultra-left wing.
On Sunday night, New York City Mayor Eric Adams told 60 Minutes that he intended to give police 'the tools to deal with violence right now.'
'Democrats don't like talking about intervention,' said Adams, 61. 'But we have to lean into the discomfort of the immediate things we must do. Because you can't say when a police officer shoots a young person, but does that Black Lives Matter when a 12-year-old baby was shot?'
The LA Sheriff is also dealing with out-of-control homelessness.
Villanueva said that a quarter of the country's homeless population lives in LA county.
Recently, the corpse of a homeless man who died on the city's transit system was left on a train for six hours.
Robberies took place all across L.A. with some of them taking place in Hollywood, between January and March of this year. Two robberies were also reported in Burbank and in the neighborhood of West L.A.
'I didn't know how explain that one. Then the MTA board of directors says we don't want more cops on the line, but the want to increase the outreach to our homeless population. The result is 5,700 homeless live on our trains in LA. You can't make that one up. It's just bizarre.'
The mentality from the Los Angeles MTA has been to avoid arresting the homeless.
'That means [if there is a] transient smoking meth, buck naked in a train doing unspeakable things to himself in front of your family and kids, then they're instructed to escort you out of out of the train and leave the disturbed party on the train, because for them it is a sanctuary. You can't make this stuff up.'
A robbery target was struck by a silver Dodge, shown here, while a group of 'Follow-Home' bandits tried to take her watch. She was thrown to the pavement and tossed her watch on the road way where robbers retrieved it and sped off
He said that the mentality is backward and it's hurting the city.
'This is what happens when you have 14 woke individuals, the public safety advisory committee, and the members of the MTA board, they all worship at the alter of wokeism. They decided that cops are mean and people feel intimidated and threatened by law enforcement. So they prefer the guy smoking meth. I kid you not.'
The county Board of Supervisors is also threatening to rid the department of all those who have not been fully vaccinated, despite a negligible difference in the infection rates between unvaccinated and the vaccinated.
'I don't even know what words to describe the board of supervisors right now, but they insist on doubling down on stupid while the community is suffering from those effects of defunding,' Villanueva said. 'We lost 1281 personnel due to their budget cuts while they're sitting on a $2 billion surplus and they're defunding the Sheriff's Department. On top of that now this move to expose up to 4000 of our employees to being terminated. It's an absolutely idiotic concept that they're pushing and the people that pay the price are the community that and least afford the loss of law enforcement.'
Villanueva has come under fire since he was elected in 2017 for clashing with police oversight agencies. Last year, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra launched a civil rights investigation into the department for excessive force and police misconduct. The sheriff's department has been accused of allowing police gangs, called 'deputy gangs' which have been accused of violence and aggressive policing.
He also implemented the use of body cameras by members of his department and stopped cooperating with federal immigration officials seeking deportation of undocumented immigrants.
The sheriff called for a renewed focus on public safety after the calls to defund the police that spread nationwide in 2020.
'I think 2022 is going to be a special year,' he said at the public forum. 'I think it's going to be a referendum on a national disease that's finally going to see a cure coming along. Wokeism is on the ropes, let's put it out of its misery in 2022.'
