On October 4th, Mayor Bass selected former sheriff Jim McDonnell as LA’s next police chief, describing him as a “leader, innovator and changemaker.” Journalists quickly commended her choice of a “seasoned leader” who will help “stabilize the department.” A closer look at McDonnell’s long career in law enforcement tells a different story.

McDonnell joined LAPD in 1981 and moved up the ranks to hold virtually every position in the department before losing two bids for the top job–first to Bratton in 2002, and then to Beck in 2009. He left LAPD to lead Long Beach’s smaller police department, where he oversaw a rise in officer-involved shootings and the 2013 beating of an unarmed man. He then took the helm at LASD following public outrage over the scandal-ridden tenure of former sheriff Lee Baca and Baca’s second in command, Paul Tanaka (both convicted felons).

Thanks to his anti-immigrant stance and a cascade of scandals in the department, McDonnell became the first elected LA sheriff to be unseated in a century. When Trump rose to power on a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria, McDonnell was uniquely positioned to shield LA’s immigrant community from the incoming administration. Instead, he turned his back on vulnerable Angelenos by undermining the state’s sanctuary law and cooperating with ICE.

On his watch, LASD deputies profiled Latino motorists and shot three unarmed men in the space of two weeks, killing two of them. There were also suspicious deaths inside county jails, and disturbing allegations of deputies demanding sex in exchange for time off, purchasing impounded luxury vehicles, and raping inmates at the women’s jail in Lynwood. McDonnell’s department was dogged by low morale in the rank-and-file, and he admitted to promoting deputy gang members to command staff positions.

Given this track record, Jim McDonnell’s historic 2018 defeat to Alex Villanueva is not surprising. Let’s not allow Villanueva’s disastrous tenure as sheriff to trigger a collective amnesia about his predecessor’s many failures.