By: Marvin McCoy
In the spirit of the late great comedian Bernie Mac “can we be honest here America”?
Let’s not kid each other, let’s discuss the obvious elephant in the room that everyone wants to ignore which is newly elected Sheriff Robert Luna, from the former Long Beach Police Department, failed miserably in his department’s response to the mass shooting in Monterey Park.
If I’m reading correctly, according to the Los Angeles Times, it took up to five hours for upper brass at LASD to alert the general public that there was an active shooter on the loose.
Are you serious? I can’t imagine in any scenario where apparently the suspect who after the initial shooting in Monterey Park, and then a failed at a second attempt in the City of Alhambra, was able to drive all the way to Torrance and commit suicide by a self-inflicted wound.
5 hours?
“Five hours is kind of ridiculous,” said Chris Grollnek, an expert on active-shooter tactics and a retired police officer and SWAT team member. “This is going to be a really good case study. Why five hours?”
Related: Cops took 5 hours to warn that dance hall shooter was loose
Can you imagine what carnage this man could have done within 5 hours? Let’s not mention the fact they weren’t able to find the perpetrator of this heinous and cowardly act until the next day fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you view it. Meanwhile, all five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have made no public comments sharing the concern of law enforcement of experts in the time it took to alert the public.
Word is Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell is entertaining a run for Diane Feinstein’s seat and being silent on this is not a good look.
But this one and from just my general experience and a somewhat working knowledge of the machinations of the democratic “woke” liberal movement the suspect, his race, and alerting the general public as to the race of the shooter if handled wrong could prove to be a political “death trap” so to speak as we are witnessing before our eyes the evolving and ever-changing political force that the AAPI community has materialized into as far as it relates to organization, a reliable voting bloc and a reliable deep donor base.
Like I said in my previous letter, I don’t envy Sheriff Luna’s position but I can’t help to believe that political correctness and the Sheriff’s indebtedness to the Board of Supervisors, which is largely responsible for his ascension to one of the most coveted jobs in law enforcement in the country, is ready for primetime.
Luna is quoted as saying “his department was “strategic” in its decision to release information” and “it worked”. How?
He was on the loose from 10 p.m. to 11:00 a.m., the following day, and committed suicide. Authorities didn’t apprehend him. What kind of carnage could have occurred in those twelve hours had that hero not wrestled the gun from him in Alhambra?
I have questions and I hope other’s do too because we have to assume another Monterey Park, CA incident is lurking around the corner and I need a sense of confidence, which quite honestly I’m currently lacking that our current Sheriff is able to handle emerging and difficult crisis as they arise but also the ability to foresee and take preventive and corrective measures to prevent or limit events like these in the future.
We can all sit here and debate the merits and question the decisions of the current Sheriff, if so inclined, as admittedly I’m a huge fan of the former Sheriff but to not discuss the outright complete failure to warn the general public until 5 hours later that a mass murderer was on the loose not only irresponsible but shows the lack of decisive, unencumbered decisions that we should expect from any head of a law enforcement agency, especially that of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
With that being said it’s easy to blame Sheriff Luna for the failure in Monterey Park but we collectively as a community have to hold the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors equally responsible because although Sheriff Luna was the second choice of the “woke” left, he is in fact still their choice and his failures good bad or indifferent may dampen the political prospects and futures of current board members, specifically that of Holly Mitchell who is a rumored candidate in 2024 Senate race to replace Dianne Feinstein.
In closing, I can’t reiterate this position enough that I don’t envy’s Sheriff Luna’s position and if I were him taking an early retirement isn’t probably a bad idea because with the local media seeking out the former Sheriff Alex Villanueva for solace and comfort through a period of great pain and/or suffering not only for Monterey Park but the Country, in general, doesn’t bode well for the present Sheriff and his tenure going forward.
Let’s be honest, Sheriff Luna was set up for failure to begin with because let us not forget their first choice for Sheriff was LAXPD Chief and former Assistant Sheriff Cecil Rhambo who served under the disgraced and indicted former Sheriff Lee Baca. Rhambo’s choir boy image was cultivated and created amongst the democratic woke strategist to destroy the credibility and weaken the powers of Villanueva because he chose to be accountable to those who elected him as Sheriff instead of acquiescing to every political whim and machinations of the 5 member voting bloc on the Board of Supervisors whom many can argue out of political mischief and retribution limited his ability to effectively do his job in his short but powerful tenure.
Imagine if we had Alex Villanueva as Sheriff during Monterey I can’t imagine any circumstance where regardless of race, creed, color or religious background would have withheld pertinent information that could possibly save lives because that’s what we expect for them to do as we elect them to do and anything else contradictory to the general principle to protect human life is grounds for dismissal.
It’s hard not to argue that the new Sheriff didn’t fail horribly in his first real test which leaves me to ponder that had the suspect been a young Black male, with a hoodie would it be reasonable to argue that the warning would have gone out immediately?
