Gunning Up: L.A. County’s Top Cop Versus the Feds

Crimes of the Times

L.A. Times Studios

Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles, La Times, Los Angeles Times, True Crime, Chris Goffard, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 42.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. Host Chris Goffard, from the Los Angeles Times and creator of Dirty John, traces how the investigation escalated to obstruction of justice. Topics in this episode include: Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles County Jail scandal, Gabriel Carrillo beating, FBI investigation, police corruption.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you have any idea that they were watching it?
0:05.0	No. No.
0:06.0	Are you injured?
0:08.0	Yes, I have. Where are you injured?
0:09.0	Up over my face.
0:10.0	And as I start walking to the door of my apartment, I see two individuals standing in the front.
0:16.0	They both have sheriff's badges on.
0:18.0	Every time I saw that video, we get my blood boiling.
0:21.3	He had his gun showing, he had his badge showing.
0:23.5	It appeared very intentional to me that this was meant to be a intimidation tactic.
0:37.1	When Lee Baca took over the L.A. County Sheriff's Department in 1998, he promised a
0:42.6	new age of law enforcement at the vast scandal-plagued agency. He set out to improve the massive
0:49.0	jail system under his command, which had long been a cauldron of fear and dysfunction.
0:57.1	He built a reputation as a progressive reformer.
1:04.3	He bragged that on any given day, 8,000 inmates were taking classes in his jailhouse education programs.
1:09.7	The purpose of a prison or a jail is to educate the people there.
1:16.6	But what we've done is we've created this expectation for the public, which is a bad one,
1:23.1	that we're here to seek revenge for the sake of the crimes they've committed.
1:27.0	Close to half or more of the people in jail have not finished school. You have people who are
1:29.1	coming from very difficult family lives, and as children have been abused. Baca had a different
1:35.1	vocabulary from other lawmen. He often sounded like a social worker, and when the newspaper
1:40.8	described him as one, he embraced it. Sometimes he spoke in the language of new age and self-improvement seminars.
	...

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