Failed negotiations, aging vehicles and a county motion seeking a temporary fix put Sheriff Luna’s fleet management under scrutiny.
Centerra mechanics walked out Friday, October 30, after negotiations over the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s fleet maintenance arrangement collapsed, according to sources familiar with the contract talks. The breakdown compounds an already deteriorating fleet crisis under Sheriff Robert Luna: aging vehicles, recurring breakdowns and repairs that personnel say take months. Now the department faces a basic operational question with direct consequences for deputy and public safety: Who is going to fix the vehicles?
According to sources, negotiations broke down after Amy Wong, acting captain of LASD’s Communications and Fleet Management Bureau, made “unreasonable demands” of Centerra. The company countered with demands of its own, and the standoff ended without an agreement – prompting mechanics to walk out and leaving an aging fleet already in desperate need of repairs facing an interruption in maintenance.
Sheriff Robert Luna has yet to explain how his department reached Friday without an agreement to keep those mechanics in place – and according to insiders, no functioning replacement arrangement exists.
An October 27 motion by Supervisor Kathryn Barger shows officials were already addressing the problem. It identifies LASD’s Centerra contract as an agreement executed September 15, 2021, with a five-year initial term and extension options. The motion says the county exercised a two-year extension while successor proposals were being evaluated, but encountered further “delays and challenges.”
Barger sought authority for Sheriff Luna to execute temporary contracts, amendments and purchase orders covering up to nine months. The motion provides no evidence that replacement personnel were in place Friday, leaving LASD leadership with a critical question: If the county had already exercised a two-year extension, how did the department still reach a standoff that ended with mechanics walking out?
This was hardly an unforeseen procurement need. LASD’s own solicitation page lists a fleet maintenance request for proposals opened March 3, with a May 29 submission deadline. The department had months to address the transition.
Meanwhile, messages reaching The Current Report describe vehicles already struggling to remain in service. One source reported detective bureau cars 11 to 15 years old, breakdowns during work, malfunctioning air conditioning or heating, and no available replacements. The source also said personnel lacked the new vehicles shown to news crews months earlier. A car displayed for cameras does nothing for someone waiting for a replacement at a station.
A separate message described repairs taking months, even for jobs the sender characterized as simple, and attributed the delays to insufficient technicians with the necessary skills. These complaints preceded Friday’s departure. Any further loss of maintenance capacity risks adding to the backlog and placing greater demands on vehicles still operating.
Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva put it this way: “An aging fleet without mechanics to service them is a direct threat to public safety and deputies will not have vehicles to respond to calls for service and emergencies.”
Whatever role CFMB Acting Captain Amy Wong played in the breakdown with Centerra, responsibility for keeping LASD’s fleet operational rests squarely with Sheriff Robert Luna. This is another critical breakdown in a long line of failures that have left the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department severely deteriorated under his leadership. Deputies cannot respond to emergencies in vehicles sitting idle awaiting repairs, and residents should not have to pay for this administration’s failures with delayed response times during life-threatening situations.
