In a stunning display of political theater disguised as justice, Los Angeles County just handed over $8 million of taxpayer money to settle a six-year-old lawsuit brought by eight sheriff’s deputies who claimed they were harassed by the so-called “Banditos” clique at the East Los Angeles station.
The settlement was quietly approved by the Board of Supervisors on April 7, 2026, just days before what would have been a very public trial. But make no mistake: this wasn’t about accountability. It was a coordinated eleventh-hour escape hatch engineered by Sheriff Robert Luna and his hand-picked county attorney, Jason Tokoro, to shield Luna from the one question he could never answer under oath: How many deputy gang members have you actually identified?
Under oath during the recent Ben Torres trial, the Sheriff’s Department’s own head of Internal Affairs, Chief Laura Lechervain, gave a definitive answer: zero.
Not one single deputy has been formally identified as a member of any “gang” since Luna took office and began grandstanding about his “zero-tolerance” crusade. Yet Luna has spent years flooding the airwaves with tough talk about “eradicating deputy gangs,” complete with new pledges, oversight commissions, and photo-ops. The rhetoric was always hollow, and the Banditos lawsuit threatened to prove it in open court.
The 9th-Inning Settlement: A Classic Political Dodge
The lawsuit, filed in September 2019, alleged that members of the Banditos clique assaulted and intimidated younger deputies during an off-duty 2018 gathering at Kennedy Hall. County lawyers, led by Tokoro of the politically wired firm Miller Barondess, repeatedly argued the incident was off-duty, non-county business, and that the plaintiffs were targeted not because of ethnicity but because they refused to play along with station cliques.
The case dragged on through multiple hearings. A judge allowed most claims to proceed in 2023. Trial was finally set for early 2025. Then, on the eve of jury selection, the county suddenly folded and settled for $8 million, money that will ultimately be drawn from the Sheriff’s Department budget, meaning taxpayers foot the bill for Luna’s political protection.
Why settle now, after years of fighting?
The answer is simple. A jury trial would have forced Luna or his command staff to take the stand. Under oath, they would have had to admit the embarrassing truth: despite all the pledges, tattoos checks, and Civilian Oversight Commission recommendations, the department has identified exactly zero active deputy gang members. That revelation would have been catastrophic for Luna’s 2026 reelection campaign. The “tough-on-gangs” sheriff who rode into office on the backs of anti-gang hysteria would have been exposed as all bark, no bite.
Jason Tokoro: Not Just a Lawyer – Luna’s Political Fixer
Enter Jason H. Tokoro, partner at Miller Barondess and the county’s bulldog litigator in this very case. Tokoro has been the public face defending the county against the Banditos plaintiffs since at least 2022. But Tokoro isn’t some neutral civil servant. He and his firm have direct financial ties to Luna’s political machine. Public records show Tokoro personally donated to Luna’s 2022 campaign. Multiple partners at Miller Barondess, under the direction of senior partner “Skip” Miller, have likewise poured money into Luna’s war chest, including for his 2025 reelection efforts.
This is a textbook conflict of interest. The same law firm billing taxpayers millions to defend the Sheriff’s Department is simultaneously bankrolling the Sheriff’s reelection. While Tokoro was in court arguing the county bore no liability for “off-duty” deputy behavior, his firm was helping ensure the very sheriff who appointed him stayed in power. Democrat power brokers on the Board of Supervisors, Luna’s political enablers, were only too happy to rubber-stamp the settlement and keep the embarrassing facts buried.
The Fake Narrative That Never Dies
Let’s be clear: the entire “deputy gang” panic was always more political weapon than public safety crisis. Previous Sheriff Alex Villanueva correctly called it out as a manufactured narrative pushed by progressive activists, the Civilian Oversight Commission, and LA’s Democrat establishment to smear the department and influence elections. Luna, the self-proclaimed reformer, simply flipped the script. He promised federal intervention and a new “Office of Constitutional Policing” to “eradicate” the gangs, then quietly admitted through department channels to oversight bodies that no such groups meet the legal definition of a gang under his watch.
Yet the taxpayer cost keeps mounting. Los Angeles County has shelled out tens of millions over the years in deputy-gang-related settlements, money that could have gone to hiring, training, or actual crime-fighting. The Banditos case alone started as an $80 million demand. The $8 million settlement is a bargain for Luna politically, but a raw deal for every Angeleno paying the tab.
Chief Lechervain’s internal affairs assessment is devastating because it’s honest: despite years of rhetoric, investigations, and millions spent, the department has not identified a single active deputy gang member. The tattoos, cliques, and station rivalries that have existed for decades? Luna’s team rebrands them as “subgroups” or “cultural issues” while claiming victory. It’s the same old LASD culture dressed up in progressive buzzwords.
Democrat Handlers and the Re-election Shield
Luna didn’t act alone. This settlement was green-lit by the same Democrat-dominated Board of Supervisors that has used the sheriff’s office as a punching bag for years. They needed a compliant sheriff who would mouth the right platitudes about “systemic issues” and “accountability” without ever delivering the one thing that would actually matter: naming names and cleaning house under oath. Tokoro and Miller Barondess provided the legal muscle and the political donations to make sure the case died in the 9th inning.
The result? Eight million dollars vanished from the Sheriff’s budget. The Banditos lawsuit, once poised to expose the emptiness of Luna’s anti-gang crusade, disappeared without a trace. And Sheriff Luna lives to campaign another day on a narrative that his own department’s internal affairs chief has already debunked.
This is a racket dressed up as reform.
The fake deputy gang narrative has already cost Los Angeles County dearly, in dollars, in trust, and in effective law enforcement. Rest assured, the only “gangs” winning are the ones in the Board of Supervisors chambers and the campaign finance reports.
