In a county still reeling from revelations of pay-to-play schemes disguised as jail reform, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) is preparing to host a virtual town hall on Tuesday, November 4, to discuss compliance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). The event, promoted as a “community feedback forum” to create safer reporting environments for sexual assault survivors, will run from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. via Webex and is co-sponsored by several advocacy organizations. But critics say the initiative looks less like genuine reform and more like another public-relations maneuver to protect the same insiders who have profited from “oversight” for years.
At the center of the coalition sits Peace Over Violence (POV), the politically connected nonprofit run by Executive Director Patti Giggans, a longtime ally of former County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Appointed by Kuehl in 2016 to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission (COC), Giggans has since helped shape many of the County’s so-called reform narratives while her nonprofit collected millions in County contracts for violence-prevention programs. Her inclusion as a PREA town-hall partner raises familiar red flags. Giggans’ organization was a focal point of corruption probes after Kuehl’s office allegedly funneled no-bid deals to friendly nonprofits under the guise of jail reform, among them a controversial $494,000 Los Angeles Metro contract in 2020 that fell just below the competitive-bidding threshold.
Campaign finance records reviewed by The Current Report show a pattern of reciprocal donations between Kuehl and Giggans. Between 2013 and 2018, Giggans contributed over $2,500 to Kuehl’s campaigns, including $1,000 in 2014, during an active reform funding cycle. But notably, Giggans stopped donating to her “BFF forever,” Sheila Kuehl, after 2018, the year multiple contracts were locked in and approved, ensuring POV’s financial pipeline was secured. As one County insider put it, “She didn’t need to buy access anymore. The money was already flowing.”
The parallels between the way Los Angeles County promoted the LA Metro sexual-harassment hotline and how it is now pushing the PREA “town hall” are striking, and deeply troubling. In both cases, officials and their nonprofit partners framed the initiatives as groundbreaking efforts to protect vulnerable populations, while quietly funneling taxpayer dollars and political capital into the same circle of insiders. Just as the Metro hotline was marketed as a lifeline for harassment victims — only for whistleblowers and Bill Melugin’s FOX 11 investigation to reveal it cost $8,000 per call and served mostly as a vehicle for no-bid contracts to Peace Over Violence, the PREA campaign is being sold as a reform milestone in creating “safe reporting environments” inside jails. Yet it features the exact same players: Patti Giggans, Sheila Kuehl’s longtime ally and beneficiary of County contracts, now re-emerging under the banner of “sexual assault prevention” with the Sheriff’s Department. Both programs lean heavily on virtue-signaling rhetoric and public-relations theater, using survivors’ stories as moral cover for a system that has repeatedly prioritized optics, funding, and political loyalty over measurable outcomes or accountability.
Kuehl, in turn, supported allies inside law enforcement. Just months after being tipped off to a pending LASD search warrant related to her Metro dealings, a leak that allowed her to evade initial scrutiny, Kuehl donated $1,500 to then-candidate Robert Luna’s 2022 sheriff campaign. Luna defeated incumbent Alex Villanueva in what became one of the most politically charged sheriff races in County history. Since then, critics argue, Luna has shielded Kuehl’s network rather than investigated it.
Upon taking office in December 2022, Luna’s first move was to disband the LASD Public Integrity Unit, the same unit that had been investigating the Kuehl-Giggans corruption case. Oversight commissioners denounced the move as “a puppet’s first priority,” warning it effectively dismantled internal safeguards against misconduct. Three years later, Luna’s department faces mounting accusations of PREA non-compliance and rising sexual-assault reports within jails. An April 2025 COC ad-hoc report cited chronic underreporting and failures to ensure long-term compliance. Meanwhile, statewide audits found that 37.5 percent of jail deaths between 2016 and 2025 stemmed from preventable causes, including unaddressed sexual violence.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s September 2025 lawsuit against LASD for “inhumane” jail conditions underscores the department’s deepening crisis. Instead of cooperating, Luna sued the COC in March for issuing subpoenas into deputy misconduct. Behind the glossy language of “zero tolerance,” insiders describe a system where PREA violations persist because the same players responsible for systemic abuse are now rewriting the rules. Survivor advocates privately accuse Luna of “looking the other way”, not out of incompetence, but deliberate protection of what one whistleblower called “the reform-industrial complex” that enriched Kuehl, Giggans, and their allies.
Adding to the intrigue, The Current Report recently revisited the 2022 Kuehl corruption probe, uncovering a key unresolved mystery: Why did the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, after pledging 40 agents to assist LASD’s Metro search warrants, suddenly withdraw one week before execution? Sources close to the investigation cite political interference from Sacramento, a theory bolstered by statements from agents familiar with the case. The Bureau has refused to explain its withdrawal.
As the PREA town hall convenes next week, the public will hear speeches about compassion, safety, and transparency, many from the same voices who oversaw a decade of corruption, mismanagement, and performative reform. The real question remains: will this forum expose the rot, or polish it?
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