Broken From the Top: Eric Strong Says LASD Needs Real Reform, Not Promises

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Lt. Eric Strong is watching the same scenes in his news feeds as the rest of us, of masked federal agents violating civil rights… demanding documents to prove citizenship…and snatching people off streets, parking lots and classrooms… drawing weapons on bystanders filming their interactions… and at times firing those weapons and sometimes killing said bystanders… Even local police officers are being stopped.  

“We have an administration that’s pushing an agenda that, candidly, I believe is rooted in racism,” said the now two-time candidate for sheriff. “If the goal is to secure the border, there are other ways to do that besides targeting workers and families.”

Strong, a 35-year law enforcement veteran, first gained countywide visibility during his 2022 campaign for sheriff. He distinguished himself as a blunt critic of what he describes as systemic corruption and leadership failures inside the department.

He questions the logic behind current federal enforcement tactics.

“If the argument is that undocumented immigrants are draining the economy — that they’re not paying taxes but receiving services — then why are tax returns and pay stubs being used to locate them?” Strong asked. “If the issue is violent crime — murder, rape, carjacking — then why are people being picked up at Home Depot parking lots and other public spaces? If this is about violent and dangerous individuals, then why are officers walking up to people in Walmart parking lots and asking, ‘Were you born here?’ To me, it feels like there’s been a green light given to return to racial profiling.”

Leadership and Accountability
In his previous campaign, Strong sharply criticized former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, describing his leadership as vindictive rather than competent. He said experienced leaders were removed not for poor performance but as retaliation and replaced by loyalists promoted beyond their training or experience.

Villanueva had been elected in part to finish the job Sheriff Jim McDonnell started in reforming a department tarnished by inmate abuse scandals during former Sheriff Lee Baca’s tenure. But according to Strong, conditions have not meaningfully improved. In September 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the Sheriff’s Department, alleging unconstitutional and inhumane conditions in county jails.

The roots of that lawsuit trace back to a 2021 state investigation into whether LASD had engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing.

Of Sheriff Robert Luna, Strong said:

“The only real difference is he’s quiet. Villanueva was loud and toxic. Luna smiles, shakes your hand, but in many ways he’s doing the same thing — and in some ways it’s worse.”

He pointed to the boycott of the Baker to Vegas relay race, an annual competition for law enforcement. Many LASD deputies declined to represent the department.

“Instead of asking why deputies boycotted, the response was to find out who organized it and put them under investigation. That’s not introspection — that’s control.”

The Whistleblower Allegations
During that period, Strong’s wife, Lt. Sidra Sherrod-Strong, then head of the department’s Food Services Unit, reported longstanding problems that resulted in inmates being served spoiled food. According to reports at the time, approximately 3,000 inmates were affected.

She also reported the sudden disappearance of $15 million from the unit’s $30 million budget. The funds later reappeared. Sherrod-Strong has claimed she learned the money was temporarily concealed as the department anticipated budget reductions from the Board of Supervisors.

Strong alleges that after raising these concerns, his wife faced retaliation.

“In an effort to discredit my family and me, my wife was put under a second investigation,” he said.

He described one allegation that she failed to report a policy violation.

“For you to be in violation, you have to know about it,” Strong said. “Internal Affairs didn’t even retrieve the department’s own intake report, which showed it wasn’t a policy violation in the first place.”

He called the investigation politically motivated and wasteful.

“Look at the manpower and the money spent trying to investigate employees who aren’t aligned with the regime. When you’re transparent, that kind of thing comes out.”

Strong argues that instead of using his wife’s experience to fix systemic problems in the jails, department leadership removed her.

“He had the recipe to fix it — no pun intended,” Strong said. “Instead of using her expertise, she was removed.”

LASD Resistant to Transparency Misconduct
Strong says Luna’s legal efforts to block oversight laws are designed to hide flawed use-of-force reviews, biased complaint dispositions, and decision-making processes from public scrutiny.

“Luna ran on transparency, but he’s not living up to it.”

He argued that true transparency would expose not just incidents, but how the department investigates itself.

“Transparency isn’t just about showing an incident. It’s about showing the investigative process — how decisions are made, how complaints are handled, and why cases are closed the way they are. That’s what he doesn’t want exposed.”

Strong criticized the sheriff’s legal challenges to oversight laws designed to increase public access to records.

“If the union has concerns, let the union fight it. The sheriff should comply with the law.”

Strong suggested that the resistance to disclosure signals deeper problems.

“Fighting transparency makes no sense unless you don’t want people to see what’s happening,” Strong said.

According to Strong, transparency would reveal whether investigations are being conducted properly or used selectively. Yet, despite campaign promises of transparency, Strong asserts that oversight commissions and Inspector General findings continue to be ignored or undermined by the sheriff’s administration.

Deputy Wellness in Full-blown Crisis
Strong cites unprecedented suicide numbers, excessive overtime, emotional exhaustion, and the absence of meaningful peer-to-peer or confidential mental health support systems.

Strong recalled a friend involved in a fatal traffic collision.

“He did everything right. But someone died. And even when you do everything right, that stays with you,” Strong said. Incidents like that don’t simply end when the report is filed.

“We expect deputies to just move on to the next call as if nothing happened. But they carry that. They take it home.”

He argued that wellness must address the psychological weight of repeated exposure to trauma, not just offer surface-level perks.

“A beanbag chair and a foosball table isn’t wellness in law enforcement. It has to be real support — confidential, peer-driven, trauma-informed.”

Strong connected the issue to the department’s suicide rate and burnout.

“Our deputies are depleted — emotionally, mentally, physically. If we don’t address that seriously, we’re failing them.”

Jail conditions reflect systemic leadership failure
From moldy food served to thousands of inmates to persistent sexual abuse allegations, Strong argues these issues persist because leadership refuses to act on known, fixable problems.

“If things were improving, the attorney general wouldn’t be filing suit three years into his term,” Strong said. “Conditions are getting worse.”

Other takeaway quotes: 

“You have thousands of inmates being served spoiled food. That’s not a line-level problem — that’s leadership.”

“Six hundred complaints of sexual abuse and not one substantiated? Having worked Internal Affairs, I know that’s not legitimate.”

“When you see numbers like that, that’s not a coincidence. That’s failed leadership.”

“You can’t blame the deputies on the floor for systemic problems. That comes from the top.”

“These aren’t isolated incidents. When the same problems continue year after year, it reflects an administration that isn’t fixing what it knows is broken.”

Why LASD is Losing Deputies
Eric Strong argues that LASD’s staffing crisis is not simply a hiring problem — it is a leadership and morale crisis. He attributes the department being down roughly 1,500 deputies to a combination of poor leadership, retaliatory internal culture, lack of transparency, burnout from excessive overtime, inadequate wellness support, and failure to modernize recruitment.

According to Strong, deputies are leaving because they feel unsupported, overworked and politically exposed. He also suggests that recruitment efforts have been mishandled, including inconsistent standards and messaging that fail to attract qualified candidates.

“Our deputies are depleted — emotionally, mentally, physically,” Strong said. “They’re missing birthdays, recitals, family time. When you’re working excessive overtime like that, over and over again, it takes a toll.”

Reimagining Policing
It’s not lost on Strong that the worst excesses of the federal government’s masked agents have strong parallels with the Sheriff’s Department’s own issues.  

Strong believes policing should prioritize transparency, accountability, and community trust rather than militarized enforcement and political agendas and advocates for moving away from punitive, fear-driven tactics toward strategies that protect civil rights, focus on serious crime, and invest in long-term community partnerships, arguing that meaningful reform requires structural change, not superficial policy shifts or performative gestures.