Councilmember Erickson: How many deputies do we need to make WeHo feel safe?

Councilmember John Erickson grilled Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Commander Ed Ramirez over how the agency fields emergency calls on Monday at City Council’s meeting.

Erickson wanted to know why deputies sometimes ask crime victims to perform a “citizen’s arrest” on the suspect — for example, a resident being assaulted by a homeless person.

“Why would you ask a individual private citizen to do a citizen’s arrest when they’ve been assaulted and not arrest (the suspect) yourselves especially when there are witnesses and everything?” he asked.

That’s just state law, according to Ramirez.

“If an assault is a misdemeanor like a misdemeanor battery and we are not witness to it, then the law requires the person who’s the victim of a misdemeanor battery to place the person who committed it under a private person’s arrest,” he said. “It’s essentially signing a sheet saying this person did this to me.”

“Now if the assaulting party hits them with a pipe and cracks their head open, that’s a felony, and so we can take action and arrest that individual without a private person’s arrest.”

The line between misdemeanor and felony can get blurry. Deputies make arrests when it’s domestic violence or when criminal threats are involved.

Erickson felt that there was a larger “disconnect” that left residents feeling isolated in dealing with law enforcement issues. He cited a recent incident where a car had flipped over near his home on Fountain Ave. LAPD officers had come and gone, leaving the vehicle in the street and forcing pedestrians to attempt to re-direct traffic on their own. Erickson personally requested the Sheriff’s help via Public Safety Director Kristin Cook. 

“I essentially begged Kristin to get someone out there. They sent one of your sheriffs, they parked and they sat in their car and watched it all happen,” he said.

“I’m a councilmember. I’m on the phone with our public safety director and I can’t get anyone out here to make sure members of the public who are actively in the street directing traffic don’t get killed by cars on Fountain. And that’s just one of the many issues that I hear every day about reporting and how people don’t feel like they’re taken seriously.”

Ramirez defended his department’s performance.

“Our teams are doing the best job that they can with the resources that we have. Violent crime is on the rise and we will continue to continue to work diligently to ensure the safety and security of the citizens of West Hollywood, whether we have 50 deputies or whether we have 60 deputies, and that’s just what the Sheriff’s Department does. We have always worked with less. I strongly discourage it but we will always work with the tools that we are given.”

Erickson seemed unsatisfied with the response.

“How many more officers is it going to take to make our residents feel safe? And I don’t know if that’s even the right question because we don’t have that analysis in front of us but I hear a lot of members of the public say that they are scared and that is something that I take very seriously regardless of whatever people say about how I actually feel. That is what I actually take very seriously. And they wouldn’t be here at 11:30 at night if they didn’t feel this way and I still don’t know if we have a concrete plan to making individuals feel safer and that worries me. Because you are still getting roughly $19 million — a big portion of our budget to do that — and people still feel really unsafe.”

Publishers Note: Council member Erickson has advocated cutting the Sheriff department budget due to a whistleblower who accused the Los Angeles County Sheriff over billing. With cost increases in labor and other West Hollywood’s public safety budget and the number of officers have yet to be restored to pre-covid levels. Council member voted instead for a $100,000 study to study reparations for black and indigenous peoples, and almost another $100,000 to repaint the crosswalks with a new flag.