ALERT: In view of recent developments within the Sheriff department, the Prayer Vigil for May 22 at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has been postponed and will be rescheduled at an appropriate time and date. Thank you for expressing your interest in participating in this event.
Please save the date for our First Thursday, June 6, 2019 Forum. We will provide:
- New Developments with the Sheriff Department
- 2019 Legislative Policy Watch and Updates
- How You, Your Congregation, and Community Can Get Involved
No Turning Back: Faith Vigil for Sheriff Accountability
May 22 – 12 Noon
LA County Sheriff Dept. HQ
4700 Ramona Boulevard
Monterrey Park
Justice Not Jails will lead a community-wide vigil and rally – featuring prayer, song, and preaching – at the central headquarters of the LA Country Sheriff’s Dept. on May 22. Our purpose is to lift up grave and growing concerns about the direction being taken by newly-elected Sheriff Alex Villanueva. To date, Villanueva has reneged on campaign promises related to maintaining hard-won reforms in the huge department he supervises. He has set up a phony “truth and reconciliation” commission in order to reinstate deputies who had been terminated for wrongdoing; he has said it’s okay for deputies to belong to violent internal gangs; he has treated the Civilian Oversight Commission with open contempt; he has used third-party means to continue to cooperate with ICE; and he has even said he doesn’t see anything wrong with officers referring to the East LA substation as “Fort Apache” despite the racist and white supremacist associations of such a reference.
People of faith who join with others in seeking a new model for policing in this region cannot and will not be silent as Villanueva rides roughshod over the legitimate concerns of the reform community. We cannot and will not abide a Sheriff’s Department that seeks once more to be a law unto itself and to reinforce rather than to work against the pervasive racism embedded in the Department and especially in its Custodial Division, which runs the nation’s largest jail system.
On the May 22 will will bring light and love and truth to the doorstep of Sheriff Villanueva. We will invite him to join us in open dialogue. We will pray that he can still return to the righteous path he promised us that he would take as a candidate.
Please join us! Visit our Justice Not Jails website for more information and for updates as the date draws nearer. We will be organizing group transportation from at least one central LA location.