An attorney is urging the state to decertify the second-highest-ranking official in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, accusing her of committing perjury last year during a civil trial when she denied the existence of deputy gang activity at the Compton sheriff’s station.
Alan Romero, who represented sheriff’s Lt. Larry Waldie in a failed $26 million whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department, filed a petition this week with the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training seeking decertification for Undersheriff April Tardy.
Waldie alleged in a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that he was targeted and demoted while serving as acting captain at the Compton station after speaking out against the undue influence of a deputy subgroup there known as the Executioners. The jury found Waldie engaged in whistleblowing activity, but that it was not a substantial factor in how he was treated.
The decertification petition submitted to POST on Monday alleges Tardy committed perjury when she untruthfully testified at Waldie’s trial that there was no deputy gang activity at the Compton station or a deputy work slowdown in 2019 led by alleged Executioners’ “shot caller” Deputy Jaime Juarez.
Tardy’s court statement contradicts sworn testimony she provided in 2022 to the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, which is investigating the existence of deputy gangs within the Sheriff’s Department, Romero alleges.
There, Tardy attempted to portray herself as a reform-minded candidate for undersheriff, testifying in an “inapposite, irreconcilable and mutually exclusive manner” that she had moved Juarez from the Compton station because he was the leader of the Executioners, the petition states.
However, after Sheriff Robert Luna appointed her as undersheriff, Tardy allegedly disavowed and began to “unwind” her COC testimony about deputy gangs at the Compton station, Romero…
Read the full article here
