If you\u2019re still on the already rickety fence about how to handle the dicey question of who should win the race for LA County Sheriff this November\u2014your choice is either incumbent Alex Villanueva, or the hometown former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna\u2014perhaps a lively pub crawl will help determine who will earn your vote. And by “pub crawl,” I mean publicity crawl.<\/p>\n
Villanueva and a busload of supporters and staffers plan to tour Long Beach on Saturday, metaphorically sifting through the ruins of the May 31, 2020, fiery and violent unrest<\/a> in Downtown sparked by the murder of George Floyd, when local police did seem quite caught off guard.<\/p>\n What’s happening today is not just a regular bus taking guests around town, but as befits a pub crawl, it\u2019s the Villanueva campaign’s double-decker bus of the sort that typically ferries revelers from public house to public house for a booze blast. Come on! It’ll be fun!<\/p>\n The tour will feature chats with business owners who were, and perhaps remain, angry with Luna\u2019s response<\/a> to the mad crowd as the May protests flashed from peaceful to violent while Luna kept his officers at bay as looters and arsonists ran amok in the city. Scheduled stops and chats with business owners include Men’s Suit Outlet, 655 Pine Ave., at 10:15 a.m.; Beach Jewelry Center; 121 Pine Ave., at 11 a.m.; and Cambodia Town, 605 E. Anaheim St., time pending.<\/p>\n Even as the unrest continued in the days and weeks ahead, Villanueva seized the opportunity to play hero as he conducted a hold-my-beer publicity stunt in North Long Beach, posing with some Long Beach officers decked in riot gear, basically showing Long Beach that the cavalry has arrived to take over from the Luna-led F-Troop of Long Beach.<\/p>\n In his defense, Luna has said that his charges were outnumbered as things turned ugly, and he didn\u2019t want things to turn ever more explosive. He said that, though he felt he had more than sufficient officers to handle the protest, he was nevertheless unprepared for the unrest as things turned ugly.<\/p>\n Still, he was prepared enough to barricade police headquarters, but no other buildings, one of which, the Men\u2019s Suit Outlet<\/a>\u00a0was destroyed by fire while other businesses were vandalized, looted and otherwise terrorized.<\/p>\n Obviously, Villanueva sees Luna\u2019s failure as a ripe source of attack in the race, while Luna has a sweeping slate of Villanueva\u2019s weaknesses to exploit, and it\u2019s a list that\u2019s growing by the day and just waiting for Luna, who has no discernible oratorical skills or Villanueva\u2019s killer instinct, to plunder.<\/p>\n Just this week, the Sheriff\u2019s Department\u2019s Public Corruption Unit served a search warrant<\/a> on LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl citing, rather vaguely and generically, an \u201congoing public corruption investigation.\u201d They also issued a warrant at the home of Patricia Giggins, an LA County Civilian Oversight commissioner. Both women have been outspoken critics of Villanueva and have called for his resignation.<\/p>\n That\u2019s typical of how the sheriff deals with his critics, while those he favors receive special attention, as reported Friday in the Los Angeles Times in an article<\/a> that noted that at least 50 contributors to Villanueva\u2019s campaigns\u2014either his first or current one, or both\u2014have received concealed-carry permits to carry guns in public. And, while it\u2019s hardly unusual for Villanueva to issue some permits\u2014they\u2019ve been easier to get than a dog license since he\u2019s been sheriff, to the point where 2,800 people had them as of May, up from just two years ago, when only 155 people in the county had a permit, according to the Times\u2014the difference is the contributors frequently had the process expedited, getting permits in a month as opposed to the average wait time of six to eight months\u2014and sometimes with the assistance of two deputies who worked directly for Villanueva.<\/p>\n