Checking In With Captain Mike
Mike Bornman discusses his run for Los Angeles County Sheriff.
The position of Los Angeles County Sheriff was once a very stable one. LA County voters continually reelected the incumbent Sheriff from the late 1950s into the 2010s. Peter Pitchess served as Sheriff from 1958 to 1981. Sherman Block succeeded Pitchess and served until 1998. Lee Baca succeeded Block and served until 2014, when his legal woes caught up to him.
Ever since, there’s been nothing but turmoil with three consecutive one-term Sheriffs: Jim McDonnell, Alex Villanueva, and, most recently, Robert Luna. (Luna is running for reelection).
Thirty-six-year LA County Sheriff veteran Mike Bornman seeks to change that. In June, Bornman announced he was running for Sheriff, challenging the incumbent Luna. In July, Villanueva jumped into the race. With Luna, Villanueva and four others in the race, Bornman expects that it’s going to be a mudslinging contest.
“I’m just going to let everybody beat the crap out of each other,” Bornman said. “I’m just going to stand back.”
So far, Bornman has raised $50,000 to $55,000 for his campaign. He noted that November and December are off-peak months for campaigning, and he’s planning to ramp things up in January 2026.
“I’m pretty happy with where I stand,” Bornman said. “It’s so darn early. People aren’t paying attention to the race right now.”
Bornman noted that name recognition is the biggest issue he faces. Should Bornman overcome it, he feels confident that Robert Luna will get less than 50 percent of the vote in the June election, which then would set up a Top Two runoff in November.
“People don’t feel safe in their neighborhood,” Bornman said, referencing what he’s heard at campaign events he’s attended. “The issues I hear about are the ones I’m complaining about.”
Bornman noted Luna took $4,500 in campaign contributions from individuals connected to Shangri-La Industries, which was federally indicted in October for various fraud-related crimes. Shangri-La Industries epitomizes the Homeless Industrial Complex—well-connected firms getting lucrative government contracts for alleged “solutions” to homelessness in exchange for financial support for elected officials.
“He hasn’t said a thing,” Bornman remarked about Luna’s silence. “He’s hoping it goes away. But it’s not.”
Broken System
Mike Bornman’s campaign platform is centered on rectifying the “broken system” that is the current state of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Bornman has highlighted the Sheriff’s Department bus fleet shortages as a problem.
“How do you go from 86 [buses] to 5?” Bornman said, acknowledging that the Board of Supervisors has authorized money for new buses. “It’s still going to take years to get the number of buses back to where they should be.”
One of the interesting fun facts Bornman mentioned was that the Sheriff’s Department has a “Statewide Bus” that goes up and down the Golden State picking up arrestees at county jails who have warrants out from LA County.
Bornman has proposed a “top-to-bottom” forensic audit of the Sheriff’s Department. He’s skeptical that there is a structural deficit within the department and believes there’s a lot of “fat” and “redundancy” that can be eliminated. As an example, Bornman cited the policy of having two captains oversee a detention facility.
“If more than one person is in charge, then no one is in charge,” Bornman said, adding he wants to see the numbers and paperwork that proves it produces better management practices. “I’m not convinced it works.”
Addressing The Jail Issue
LA County has one of the—if not the largest—jail systems in the United States. And the jails are in dismal condition. Even the newest jail, the all-female Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, which opened in 1997, is showing its age.
“It’s looking ghetto in there,” Mike Bornman noted.
Bornman’s solution is to build a “brand new, state-of-the-art” women’s facility on the former Sybil Brand Institute site in East LA, convert Century Regional Detention Facility into an all-male facility, and demolish Men’s Central Jail.
The LA County Sheriff’s Department assigns all new deputies to work in the jails for the first 2 years of their career. While Bornman believes working the lockups helps new deputies learn how to handle themselves among the criminal element, he thinks the jail assignment should be shortened to just 1 year.
“After that, you’re just twiddling your thumbs and babysitting.”
Bornman also noted that Sheriff’s deputies represent 60 percent of the correctional staff, and custody assistants make up the remaining 40 percent. He would change that to 85 to 90 percent custody assistants, which would free up deputies to work patrol.
Sheriffs In The News
A lot of sheriffs have been in the news of late, including Christina Corpus, the former San Mateo County Sheriff, who was recently removed from office by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. Corpus was elected in 2022 and quickly found herself embroiled in scandal. In many ways, Corpus’ saga mirrored what occurred with Alex Villanueva in LA County between 2018 and 2022.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors placed a measure on the countywide ballot to amend its County Charter in 2022 to allow a four-fifths majority to remove a sitting Sheriff—a rather legally dubious proposition—aimed at Villanueva. The voters approved it, while simultaneously voting Villanueva out of office.
However, Mike Bornman doesn’t like how the Corpus affair went down or, for that matter, the idea of any Board of Supervisors having the power to remove a sitting Sheriff.
“The voters voted her in and the voters should be the ones that vote her out,” Bornman said. “The Sheriff doesn’t answer to other elected officials.”