A commander of an elite Los Angeles County sheriff’s unit ignored evidence that cleared a subordinate of wrongdoing and went after him anyway — and then provided “false or misleading” statements about it under oath, an internal investigation found.Top brass recommended that Cmdr. Oscar Barragan, who oversaw the agency’s special enforcement bureau, be discharged for violating the department’s policies on dishonesty and obstructing an investigation, according to an internal July 14 memo reviewed by The Times. A sheriff’s spokesperson said Barragan “separated” from the department two weeks before the memo was issued. She declined to elaborate further. Barragan did not respond to a request for comment. In an internal interview with sheriff’s investigators, he blamed his bad memory and denied intentionally providing false or misleading testimony.The special enforcement bureau, which handles high-risk tactical operations like barricaded suspects and hostage situations, has been at the center of several recent controversies. Last year, a grenade exploded at a training facility, killing three bomb squad detectives. The incident prompted multiple investigations — one into the deputies’ deaths, another into the disappearance of a second grenade and a third into the alleged distribution of graphic crime scene photos of the detectives’ bodies. A state investigation, meanwhile, found a series of safety violations, including failure to provide effective training. In another case involving the bureau, a black Labrador named Spike who was trained to detect fire accelerants in arson investigations overheated after a sergeant left him in a car for more than four hours. The events that led to Barragan’s discharge recommendation began in 2023, when a lieutenant in the bureau bought a car with a cashier’s check he obtained from Wells Fargo, according to the internal sheriff’s department memo.A few weeks later, according to the memo, the lieutenant, Joseph Garrido, noticed the money was still in his account. The seller, though, said he had cashed the check. So the lieutenant went to the bank, the memo says, where tellers realized they had mistakenly withdrawn the $33,500 from the account of the Sheriff’s Relief Assn., an organization that supports sheriff’s employees during times of crisis. The bank fixed the error and gave him a deposit slip that read: “Correction, teller debited wrong account.” It also issued a letter saying the same thing.The memo says Garrido reported the incident to the Sheriff’s Relief Assn. and to his supervisor at the Sheriff’s Department, then-Capt. Bryan Aguilera.Aguilera had “no concerns” about the lieutenant’s actions “because the evidence and documents presented to him showed that the incident was the bank’s mistake and that he did nothing wrong,” the memo said.Meanwhile, according to the memo, Barragan wrote a supervisory inquiry in which he “recommended further investigation into the matter.” In another form requesting a criminal investigation, Barragan wrote that he suspected the lieutenant of embezzlement. None of the documents mentioned the letter from Wells Fargo clearing Garrido.In April of last year, Barragan was deposed as part of a retaliation lawsuit filed by Garrido unrelated to the Wells Fargo case.Garrido had previously been targeted with another criminal case in which the investigating sergeant said in an email to a top executive that he suspected Garrido had been set up to face unfounded allegations he had used a department-issued vehicle to tow his boat to Arizona for a vacation in 2022. Garrido alleged in his lawsuit that the inquiry was manufactured as payback for a campaign donation he made to a political rival of former sheriff Alex Villanueva.County lawyers have agreed to settle the case, pending approval by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. When questioned about the Wells Fargo case, the department’s internal memo says, Barragan denied that he authored a supervisory inquiry and request for a criminal investigation.Later, Barragan signed paperwork to change his answers to those deposition questions, saying he “found documents that refreshed my recollection” and that he did, in fact, author the inquiry and request for a criminal investigation. In an interview with internal sheriff’s investigators, Barragan was “unable to explain” why the exculpatory documents were omitted, the memo said.Barragan told investigators that “although Wells Fargo characterized the incident as a mistake, he believed additional review was appropriate given the amount of money involved,” the memo says. He blamed the false statements in his deposition testimony on the “passage of time, limited preparation, and his inability to recall the documents during questioning.”Vince Miller, an attorney representing Garrido, commended the Sheriff’s Department for doing “the right thing” in this case. Barragan’s name has also been mentioned in a lawsuit filed over the deadly training center grenade blast last year.The explosion at the Biscailuz Center Training Academy killed Dets. Victor Lemus, Joshua Kelley-Eklund and William Osborn. A lawsuit filed by Lemus’ daughter last month claims that Barragan and other top commanders were warned of “training deficiencies” within the arson explosives detail before the incident. The lawsuit alleges that one veteran deputy told a captain a few months before the explosion that “the bomb squad unit was so undertrained that someone would be killed.” Nicole Nishida, a sheriff’s spokesperson, said by email that the agency has taken steps to improve safety, including “standardizing policies and procedures to ensure greater organizational consistency, introducing new equipment, and refining supervisory response protocols based on the nature of each incident.” “The Department continues to evaluate our training, equipment, and operational practices to identify additional opportunities to enhance the safety of our personnel while maintaining our ability to effectively protect and serve our communities,” she said. A 2023 captains survey conducted by the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the labor union that represents rank-and-file deputies, said that Barragan, who was captain of the bureau at the time, “will sacrifice vital training opportunities in order to farm out personnel for nonessential displays or appearances.” His assessment was “satisfactory.” In 2024, the same union survey concluded that Barragan’s performance was “very good,” but said that his choices for lieutenants and sergeants “lack operational experience.” Barragan was promoted to commander that year. Prosecutors in June declined to file charges against another top official, Cmdr. Thomas Giandomenico, saying a forensic examination of his phone revealed eight photos taken on the day of the incident. One of them showed the scene, with the deceased deputies covered on the ground, though they were not the focal point, according to a L.A. County district attorney’s office declination memo.“The evidence does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the photograph was taken for a purpose unrelated to official duties,” the D.A. declination memo says. “No evidence was discovered showing the photograph was disseminated outside official channels or used for any personal or non-official purpose.” Giandomenico did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an interview with investigators, according to the D.A. memo, Giandomenico said he believed the allegation was unfounded and suggested it may have been motivated by internal politics. He remains on leave and an internal administrative investigation is ongoing. The investigation into the grenade explosion by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health resulted in more than $350,000 in fines to the Sheriff’s Department, including for failing to establish procedures for identifying workplace hazards associated with handling explosives. The Sheriff’s Department has said it had appealed the citations.
