April 28--As the fallout builds over jokes emailed by a top Los Angeles County sheriff's official, Sheriff Jim McDonnell finds himself in a tight spot.
Civil rights groups have called for Tom Angel, McDonnell's chief of staff, to face consequences after The Times this week published the emails, which contain stereotypes of Muslims, blacks, Latinos, women and others.
But McDonnell has said he has no immediate plans to discipline his aide because the emails predate Angel's current employment with the Sheriff's Department. Angel sent the emails from his work account in 2012 and 2013 when he was the No. 2 police official in Burbank, brought in to reform an agency reeling from allegations of police brutality as well as racism and sexual harassment within its ranks.
The emails have drawn fire from community leaders, including Muslim Americans, who were carefully cultivated by the previous sheriff, Lee Baca. Now, McDonnell risks alienating some of those leaders if he does not take public action against a trusted aide he recruited back to the department less than a year ago.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a civil rights advocate who has called on the Sheriff's Department to audit all employee emails to see whether others are sending offensive material, said that expressing disappointment in Angel, which McDonnell has done, is not enough.
"It doesn't send a message about zero tolerance," Hutchinson said. "You have an individual who occupies a major position in the Sheriff's Department, and you're saying he's above the law. If he were a beat officer, you would discipline him or her."
Some Muslim groups also are calling for Angel -- a longtime sheriff's official who returned last year to join McDonnell's effort to turn around the troubled department -- to be reprimanded or disciplined and for sheriff's deputies to receive cultural awareness training. As a chief, Angel is an at-will employee and could be fired or demoted without the civil service protections of lower-ranking sworn personnel, a Sheriff's Department spokesman said.
Angel told The Times that he did not mean to embarrass or demean anyone. He said it was unfortunate that his work emails could be obtained by the public under the state's records laws.
"I took my Biology exam last Friday," said one of the forwarded emails, which The Times obtained from the city of Burbank under the state's public records law. "I was asked to name two things commonly found in cells. Apparently 'Blacks' and 'Mexicans' were NOT the correct answers."
Another email ridiculed concerns about the racial profiling of Muslims as terrorism suspects. A third included the subject line, "How dumb is dumb?" and listed 20 reasons "Muslim Terrorists are so quick to commit suicide," including "Towels for hats," "Constant wailing from some idiot in a tower" and "You can't wash off the smell of donkey."
Four of the emails were a series of jokes that Angel received and then forwarded. A fifth was a short dialogue between Angel and another Burbank police official in which Angel asked how many virgins are supposedly awarded to Muslims in the afterlife.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council met with McDonnell on Monday and has set up another meeting with him for next week. A statement from the organization calling for disciplinary action against Angel also was signed by the HIV/AIDS advocacy group Bienestar, the African American community service group Brotherhood Crusade, the immigrant rights group CARECEN and the anti-bias group The California Conference for Equality and Justice.
"Holding Mr. Angel accountable for his actions by demonstrating a zero tolerance policy for hate and bigotry is critical for the LA Sheriff's Department to maintain public trust, especially in the face of the growing climate of bigotry and racism we are witnessing across the country," Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in the statement.
Hutchinson said that Angel's emails, coming from a close advisor to the sheriff, raise suspicions among blacks and Latinos that the Sheriff's Department still espouses an "us versus them" attitude.
Biases such as those expressed in the emails could affect how deputies police the streets because many of their interactions are with black and Latino residents, Hutchinson said.
In recent years, federal officials have stepped in to stop beatings by deputies in the jails and racially discriminatory policing practices in the Antelope Valley. More than a dozen sheriff's officials, including Baca, have been convicted or pleaded guilty to charges involving misconduct in the jails.
Despite the jail scandal, Baca won praise during his 15 years as sheriff for building strong relationships with minority groups who said the Sheriff's Department previously had mistreated them and ignored their concerns. Baca required his deputies to memorize a pledge to fight against racism, sexism and homophobia. And he created dozens of ethnic advisory committees, formalizing a pipeline between his office and the county's many minority groups.
Among Baca's legacies was the Muslim Community Affairs unit, which was started in 2007 and consisted of several deputies whose job was to maintain relationships with Muslim residents and educate fellow deputies about Islam. The unit has continued its work under McDonnell.
At a congressional hearing on homeland security in March 2010, Baca testified about the importance of strong ties with Muslim communities. When a congressman questioned why Baca attended fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the sheriff defended his ties with the group.
"If he thinks I'm afraid of what he said, I will go to 10 fundraisers because he said it," Baca said later.
cindy.chang@latimes.com, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @cindychangLA, @atchek
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