Lee Baca
| Lee Baca | |
|---|---|
Baca in 2011
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| Born |
May 27, 1942 East Los Angeles, California |
| Other names | "Lee" |
| Police career | |
| Department | Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department |
| Country | United States |
| Years of service | 1965–2014 |
| Rank | Sworn in as a deputy - 1965 Sergeant - 1970 Lieutenant - 1975 Captain - 1981 Commander - 1987 Chief Deputy - 1992 Sheriff - 1998 |
 Former L.A. Sheriff’s Cmdr. Interviewed About Baca’s Failed Leadership Concerning Inmate Abuse Scandal, KTLA5, July 18, 2016
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Leroy David "Lee" Baca (born May 27, 1942) is a former Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California.
Baca was elected Los Angeles County's 30th sheriff against his mentor Sherman Block, who had died in office days prior to the election but remained on the ballot. He was sworn in on December 7, 1998.
He was re-elected to a fourth term in 2010. He has been criticized for proposing a half-percent sales tax increase in 2004 to hire more deputy sheriffs, placing friends on the payroll, taking of gifts and for releasing inmates from the Los Angeles County Jail.
On January 7, 2014 Baca announced that he would retire at the end of January 2014 before the expiration of his term.
In 2016, Baca plead guilty to federal charges of lying during an investigation into civil rights violations at the county jail. He later withdrew the plea, and had a hung jury on his first trial. He was retried and on March 15, 2017, as the last of 21 defendants, he was found guilty of corruption charges involving impeding a FBI investigation.
Baca's mother was a seamstress born in Michoacán and then brought to the U.S. illegally when she was a year old. Lee Baca was born in East Los Angeles and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School, located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, in 1960 and later from East Los Angeles College. In 1964, Baca joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
On August 23, 1965, Baca was sworn in as a deputy sheriff trainee of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Baca began his career in street patrol, custody, and recruitment and was a staff instructor at the Sheriff's Academy. In 1981, Baca became captain of the Norwalk, California sheriff station. On January 23, 1992, Sheriff Sherman Block promoted Baca to the rank of chief deputy.
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