LA County Assistant DA Diana Teran, who oversaw George Gascón's efforts to prosecute law enforcement officers instead of criminals and to release thousands of felons from prison early, was arrested Saturday on 11 felony charges related to the "unauthorized use of data from confidential, statutorily-protected peace officer files." Like many alleged felons in Los Angeles County, Teran was out on bail less than an hour after her arrest.

Unlike many alleged felons in Los Angeles County, the Diana Teran scandal has the potential to topple the county's power structure, or to put a severe dent in it.

That potential exists because of the sheer volume of personnel and criminal cases Teran was involved with that might now be challenged in court, and because her actions at issue in the criminal case allegedly involve coordination with high-ranking county officials, such as Inspector General Max Huntsman, District Attorney George Gascón, and current and former members of the county Board of Supervisors.

READ: Top Advisor to LA DA Gascon Arrested, Allegedly Stole LA Sheriff Deputy Personnel Files

According to a press release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Teran "accessed computer data including numerous confidential peace officer files in 2018, while working as a Constitutional Policing Advisor at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and, after joining the LADA in January 2021, impermissibly used that data at the LADA."

That sounds rather vanilla, but additional details on what Teran is alleged to have done demonstrate that there's nothing vanilla about it at all. It's more convoluted than any script Hollywood could come up with. At this time it's not clear specifically which peace officer files Teran has been charged with using improperly since the detailed criminal complaint was filed under seal, but the following information on her activities relating to personnel files has been provided to RedState by numerous sources in law enforcement, county government, and in Gascón's office:

• Between 2014-18, as Constitutional Policing Advisor for LASD, Teran withheld exculpatory evidence from Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) investigations and findings, leading to the discipline and termination of deputies who should have been exonerated.
  • NOTE: Those deputies' personnel files would then contain inaccurate information about their actions, and could improperly taint cases they were involved in.
• Starting in June 2018 Teran improperly accessed and downloaded the personnel files of then-candidate Villanueva and other LASD employees who supported his campaign, allegedly at Huntsman's direction.
• The weekend before Villanueva was sworn in, according to sources, Huntsman sent Teran into the Sheriff's office with an external hard drive and instructions to gather additional personnel files.
• After leaving LASD when Villanueva took office in late 2018, Teran went to work with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and eventually the LA County Public Defender's office, and sources close to the current investigation have told RedState that Teran added information from the personnel files to the Public Defender's database. (She is not charged with doing so currently, and we do not have independent verification of that.)
• When Villanueva learned in early 2019 that personnel files had been improperly removed, he initiated an investigation into Teran and Huntsman; Huntsman aligned with anti-cop members of the LA County Board of Supervisors to shut it down.
• Teran allegedly used information within one deputy's personnel file to charge him with domestic violence once she was working at the DA's office, just a few days before the statute of limitations would have run.
• According to sources within Gascón's office, Teran uploaded the personnel file information into a database (likely the ORWITS database) at Gascón's office.
• Teran used the information in these files when she headed up Gascón's re-investigation of officer-involved shootings and use-of-force incidents that had already been cleared under former DA Jackie Lacey, according to sources within Gascón's office, and Gascón was in the room with her when she did so. At least a few of those deputies were criminally charged.
• In 2022 Huntsman allegedly tipped off LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl the night before a search warrant was to be executed by LASD and FBI related to a pay-for-play investigation. Kuehl was one of the loudest voices against Villanueva's investigation into Huntsman and Teran.
• As one of Gascón's most trusted assistants, Teran has overseen retaliatory actions against Deputy DA's who speak out against Gascón's directives or refuse to enforce his policies that they believe are against the law or against their oath. Millions of dollars in legal settlements have already been paid to Deputy DA's as a result, as the Deputy DA's union (LAADDA) points out here.

Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva appeared on a local talk radio show Friday and relayed some details related to the items above.

First, there's some background that's important to know. Teran worked for (now former) LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell from 2014 through 2018. McDonnell ran on being a "reformer" after Sheriff Lee Baca resigned amid a massive prisoner abuse scandal and investigation. Baca was later convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice for his role in attempting to cover up the abuse, and a total of 21 members of the LA County Sheriff's Department were eventually convicted of charges related to either obstruction of justice or jail abuse. There was, justifiably, a push to root out deputies who were bad apples, and McDonnell wanted to show the public, the Board of Supervisors, and the Civilian Oversight Commission results. With hindsight, it seems that push also created an environment where people who were either lifelong cop haters (Teran) or who wanted to retaliate against professional rivals (McDonnell) could push out good deputies without much pushback.

With that background, back to Villanueva's interview:

This is an earthquake that’s going to reverberate throughout county government, because now everything that she’s done, you have to look at it in the light, did she alter the records? Did she conceal exculpatory evidence, which we have a lot of evidence that that’s what she was doing under McDonnell’s tenure.

And now under Gascón’s tenure, we have the same situation. Those 34 lawsuits that have been filed against Gascón for retaliation? Well, she was the one basically – the loyal soldier of Gascón, doing all the hard moves. And this is gonna bear a lot in the criminal justice system here in LA.

[W]hat she was doing is putting her finger on the scales and eliminating exculpatory evidence, because what they wanted was a high body count of terminations to look good in the eyes of the establishment and the press. “Look, we fired all these people.” But she was cheating while she was doing it, and therein lies the problem, because now you destroyed people’s lives just for someone else’s political benefit.

Those are big allegations, but Villanueva's not the only one making them.

Allegations of Fabricated Evidence Against LASD Deputies

After Teran's arrest was announced, retired LASD Lt. Rich Westin shared the following to his Facebook page. Two separate sources provided the Facebook post to RedState. Westin's narrative expands on what Villanueva said in the radio interview about Teran putting her finger on the scale.

Before I retired, I was tasked with reviewing 12 discharge cases recommended by Teran and McDonnell's very obedient chain of command. Those cases "justified" termination using fabricated evidence (literally) or evidence entered AFTER executive case review.

• I found audio recordings enclosed as exhibits that absolutely exonerated the deputy but were intentionally left out of the findings in favor of dubious and unwitnessed allegations made by members of the public. 
• In one case IAB's own department expert backfired on them and exonerated a deputy with written policy, but they ignored his recorded interview. 
• In one case, the relative of a former undersheriff made unsubstantiated "code of silence" allegations against a sergeant. Almost every single question the investigator asked the complainant was a leading question designed to incriminate the sergeant because there was simply no real evidence. The sergeant was fired. 
• In a custody case, 2 deputies were fired for unreported force.  The only problem was, they were on their day off when it supposedly happened and were fired because the investigators assumed the inmate making the allegations must have been mistaken about the date he claims deputies beat him up. The truth was, he was beaten by other inmates and made up a good story about being beaten by deputies.

Westin had a warning for those who went along with Teran and McDonnell's quest to curry favor with anti-police activists at the expense of the truth.

Here is what I hope happens. Teran's prosecution will go way back to the question of who gave her access to data and how she was instructed to use it.... Teran will do anything to save herself and she is smart enough in an evil way to have the proof.  You can count on it.

A retired LASD Chief had similar sentiments on Twitter.

Given my knowledge of Diana Teran’s behavior while the “Constitutional Policing Attorney” for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept, I am not surprised. When going after Deputies, I felt she operated in the “gray area”. #LASD

— LASD Chief Patrick Jordan (Retired) (@LASDJordan) April 28, 2024

Ripple Effects in DA's Office

The Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys, the union representing line prosecutors, published a memo after Teran's arrest outlining seven instances of retaliation in Gascón's office, some of which Teran was directly involved in:

In early October 2022, a Public Integrity Division (“PID”) deputy filed a case with the express and explicit approval of Gascón’s Chief Deputy. When the case caused political problems for the District Attorney, the administration dismissed it. Then Gascón pulled the deputy out of PID and put him on administrative leave… for more than a year. The charged defendant sued the County; that lawsuit recently concluded with a $5 million settlement. The affected line deputy has also taken legal action; his claim is pending.

In October 2022, the Justice System Integrity Division (“JSID”) declined to file excessive force charges against a law enforcement officer. Teran worked to delay the public announcement of that decision because she thought clearing the officer would help her political opponent. When a JSID line deputy questioned the ethics and propriety of Teran’s decision to sit on the declination until after the 2022 general election, the deputy was removed from her assignment and transferred to another unit. A lawsuit is pending.

The memo mentions two retaliation cases filed by Deputy DA's that have been settled for a total of $2.5 million, and notes that "additional lawsuits are pending," so additional taxpayer dollars will go to compensate line deputies retaliated against for attempting to put criminals behind bars.

And the memo brings up another potential issue with Teran's lack of ethics. It's now known that Teran's attorney James Spertus now represents convicted murderer Rebecca Grossman, whose trial just ended in March and who is at this moment under investigation for witness tampering from jail. Teran was part of the chain of command in the prosecution of that case, and Spertus has possibly been representing Teran for months; Spertus told the LA Times that his client had been cooperating with AG Bonta's investigation and was surprised by the charges. The Deputy DA's who tried the Grossman case filed a motion Thursday asking that judge to review the potential conflict. 

Foreshadowing?

Looking back at the LA County Public Defender's Facebook post announcing Teran's hire, it's clear that even then - immediately after she left the Sheriff's Department - she was a woman on a mission. 

The post quotes Teran as saying:

“As LASD’s first Constitutional Policing Advisor, I spearheaded policies relating to providing more humane treatment to transgender individuals, civil detainees in custody, undocumented people who encounter law enforcement in the field as victims, witnesses or suspects, eye-witness identification procedures and assisted with developing a shooting review process for deputies engaged in multiple shootings. I also expressed my concerns about the fact that at least 300 deputies had potential Brady material in their personnel files to the Sheriff and recommended the information be provided to prosecutors."

Then continues:

"It recently became clear to Ms. Teran that she could have a bigger impact on the criminal justice system by working with the Public Defender’s Office to assist with issues relating to law enforcement accountability and Brady."

Just doing her job?

Teran's attorney claims that his client did nothing wrong, that the files she possessed she had the right to possess by virtue of her job with Gascón, and that when she shared personnel files with IG Max Huntsman that was also as part of her job. According to policy documents provided to RedState that were in effect at the time Teran is accused of copying personnel files from LASD's computers, that's not accurate.

The Memorandum of Agreement signed by Sheriff McDonnell and Huntsman outlines the procedure for OIG requesting records from LASD, including to which email address those requests would be sent. Personnel files are just one type of information the OIG could request, but there were different procedures for those confidential documents:

The Office of Inspector General shall be permitted to make or receive copies of confidential documents from the Sheriff's Department, with the exception of files maintained by the Personnel Administration Bureau or records of pending investigations. Files and records maintained by the Personnel Administration Bureau and records of pending investigations will be viewed by OIG personnel at Sheriff's Department premises except in unusual circumstances. No files, records or copies thereof shall be made or removed from Sheriff Department premises without the express permission of the Sheriff's Department.

It also outlined the penalties for improper disclosure:

The parties intend that all disclosures contemplated by this MOA comply with all applicable laws. Any County officer, agent or employee who improperly discloses confidential and/or privileged information is subject to discipline, up to and including termination, and may further be subject to criminal and/or civil penalties where applicable.

MOA to Share and Protect Co... by Jennifer Van Laar

LASD procedure also states that even Internal Affairs and outside agencies like OIG must view personnel files at the Sheriff's Department and cannot take copies or photographs of items within the file.

As of Saturday, Teran was scheduled to be arraigned Monday morning in downtown Los Angeles. Late Sunday RedState was notified that the arraignment was "months" away, with one source saying it would be held July 1. What's contained in this article is probably only the tip of the iceberg in this LA District Attorney's office version of "LA Confidential."