Baca Retreads Fundraising Tire Guy, Others with Badges

Last week, LACityNerd, an often elliptical blogger who professes bottomless love for the City of the Angels, spoke to the fact that Police Chief Bratton espouses "Broken Window Theory" as a law-enforcement strategy.

Though it's not known what kind of law enforcement theory Sheriff Lee Baca espouses, he certainly seems to favor spending money to achieve it. For starters, Baca is calling for $300 million to open the shuttered Sybil Brand facility.

In the search for a Baca unified theory of law enforcement, we should also look to his ideas on badges. He seems to favor putting a maximum number of badges on the street---whether they belong to actual full-time officers or not, in fact:

But Nalbandian [who got a badge from Baca] is not a professional cop. The only paid law enforcement position he has held is as a volunteer reserve deputy with the Los Angeles County sheriff — salary, $1 a year. His real job is running a tire store in Glendora.

He is, however, a major political fundraiser for Southern California law enforcement officials. Over the last nine years, Nalbandian has tapped a network of businessmen and acquaintances, most of them from the Armenian community, to raise tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions for Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Riverside Sheriff Bob Doyle and San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Mike Ramos.

A Glendale dentist who also received a Baca Badge says:

"I knew, sooner or later, this conversation would happen," Khachatrian said. "Too many people were having badges…. Too many regular people like me, a simple dentist, can use those badges in many different ways."