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When Lee Baca took over the Sheriff’s Department in 1998, he promised a new age of law enforcement at the vast, scandal-plagued agency.

Voters elected him to the post four times. He served in the agency for nearly half a century.

When Leah Marx began visiting Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles in 2010, it did not immediately raise alarm among the people who ran it. Most of the time, jailers just looked at her federal ID and let her in without asking why she was there. If they did, she said she was investigating a human trafficking case. It was a good-sounding story. Believable. Perfect to deter further questions.

Marx was in her late 20s, just beyond her rookie year at the

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