After five years at the helm of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, its longest-serving captain, Cmdr. Justin Diez has now been promoted to lead five stations for the Sheriff’s Department’s North Patrol Division.
Diez, whose promotion from captain to commander became official Sunday, now has oversight for the station in his hometown, the SCV, as well as Lancaster, Palmdale, Malibu/Lost Hills and West Hollywood.
When reached by phone Monday, Diez said he’s excited about the opportunity to lead the stations, having worked at all of them over his 23-year career with the LASD.
“The beauty of it is, you know, I’ve worked all five of those stations in various capacities, and I’m familiar with how they operate and familiar with their personnel,” he said. “So it’ll be a pretty smooth transition.”
He described being a sheriff’s captain in his hometown as a “dream job” and he felt very fortunate for the opportunity.
He also said he will really miss some of the community connections he’s made over the years, particularly in leading an important local institution like the station through a global pandemic, national law enforcement protests and local challenges in law enforcement as well.
The implementation of body-worn cameras brought change, as did the response to the health crisis.
While COVID-19 brought about historically low crime numbers, those began to creep up from 2021 to 2023, before being brought down again last year. Crime numbers for the first two months of 2025 indicate both property and violent crimes are still trending downward.
While staffing levels reached historical lows due to a number of factors, Diez reported last summer the station met or exceeded departmental benchmarks for response times.
Diez also takes pride in mentioning the SCV Clergy Council, a network of approximately 70 faith leaders that the station’s community outreach team gathered at the station for occasional meetings.
He said those meetings were really helpful in delivering the station’s message to thousands of people, and the council was one of several ways he focused on community outreach, which included more social media, also.
While his new duties will require him to step back from some of the local boards on which he has served, including the SCV Sheriff’s Foundation and the SCV Boys & Girls Club, there’s one he said he plans on staying involved in, especially after a pair of American League championships: the SCV Wildcats youth football organization, where he coaches his son’s team and serves as athletic director.
Diez started working in custody at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic in 2002. Diez then transferred to one of his favorite jobs, he said, as a motor deputy for the department’s Transit Bureau, based out of downtown L.A.
He then went to his first stint in the LASD’s Community Oriented Policing Teams, or COPS, which was at the Compton station. He was then transferred to a now-defunct Gang Enforcement Team, which operated out of Compton and the no-longer Lennox stations.
He was then promoted to sergeant and transferred to Lancaster, then to the Palmdale station with the COPS Bureau.
At his next assignment in Internal Affairs, Diez was promoted to lieutenant and went back to Lancaster, and then Malibu/Lost Hills and then as operations lieutenant for Santa Clarita. Before becoming the captain for Santa Clarita, he served as a chief’s aide in downtown Los Angeles.
Lt. Brandon Barclay has been named the temporary SCV Sheriff’s Station captain. He previously served as operations lieutenant, which is the sheriff’s station’s second in command.
A timeline has not yet been announced for naming a permanent replacement captain for the SCV station.
