Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe In the first formal request of its kind, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) Thursday asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a civil rights investigation into an alleged “deputy gang” known as the “Executioners” operating out of the Sheriff’s Department’s Compton station. The move comes amid growing concern that Sheriff Alex Villanueva has done too little to address allegations his department is rife with violent deputy subgroups. In her letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Waters cited a whistleblower complaint filed last year by Deputy Art Gonzalez, who said at least a dozen of his Compton colleagues wear matching tattoos that depict a skull wearing a Nazi helmet with a rifle, encircled by flames.