Time is Proving Gascón’s Policies Right

The quotes from Gascón come from a full interview with the publisher James Preston Allen

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón is gearing up for his reelection campaign, emerging battle-tested after a mutiny launched by the Association of Deputy District Attorneys who said his agenda was too radical and moved too fast and the recall efforts funded by LA’s top Donald Trump-supporting billionaires. 

In the first 100 days, Random Lengths News interviewed a source among the deputy district attorneys and a sitting judge about the changes taking place in his office. Two and half years later, Gascón reached out to us, mostly to point out that the prognostications of his critics had failed to come true.

As he sat in the Random Lengths conference room, he recounted reading the article when it first came out and again as he was coming over for the interview. The story revolved around comments made by a sitting Superior Court judge and an active deputy district attorney.

The judge and the deputy district attorney commented on his directive to end the practice of requesting cash bail for misdemeanors and non-violent felony offenses.

Referencing the many critiques his critics have lobbed at him over the past couple of years, Gascón said it was interesting how so many of the predictions that came from that person turned out to be false. 

His critics quoted in the 2021 story didn’t exactly predict the results of Gascón’s policy changes. They argued that ending cash bail for misdemeanors could result in misdemeanor cases not being filed in the first place and that in the ones that do, the probationary period would be limited to a year. 

One judge argued that “By and large the misdemeanors that arise include drunk in public, disturbing the peace, interfering with a peace officer, firefighter or lifeguard in the performance of his or her duties, being under the influence of cocaine, meth, etc., bar room brawls, petty thefts, vandalism (graffiti), joyriding golf carts and vessels, and driving without a driver’s license or driving on a suspended driver’s license. To simply do nothing about these cases means that accountability for one’s actions is ignored.”

During the interview, Gascón doesn’t directly address this issue of justice. Instead, he focused on a prediction made by other critics, who say that if we stop prosecuting juveniles as adults, gangs were going to use juveniles to go shoot people up. 

“I’m not saying that never happens,” Gascón argued. “I was supervising a gang unit in South LA, but that is not generally what happens every day. Kids don’t go around shooting people because they’re being told by the adults to go shoot, and because there aren’t any consequences for you. I was sort of smiling internally because it is true that when I came into office, we were in the middle of the pandemic and crime was going up everywhere in the country, certainly in our county.” 

Gascón continued explaining, “Our crime was not going up as highly as neighboring counties that have the prosecutors that think like that judicial officer.”

But now we have this precipitous drop in homicides and violent crime. We’re getting back to the pre-pandemic years, Gascón explained. The policy changes that he initiated two years ago are still in place.

“You have to wonder if my policies would have caused the increase in crime, then you would think the crime will continue to go up. But it’s not,” Gascón said. 

The work of the prosecutor is not going to impact large patterns or micro areas of crime. Prosecutor’s work does hold people accountable for their behavior and it provides safety in certain instances. But it doesn’t cause crime to go up or down. There are many other social and economic factors at play, Gascón argued. 

Gascón served as captain of the Los Angeles Police Department Harbor Division from 1998 to approximately 2000, and rose through the ranks relatively quickly to become assistant chief of the LAPD under Chief William Bratton, and was a contender for the chief of police.

During the interview, as he reflected on his time in the LAPD, Gascón noted that police officers have a safer working environment when the people they are policing believe they are there to serve that community. 

“One of the situations that create some of the greatest danger for police officers is when people believe that the officers are not there to protect them, [but] there to harm them,” Gascón explained. 

While recounting his experience as a South LA sergeant in the LAPD during the 1990s, at the time of the 1992 uprising following the acquittal of the police officers involved in the 1991 Rodney King beating, the career lawman said he understood exactly the tensions that made it unsafe for everybody, including cops. 

Gascón cited studies showing that police departments that use less force are safer for police officers. 

“The way we measure that is by workers’ comp claims. Injuries on duty are measured by workers’ comp claims. We have very strict use-of-force policies, and we have fewer workers comp claims, which means fewer officers are getting harmed,” Gascón said. “So having that acceptance and different relationship with your community not only creates a safer community, it creates safety for police officers.” 

Though the term “community policing” gets thrown around a lot, Gascón took time to explain what it means and how it connected with his policies. 

“Conceptually what it meant was creating partnerships between law enforcement and all of the different community stakeholders and evaluating what is important to the community within the framework of the law and safety,” Gascón explained. “Focusing attention on those things makes the community believe it is best served. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it has been implemented in most cases. [The term “Community Policing”] has become extremely relative. It means various things to different people.”

Gascón said he’s not surprised by the amount of opposition he has received. The only thing that surprised him was how quickly the opposition emerged. 

“I mean, literally, the day that I was sworn in, I was told the following day that some people went to the county registrar trying to file for a recall,” Gascón said. “They had to be told that by rules they have to wait 90 days and one hour. When they filed the first time they spent about $2 million and failed. They filed a second time and spent over $1 million and failed again.” 

He said that technically he’s not a politician, and his motivations are not necessarily politics. 

“My motivation is the safety and the working order of our community,” Gascón said. “The reason why those two recall attempts failed is because the majority of the voters agreed with me.”

Gascón noted that his critics forget more than a quarter million people voted for him over the incumbent District Attorney Jackie Lacey — an entire city council district. Countywide, that city council district amounts to six percentage points. That’s not exactly a landslide, but he’s not wrong.

When Gascón defeated Lacey in 2020, it was just one of several fronts in the fight for criminal justice reform. County Measure J, dedicating funding to redress racial injustice — including alternatives to incarceration — passed by almost 15 points, and Proposition 17, restoring parolees voting rights, passed by 18 points, while Proposition 20, which would have rolled back several important criminal justice reforms, was defeated by 16 points. 

“The reality is that I had a very clear platform. Everything I said I was going to do, I did. I was elected precisely on the things I said I was going to do,” Gascón said.

Critics and some media outlets believe Gascón faces an uncertain future in the 2024 election, citing the ongoing fights with the Association of Deputy District Attorneys and perhaps LA’s billionaire boys’ club taking another shot at him too. But if Gascón’s comments during this interview are any indication, he likes his chances come November 2024.

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