The October Harvest moon was just rising over San Pedro Bay as Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon began speaking with a gathering of ILWU leaders, community activists, and former Commissioner Diane Middleton’s home overlooking the harbor. He started out with a personal history of growing up in East LA of immigrant parents in a one-bedroom apartment. The story of his rise out of lower class family challenges to becoming first a LAPD officer and then a deputy chief, then a lawyer to the DA in San Francisco is quite amazing. He had very humble beginnings.
However, how he came to the more enlightened position of justice as a public prosecutor is nothing short of the kind of epiphany that you’d hope any law enforcement officer would come to. He says, “If incarceration alone would stop crime then LA County would be the safest city in the world”. We have more people in jail here than anywhere else.
His opponent in the current race has accused him of being responsible for the “no cash bail” decision, but even though he supports it mo stly with some modifications, the court system actually adopted what many have argued was a two-tier form of justice.
And while street crimes seem to grab the public’s attention on the news, what he claims is the biggest theft in LA is “wage theft, which amounts to some $1 billion in stolen wages annually.” Now that’s not something being reported on much.
He also announced that his office has started a new environmental crimes investigation in Wilmington but could not reveal the details as of yet.
The local ILWU union leaders all stood beside him even though the Southern California District Council of the ILWU had not made its endorsement of him. RLnews on the other hand has.