Curious – Where was George?

There are 10 people who will be on the ballot in the March Los Angeles District Attorney primary vote – nine of them showed up at a debate Wednesday.

Guess which one wasn’t there?

George Gascon skipping the debate would be almost understandable if he were not the chief law enforcement officer in the county and directly responsible to the people of Los Angeles – who wants to stand on a stage for two hours and hear how awful, incompetent, toxic, dysfunctional, and what a good friend of criminals you are?

Because that’s what eight of the nine candidates – correctly – portrayed Gascon as being.

The one candidate whose criticism of Gascon was relatively light was Jeff Chemerinsky, former federal prosecutor and son of infamous Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.  He was the only candidate to use two key phrases – “criminal justice reform” and “mass incarceration doesn’t work” during the evening, signaling that he is positioning himself as Gascon-lite, an ideological progressive like George but also a prosecutor who not only has been in a court room – Gascon never has – but actually put people in jail – the head of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that terrorized Los Angeles and other cities across the country for years, for example.  This strategy, it seems, is to be there if and when the Gascon campaign implodes.

Chemerinsky would not commit to working to repeal/modify Proposition 47 – as the other did – and, while saying he would prioritize gun crimes and smash and grabs, he noted the issue of jail overcrowding and the need to differentiate between “violent versus less dangerous” offenders.

As for the other eight, each in their own way slammed Gascon’s tenure as district attorney, saying the community is far less safe now than when he took office.

“Crime is not down,” said former deputy district attorney and current Judge Debra Archuleta.  “They’re just sitting on his desk,” referring to the now 13,000-case backlog facing the office.

Current deputy district attorneys Jon Hatami, Maria Ramirez, John McKinney, Eric Siddall all took turns savaging their boss.

McKinney said he would repeal all nine of the policy directives  – including not seeking bail, not charging defendants with enhancements (using a gun, for example) –  Gascon put into place on his first day in office.  A number of these have already been declared unethical and null and void by a judge in a lawsuit brought by the deputy district attorney’s union about two years ago.

Siddall pointed to the empty podium – kept on stage for Gascon in case he showed up – and said “this guy didn’t even show up” and that one of the reasons there are 13,000 cases backlogged is that “no one wants to work for this man.”

The office is down about 20 percent from its typical staffing level – all of that decline has occurred under Gascon.

Hatami  said criminals must be held accountable – something that is not happening now – and that Gascon’s lack of experience – again, never been in a court room on a case – and ideology have gutted public safety in Los Angeles.

“We cannot survive another four years of George Gascon,” Hatami said.

For her part, Ramirez stressed her experience from being in management in the DA’s office for nearly 15 years; she remained in management for about eight months into Gascon’s term.

“I’ve had a front row seat to leadership at its best and at its worst,” Ramirez said.  Later in the evening, she pointedly added that the DA’s office doesn’t need another “outsider” like Gascon, implying that the five non-current deputy district attorneys in the race are lesser candidates.

Those candidates would disagree.

Retired Judge David Milton stressed his support of the death penalty, noting he helped write a pair of laws that expanded (true, in California theoretically expanded) its application.

Milton also noted that crimes like the smash and grabs plaguing Los Angeles can be charged not as simple theft, but as felony burglary and/or robbery and, since they are obviously coordinated efforts, conspiracy charges can also be filed.  Gascon has done none of that.

Judge Archuleta said even the idea of blanket policies like Gascon created is terrible.

“Gascon illegally put in the directives,” Archuleta said.  “Each case must be considered individually; blanket policies are a no go.”

Judge Craig Mitchell pointed to two cases that had come before him that “convey the travesty of the last three years.”  In one, the DA’s office gave a person caught with 20 kilos of meth a plea offer that involved only probation and three days in jail; in another, a victim stabbed a dozen times could not understand why his assailant was not being charged with attempted murder but a lesser crime instead.

Mitchell added that Proposition 47 – which dropped certain drug and theft offenses to misdemeanors, misdemeanors that Gascon’s office flatly refuses (in the drug cases) to try – has significantly damaged public safety and not helped the addict.

“We used to able to steer them into treatment,” Mitchell said.  “No there are no consequences.”

Former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman said Gascon has “squandered the tens of thousands of years of experience” of local law enforcement and the deputy district attorneys in the office, in part by refusing to work cooperatively with other agencies and in part because the other agencies no longer trust him.

“Gascon has followed a political ideology and broken the office,” Hochman said.

As to the idea of zero bail, most of the candidates said it is unworkable.  McKinney said a judicial review “risk assessment system” could work, though, and Chemerinsky declined to oppose the concept; most of the other candidates said they would work to try to change the bail schedule, figure out how to charge offenders – specifically repeat offenders –  more appropriately so that actual bail could kick in.

The candidates differed on homelessness as well.  Mitchell, who formed the Skid Row Running Club and is downtown with the homeless at least twice a week, said the city doesn’t have a homeless problem but “an addiction and mental health problem,” and, again stressed that merely “citing out” addicts perpetuates the problem.

Each of the candidates said in one form or another that poverty and/or homelessness itself should not be “criminalized,” but most called for further enforcement action.

“We don’t want to criminalize homelessness, but our public spaces are under siege,” Siddall said.  “Those spaces are everyone’s.”

McKinney and Hochman called for new(ish) special courts to handle those issues; Hatami agreed, but added that “everyone must be held accountable, homeless or not.”

Ramirez declined to use the word “homeless,” using “unhoused” instead as she called for the need for programs so jailed offenders can be released into “housing and services.”

Chemerinsky went further, saying homelessness is a “great humanitarian crisis” and that the “street to jail to street” cycle must be broken, at least in part with the provision of new permanent housing projects.

On the campaign side, McKinney said he is candidate most likely to beat Gascon in a runoff (the March vote is a jungle primary with the top two vote getters squaring off in November.)  Considering his incumbency, Gascon is viewed by many as ending up being one of those two people, though that is far from certain.  In view of that, Milton is stressing the need for the primary to produce a single winner – himself, obviously.

Hochman called himself the ‘front runner,” pointing to his race-leading fundraising haul and slate of endorsements.  Though he switched to “independent” (decline to state) for the race from Republican, others in the field say Gascon could beat him in November merely because of that “R” formerly next to his name.  Archuleta pointed to the fact that – as a judge – she has already won a county-wide race.

Interestingly, when the group was asked by moderator Pete Demetriou of KNX if they could support at least one other person on stage if they themselves failed to make it into the November runoff, all immediately and unequivocally said yes.

They wouldn’t have if Gascon had shown up.

The event was jointly hosted by:

·  Association of Deputy District Attorneys (ADDA)

·  Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS)

·  Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association (PPOA)

·  Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL)

·  Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC)

·  Long Beach Police Officers Association (LBPOA)

For more information on each of the candidates, here are their campaign websites:

Debra Archuleta:  https://judgedaforda.com/

David Milton:  https://www.davidsmilton.com/

John McKinney:  https://mckinney4la.com/ 

Craig Mitchell:  https://thejudge4da.com/ 

Maria Ramirez:  https://mariaforda.com/ 

Jeff Chemerinsky:  https://www.jeffforda.com/ 

Jon Hatami:  https://jonathanhatami.com/ 

Nathan Hochman:  https://nathanhochman.com/ 

Eric Siddall:  https://www.ericforda.com/ 

Oh, and almost forgot:  https://georgegascon.org/