Second in a series.
Editor's note: This is the second part in Frontpage Mag's new series on Racist Mayors. For Part I on Chicago's Lori Lightfoot, CLICK HERE . Stay tuned for more installments.
President Joe Biden is reportedly considering the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to India. Garcetti should feel right at home in India, where the huge homeless population will remind him of the homeless crisis in L.A. that has spun out of control under his watch. If Garcetti ends up with the ambassadorship, don’t be surprised if many Angelenos thank Biden for relieving them of their failed leftwing progressive mayor.
Homicides in Los Angeles rose 38 percent last year, according to Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) statistics, reaching their highest level in over a decade. Homicides have continued to rise in L.A. this year without letup. “Then, as now, the L.A. neighborhoods hardest hit by the violent crime increase were predominantly poor, Black, and Latino,” Jason McGahan reported in Los Angeles Magazine .
Despite the rising criminal violence besetting his city, which especially hurts people of color, Mayor Garcetti caved to pressure from Black Lives Matter activists. Last year, Garcetti proposed cutting the LAPD budget by approximately $150 million, which was more than half of the total budget cuts he had proposed.
“Prejudice can never be part of police work,” Garcetti said. “It takes bravery to save lives, too.” This is an insult to the vast majority of good cops who put their lives on the line every single day to serve their communities. Blue lives matter, too.
Garcetti also endorsed the candidacy of an anti-police white progressive to serve as Los Angeles District Attorney, George Gascon. With Garcetti’s support, Gascon beat the incumbent, Jackie Lacey, who was the first African American and woman to serve in that position. After Garcetti withdrew his original endorsement of Lacey and switched his allegiance to Gascon, Lacey said that “everybody’s trying to prove that, you know, that they’re not racist. Unfortunately, that’s been translated into ‘Who’s the more progressive candidate? What’s the more progressive stance?’”
Mayor Garcetti’s final choice for Los Angeles District Attorney pursued radical progressive policies that put criminals’ interests first. Gascon’s “social justice” war against law enforcement ignored the concerns of victims and their families who are disproportionately people of color. Gascon’s policies have endangered the public safety of minority communities most of all. No wonder Gascon is currently facing a recall challenge launched by crime-victim families. The racist impact of Gascon’s criminal-first policies is plain to see. But instead of admitting that he made a mistake in endorsing Gascon over Lacey and deciding to openly support the recall drive, Mayor Garcetti has remained silent.
David Horowitz, whose Freedom Center publishes Frontpage Magazine, has written a book entitled Progressive Racism
Progressive racism rewards African Americans collectively by granting them race preferences and privileges solely because of the color of their skin. At the same time, progressive racism punishes white Americans collectively for their alleged inherent racism and “white privilege,” again solely because of the color of their skin.
Mayor Garcetti fits the description of a progressive racist to a tee. “If there's one thing that the demonstrations for racial justice have done,” Garcetti said, “it's to lay bare the urgent and overdue demands and structural racism and to right the wrongs of the past.'' Garcetti’s way of righting the racist wrongs of the past is to commit more racist wrongs in the present.
In January 2021, Mayor Garcetti announced that the City of Los Angeles would require all its employees to undergo “implicit bias” training as part of an effort to achieve “racial justice.” Deputy Mayor Brenda Shockley, whom Garcetti also named as Los Angeles’ first-ever Chief Equity Officer, added her two cents in defense of the new indoctrination program. "Addressing implicit bias at the level of the individual is important and necessary to a meaningful and productive conversation about race," she said.
Los Angeles decided to use “implicit bias” training materials developed by Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Employees will be required to complete their indoctrination by the end of 2021 and continue to endure the indoctrination on an annual basis.
The Kirwan Institute has received funding from leftwing George Soros through his Open Society Foundations. The institute’s senior legal analyst, Kyle Strickland, has openly espoused the tenets of critical race theory. “The racial disparities and inequality that we see today,” Kirwan Institute’s senior legal analyst wrote , “are linked to our country’s legacy of slavery, white supremacy and systemic racism – the compounding harms of racist and discriminatory laws, policies and norms that create and maintain power for white society at the exclusion and exploitation of Black people and other marginalized groups.”
Here is an example of what Kirwan Institute has to offer in its progressive racism curriculum, which appears in its workbook about “implicit bias in K-12 education.” Evidently, according to one of its hypothetical scenarios, a well-meaning high school teacher was potentially guilty of implicit bias when he expected a Hispanic “undocumented” student to arrive for class on time like all his other students do. This student was the only one who was constantly late, disrupting the class in the process. In the hypothetical, the teacher also criticized this particular student on at least one occasion for being too loud and dramatic during an argument the student was engaged in while in class. The student felt stereotyped and unfairly treated in comparison to her white classmates, a feeling shared by other Latino students at the school.
Presto! Racism in the form of implicit bias must be afoot in this school. Hurt feelings, not the actual facts, are the end of the story, so long as they are expressed by someone belonging to what progressives consider to be an "oppressed" racial or ethnic group. It doesn't matter if the teacher's intent was to teach personal responsibility and to expect the same standard of good behavior from all of his students. The Kirwan Institute's twisted training is based on the principle of progressive racial and ethnic preferences.
Mayor Garcetti is forcing Los Angeles city employees to be indoctrinated with progressive racist training adapted to employees’ workplace situations from this same leftwing Kirwan Institute.
Mayor Garcetti also is promoting “racial equity” within city government and is strongly encouraging local businesses to do the same. “Our city is hungry for change, and we must knit racial justice and affirmative action into the fabric of our policies, our institutions, and our society,” Garcetti said, burnishing his progressive racist credentials.
Garcetti signed Executive Directive 27 in June 2020, which requires Los Angeles City departments to develop specific racial equity action plans and to designate their own racial equity officers. The directive also aims to develop affirmative action plans covering a broad range of racial preferences throughout the Los Angeles city government, including everything from hiring to contracting. “In the absence of thoughtful affirmative action programs, longstanding racial and gender stratification has persisted and deepened,” the directive said.
In order to achieve his affirmative action ambitions, Garcetti campaigned for the repeal of the existing voter-approved Proposition 209 (1996) banning affirmative action in California's public sector. Proposition 209 prohibits the government and public institutions from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting. By a large margin, a majority of California voters said no to repealing this ban on affirmative action. They didn’t buy the progressive dogma that requiring the government to be color-blind and race neutral in its policies and practices is racist.
In his 2021 State of the City address, Mayor Garcetti described his latest proposed budget as “a roadmap to a city built on justice and equity.” He boasted that his “justice budget” was arguably the “most progressive of any big city anywhere.” To prove his point, Garcetti said that he wants to “push toward creating a pilot slavery reparations program for Black Angelenos” on a scale that he claimed has never been tried before.
Mayor Garcetti’s city is crumbling around him. Angelenos are voting with their feet to escape the mess that Garcetti has made worse with his leftwing policies. The mayor’s answer is to create even more disastrous programs promoting progressive racism that divide the city by race and ethnic background. Garcetti has joined the rogues’ gallery of big-city Democratic mayors who have failed their constituents.
Recall Builds Against Mike Bonin as L.A. Residents Reject Plan to House Homeless Near Beach Michael Tullberg / Getty 3:31
Los Angeles residents are signing petitions for the recall of city council member Mike Bonin, as public outrage against his efforts to house the city’s homeless at the beach continues to grow.
The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on the deteriorating conditions near Venice Beach, which has always attracted eccentric people but has become so unlivable that residents are afraid to walk there or even to look at what is happening in tent cities on their doorstep:
A little over a decade ago, things began to change. The neighborhood took on some harder edges, more people began camping along the boardwalk, and the Krauses no longer felt as safe as they once had.
“I’d say it really exploded about three years ago,” said Arthur.
Tents multiplied, and the beach became an open-air clinic for the poor, the addicted and those in physical or mental distress.
“I see people wake up, lower their pants and go to the bathroom,” Rini said. “The beach is supposed to be for everybody.”
The couple profiled in the Times article told the newspaper that they intend to sign the petition for Bonin’s recall.
Bonin has become the focus of public ire, since he has championed the idea of providing housing near the beach. Pacific Palisades Residents Association president Jessica Rogers told Breitbart News Sunday that Bonin’s proposal to build so-called “temporary” housing shelters on parking lots near the beach owned by Los Angeles County would cut off poor Angelenos from essential public recreation amenities, and was also inhumane to the homeless who would live there.
Rogers spoke to Breitbart News Sunday on an evening when those same parking lots were filled with people from all over the city — not just the relatively wealthy neighborhoods nearby.
A few weeks ago, the parking lot at Will Rogers State Beach — a potential homeless housing site — was a staging post for emergency vehicles and personnel battling the Palisades Fire. Bonin has defended his plan, which was approved for study by a city council committee last month, as an effort to reclaim other public spaces from being overrun by homeless people. But the Venice Neighborhood Council has already voted “no confidence” in Bonin over another “temporary” project in the area that has become unmanageable.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Governor Gavin Newsom claim that their policy on homeless is succeeding. They are using state and federal money to pay for hotel rooms for the homeless, and even buying hotels.
But the problem has not gone away, as critics argue that the new benefits are creating more incentives for homeless people to come to California. Root causes — especially substance abuse and mental illness — are largely unaddressed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa RED NOVEMBER , tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
HERE'S WHAT BLACK RACISM AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE IS DOING TO OTHER CITIES
55 Shot During Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago AP Photo/Cliff Owen 1:40
Fifty-five people were shot, five fatally, during the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
Breitbart News reported over 40 people were shot Friday into Sunday morning alone in the Windy City. Five of those shooting victims succumbed to their wounds.
On Monday morning ABC 7 noted the total number of shooting victims for the weekend reached 55.
One of the shooting victims was an 11-year-old girl who was shot in the back Sunday night around 9 p.m. The shooting occurred in the West Pullman neighborhood, and the gunman who shot the girl was riding in a passing vehicle when he opened fire.
The Chicago Tribune points out 1,418 people were shot in Chicago January 1, 2021, through June 3, 2021; that figure includes all shooting victims, fatal and non-fatal.
In a separate table, the Tribune focuses on homicide and observes 266 people were killed January 1, 2021, through June 2, 2021. That is 13 more than were killed during the same time-frame in 2020.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins , a weekly newsletter focused o n al l things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins . Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com . You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange .
A psychiatrist based in New York City reportedly told a group at the Yale School of Medicine she fantasized about “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way.”
The New York Post reported :
Dr. Aruna Khilanani spewed the race-hating virtual remarks — in which she also said she’d walk away from the shooting “with a bounce in my step” and that white people “make my blood boil” and “are out of their minds and have been for a long time” — at the Ivy League institution’s Child Study Center on April 6.
Audio of the talk was posted on the substack online platform of former New York Times opinion writer and editor Bari Weiss on Friday, along with an interview of Khilanani conducted by writer and podcaster Katie Herzog.
Khilanani reportedly opened her talk by telling listeners, “I’m gonna say a lot of things, and it will probably provoke a lot of responses, and I want you to just maybe observe them in yourself.”
“Nothing makes me angrier than a white person who tells me not to be angry, because they have not seen real anger yet,” she said before noting how she “systematically” cut off many of her white friends about five years ago.
“I stopped watching the news,” Khilanani explained, adding, “Once I started, I couldn’t stop. It was also a public service.”
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f–king favor,” she stated.
The psychiatrist claimed Yale said footage of her talk would be released to the public on Monday, however, it was reportedly released internally and only available to those with a school ID.
According to the Post , Khilanani used what appeared to be her TikTok profile to advocate for the video to be made public.
“How did we get to a place where a psychiatrist delivering Grand Rounds at Yale School of Medicine can give a talk called ‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind?'” Weiss wrote in a social media post on Friday:
“The racism expressed by Dr. Aruna Khilanani in a Grand Rounds at Yale, just released by @bariweiss & @kittypurrzog , is deeply worrisome & counter-productive,” Nicholas A. Christakis, the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale, said in a tweet:
“Of course, as an invitee, she is free to speak on campus. But her views must be soundly rejected,” he concluded.
Over 40 Shot in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago Friday into Sunday Morning
Over 4o people were shot, five fatally, Friday into Sunday morning across Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports the first shooting fatality occurred just before 7:30 p.m. Friday when a 23-year-old was shot while in a backyard. The incident occurred “in the 5200 block of West Le Moyne Street.”
Approximately two hours later, 27-year-old Jermaine Sanders was shot and fatally wounded on the sidewalk “in the 5600 block of South Marshfield Avenue.”
Sanders was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Twenty-four-year-old Latrell Goodwin was found unresponsive in a vehicle about 10 p.m. Friday. He had been shot multiple times and was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The fourth shooting fatality was discovered hours later, around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, when police found 39-year-old Gerald Collymore “unresponsive…in the 1300 block of North Mayfield Avenue.” Collymore had been shot multiple times.
The fifth shooting fatality occurred late Saturday afternoon, when a 26-year-old man was gunned down in the street “in the 6400 block of South Hoyne Avenue.”
As for those who were shot but not killed, WGNTV reports that 21 people shot and wounded overnight, Saturday to Sunday.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins , a weekly newsletter focused o n al l things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins . Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com . You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange .
Police Force Won’t Respond to Theft Calls After 84 Officers Leave Dept. Getty Images 2:09
Asheville, North Carolina’s police department (APD) has seen 84 officers leave since January 2020 and is now making clear it will no longer respond to theft calls.
The Daily Mail reports the department will also forgo answering fraud and trespassing calls.
APD Police Chief David Zack cites the “protests against law enforcement” as one of the factors that led so many officers to step away from the job.
The Asheville Citizen Times notes that “the APD officer attrition rate, formerly one per month, jumped to 7.5 per month in the four months after local protests set off by Minneapolis police murdering Black resident George Floyd.” And even after the highest profile protests waned the APD continues to see an attrition rate of roughly six officers a month.
As a result, the APD now has “only 167 of its 238 sworn officer positions filled.”
APD response times to 911 calls have lengthened during the period of growing officer attrition. The May 2020 7.7 response time for “serious crimes” is now at approximately 10.6 minutes. So the decision to stop answering calls about less serious crimes is also part of an attempt to cut response times to serious ones.
Chief Zack to the city council’s Public Safety Committee about the decision not respond to calls about low-level crimes, saying, “This is what it looks like when you’re down this much, when you lose 50% of your detectives.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins , a weekly newsletter focused o n al l things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins . Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com . You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange .
Looting, Riots Break Out in Minneapolis After Police Return Fire, Kill Wanted Felon AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa 4:02
Burning, rioting, and looting broke out in Minneapolis on Friday night after deputies shot and killed a wanted felon who fired on them. Deputies assigned to the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force attempted to take the man wanted for being a felon in possession of a firearm into custody.
Police officials in Minnesota say the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force attempted to arrest 32-year-old Winston Boogie Smith on June 3 for a warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Associated Press reported . As sheriff’s office deputies assigned to the task force approached Smith’s vehicle, he reportedly refused to comply with orders and pulled a handgun. Officials confirmed Smith fired at least one shot from inside his car.
A statement from the Marshal’s Service said Smith was in a parked vehicle and “produced a handgun resulting in task force members firing upon the subject.” Smith died at the scene from wounds from two deputies’ shots.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reported that state investigators found a gun in Smith’s car along with a spent cartridge indicating Smith fired from inside his vehicle, the AP article states.
Following the shooting on Thursday, rioters marched in the streets, set fires, and began vandalizing and looting businesses, the AP reported. Police arrested nine people on charges following the night of violent activity.
Independent journalist Brendan Gutenschwager tweeted a video showing multiple fires set by rioters on Friday night.
In addition, rioters also set trees on fire, photojournalist Rebecca Brannon tweeted.
Rioters protesting the shooting of the wanted felon who allegedly fired at agents attempting to arrest him began looting a TMobile store, Brannon tweeted.
Another video re-tweeted by Brannon shows someone performing CPR on a person who was allegedly shot during the riots.
It is not clear from the tweets who shot the person or what if they survived.
Another person was seen being treated on the street for an unknown injury.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team . He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face .
Los Angeles county, the largest county in the U.S., where murders have increased nearly 200% so far this year compared to the same months in 2020, demands special attention.'
Putting an end to 'Reimagining’ the Criminal Justice System
Many majority Democrat cities have fallen victim to progressive prosecutors. Rather than drive down crime, improve public safety, and promote common sense tough-on-crime policies, these zealots campaign on platforms of structural racism, outcome equity, and restorative justice. In these cities, such performances have in fact become a requirement for the office of district attorney (DA). Aspiring DAs must protest the disproportionate prosecution of minorities without examining the underlying causes; they must clamor for the elimination of cash bail in the name of racial fairness; and they must recommend sentence reduction or alternatives to incarceration to mitigate “ past injustices.”
Committed to “ reimagining” the criminal justice system in the service of “ woke” rhetoric, these DAs are neither acting in the public interest to enforce the law nor honoring their oath of office. They forget that their principal duty is to uphold the law, not crusade for changes driven by their political agenda. In the process, they are emboldening offenders, fostering disrespect for the law, unleashing dangerous criminals on society, and – worst of all – robbing victims of due justice. San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, who wears his ideological lineage on his sleeve and currently faces a recall campaign, arrogantly claims that a DA can “ challenge the legitimacy of a law by declining to bring charges in certain cases.”
Progressive policies have time and again been proven to be misguided, even inimical to public safety.
A study by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) found that in six jurisdictions with “ social justice” prosecutors, reduced conviction rates and fewer guilty outcomes for serious felonies accompanied rising crime rates. It questioned the supplanting of the standard requirement of “ competency and experience” for DAs with “ ideological zeal.” In his foreword to the study, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III wrote that elected leaders, law enforcement and the media should realize that “ leftist ideas of social justice and true criminal justice are not compatible.”
The radicalization of DA offices and the clamor for defunding the police comes as crime rates are skyrocketing and Americans are worried. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 49% of respondents said that violent crime was their top concern, ahead of the pandemic, the economy, political correctness, and race relations.
Homicide rates rose 30% in 2020 in 20 major cities, with an additional 28% from January to March of 2021. Not surprisingly, Minneapolis, the epicenter of the defund-the-police movement, has a shortage of officers and a homicide rate that rose 108% between 2019 and 2020.
Los Angeles county, the largest county in the U.S., where murders have increased nearly 200% so far this year compared to the same months in 2020, demands special attention. So does its progressive DA, George Gascon, who publicly endorses Black Lives Matter (BLM) and indirectly supports the defund-the-police movement.
The county’ s sheriff, Alex Villanueva, believes that Gascon’ s policies have emboldened criminals and endangered citizens. Like Boudin, Gascon too faces a recall movement that’ s gathering huge momentum, a measure of public objection to his uberliberal policies on crime.
Gascon – who was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1954, and was brought to the U.S. by his immigrant parents in the 1960s – joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after military service in 1978. From patrol officer, he moved up the ranks to assistant chief, completing a juris doctor degree in 1996.
In 2009, San Francisco’ s then-mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him police chief. Two years later, Newsom named Gascon DA, replacing Kamala Harris when she became attorney general for California.
As San Francisco DA, Gascon expunged misdemeanor and felony convictions for more than 9,000 drug offenders. When he left San Francisco to run as a Democrat candidate for LA district attorney, former prosecutor Nancy Tung wrote : “…it’ s no wonder San Francisco has gone by the wayside, crooks commute into San Francisco to commit crimes, and why many were celebrating his departure.”
Gascon’ s campaign against incumbent DA Jackie Lacey was supported by wealthy donors who support criminal justice reform. Billionaire funder of all causes radical, George Soros, donated $2.5 million . He was also backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom, and BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, a self-admitted “ trained Marxist organizer” whose supporters mobilized for his campaign.
On winning, Gascon’ s first major meeting was with BLM organizers when he pledged to reevaluate 20,000 potential cases of convictions with enhancements under California’ s three-strike law . The 1994 law doubles punishment for serious crimes on second conviction; the third conviction brings a life sentence with minimum imprisonment of 25 years. He also announced that he would end the death penalty and commute the sentences of death-row inmates to life in prison; that he would end the practice of trying juveniles committing serious or violent felonies as adults; that he would reevaluate the sentences of those who have served more than 20 years; and that he would reopen dozens of fatal officer-involved shooting cases. He proposed the elimination of cash bail, a potentially explosive situation that could release dangerous criminals into the general population with no assurance that they would appear in court, a proposal opposed by 56% of California voters. The shocked Los Angeles Police Protective League stated: “ Victims and law-abiding residents lost a voice today while criminals and gang members gained an ally in the prosecutor’ s office.”
In December 2020, after being sworn in, Gascon wrote an open letter to the members of the Los Angeles County law enforcement community, accusing the LAPD of “ unconstitutional policing” and practices that “ severely hindered the standing and safety of us all.” He announced his belief in the revolution-seeking, anarchist, terrorism-supporting BLM, an organization that doesn’ t just want to “ defund the police” but abolish the entire justice system. While describing the “ summer of unrest” as degrading “ our standing in the communities where we both work and live,” he ignored the rioting, arson, assaults, and murders of civilians and police officers unleashed by BLM, Antifa, and other left-wing groups.
Other policies Gascon pursues include the cessation of prosecution for first-time offenders who have committed nonviolent offences, reduction of prosecution of “ low level” crimes, and limitations on the arrest of criminal illegal aliens to avoid deportation. He has also ordered the dismissal of a dozen misdemeanors on the books, including criminal threats, being under the influence of a controlled substance, trespassing, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest – all “ without conditions.” He charged prosecutors with the responsibility of searching out instances of “ racial injustice” in order to vacate convictions rather than perform their traditional role of ensuring public safety by prosecuting criminals. He even issued a directive to assist the families of felons with funeral and mental health services at taxpayer expense.
Under Gascon’s orders, all sentences of those who have served more than 15 years must be reevaluated. He has forbidden deputy DAs from supporting victims by attending parole hearings, even for serial and child rapists, writing anything but “ neutral” parole letters and ordered his prosecutors to support parole in most cases.
Public horror at Gascon’ s radical policies that put criminals’ rights above that of victims, the marked uptick in crime in Los Angeles county, and lack of justice for victims of violent crimes and their families catalyzed the Recall Gascon movement this May. The movement has found support from the county sheriff, local district attorneys and mayors, crime victims and their families, and more than a dozen city councils. For a recall election, just under 600,000 signatures (10% of the county’ s registered voters) must be collected by October 27. Hopefully, Gascon will go – and Los Angeles will serve as a model for other jurisdictions plagued by rogue prosecutors who want to “ reimagine policing” and undermine community safety.
Image: Shaun Calhoun
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