Re: District attorney candidates sound off on crime, homelessness in debate

[George Soros Should Be Executed]

Molly Bolt <mollyth...@gmail.com> posted some
news:7fa72b12-00b4-4352...@googlegroups.com:

> Gascon should be tarred, feathered, beaten senseless, and dragged out
> of town behind a speeding garbage truck.

Candidates for the office of Los Angeles County district attorney gave
their thoughts on rising crime, how to deal with homelessness and what
their top priority would be once in office on Thursday evening in a
debate streamed live on YouTube via Los Angeles Magazine.

The debate saw 10 candidates take the stage: the incumbent, George
Gascón; Jeff Chemerinsky, formerly an assistant United States attorney;
Jonathan Hatami, a deputy district attorney; Nathan Hochman, a defense
attorney and former federal prosecutor; David Milton, a retired judge;
John McKinney, a deputy district attorney; Craig Mitchell, a longtime
judge; María Ramirez, a deputy district attorney; Eric Siddall, a deputy
district attorney; and Debra Archuleta, a Superior Court judge.

Candidates were provided with 30 seconds to answer each question —
though some were allowed to go slightly past that — and rebuttals were
allowed on a discretionary basis.

The debate was moderated by Elex Michaelson, a news anchor for FOX 11,
and Jon Regardie, a Los Angeles Magazine writer.

Top priorities

Many of the candidates used their time to show how Gascón has not
delivered on his promise to use reforms to make L.A. County a safer
place.

Hatami, a Santa Clarita resident, said his first steps as district
attorney would be “exactly the opposite of what George Gascón has done.”

“We have a society right now in Los Angeles who feels really unsafe,”
Hatami said. “They feel unsafe going to the supermarket or going to the
mall. They feel unsafe going to the beach. They feel unsafe walking with
their children or walking their dog.”

Public safety was a big talking point throughout the debate. When asked
if he believes that his directives have helped to make the county safer,
Gascón, who spent two terms as the district attorney for San Francisco
before taking the position in L.A. County in 2020, was adamant that
clearing out prisons and addressing inequalities in the justice system
are paramount to a 21st-century approach to social and criminal justice.

“The work that we started to do in L.A. is showing results,” Gascón
said. “One of the biggest problems that we have in our system is the
inequality and the high levels of recidivism that are the result of a
lot of the work that people on this stage have engaged in for years,
that has created one of the highest incarceration rates of any nation in
the world. We are showing that we can hold people accountable and that
we can be safe at the same time.”

Milton, who said he’s different from the other candidates because he is
a Republican in the Democrat-dominated field for the nonpartisan office,
took things in a different direction, saying he would work toward
filling the district attorney’s office with another 250 prosecutors to
bring it back to the 1,000-plus that it used to have.

“We need to rebuild the DA’s office,” Milton said. “If we’re actually
going to do the mission of prosecuting people and keeping people safe,
we need to rebuild it … I’m going to restore the mission of the office,
which is to protect the public, then we’re going to hire people, and
then we’re going to also have a crime reduction strategy, a strategy
that focuses on the drivers of crime.”

Crime

Much of the back-and-forth on crime centered on Proposition 47.
Co-authored by Gascón and passed by voters in 2014, it turned
non-violent property crimes, in which the value of the crime does not
exceed $950, into misdemeanors.

Opponents of the proposition, which included nearly every candidate
except for Gascón, Chemerinsky and Archuleta, stated that it needs to be
amended to allow for repeat offenders to be prosecuted.

In his rebuttal, Gascón argued that he has directed his deputies to
prosecute violent crimes, but that going after non-violent crimes,
especially those involving people with a history of mental health or
substance abuse issues, would not solve the problem. He added that many
of the prosecutions that other candidates were calling for were already
being done, including organized retail theft.

“We have to understand, first of all, that misdemeanors continue to be a
crime, and Prop. 47 has not legalized theft,” Gascón said.

While Gascón touted his efforts against organized retail theft, Hochman
pointed out that the DA was not invited to be a part of a press
conference held by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass when she created the city’s
organized retail crime task force, though L.A. Police Chief Michael
Moore and L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna were.

“Because he actually symbolizes the opposite of going after organized
retail crime,” Hochman said. “I would join the bipartisan effort to
modify Proposition 47 because, in particular, when you have a DA that
tells juveniles, ‘We will not prosecute misdemeanor theft,’ it is
basically a license to steal for juveniles just under $950.”

Spinning the question somewhat around, Archuleta argued that Prop. 47 is
not the problem. Instead, Archuleta said, it is the person in charge of
prosecuting.

Archuleta blamed Gascón in her attack on retail theft, saying his
refusal to prosecute the more than 14,000 misdemeanor cases on his desk
is the reason that crime continues to rise.

“We have an ideologically driven DA who refuses to follow the law as it
is currently written,” Archuleta said. “He misapplies Prop. 47 because
it does not comport with his ideology and his narrative.”

Hatami, who is married to a detective in the L.A. County Sheriff’s
Department, said the DA’s office should be working closer with police
forces rather than targeting law enforcement as the problem. He also
argued that the threshold in which a misdemeanor becomes a felony needs
to be lowered.

“We have a major issue with smash-and grab-burglaries, we have a major
issue with organized retail theft,” Hatami said. “So, that threshold
needs to come down. No. 2, we have a major big problem with repeat
offenders, individuals who keep getting arrested for the same thing and
getting released, arrested and released.”

Homelessness

Mitchell, who founded the Skid Row Running Club to give homeless people
overcoming substance abuse a way to have a supportive community, said
addressing the homelessness crisis is essential. His plan would be to
offer homeless people with drug charges a choice: go into treatment or
go into custody.

“Having sat on the bench and dealt with hundreds of these cases, when
that is presented to an addict, 95% of the people say, ‘OK judge, I will
give treatment a chance,’” Mitchell said.

Many of the other candidates agreed with that point, that cleaning up
the streets revolves around treating people with mental health or
substance abuse issues.

Milton, however, argued that the DA does not have the jurisdiction to
address homelessness, except for when homeless people commit a crime.

“It’s only if one of the people who fall within that class commit a
crime, does the district attorney have jurisdiction to do anything,”
Milton said. “Otherwise, a district attorney is powerless to do anything
about homelessness.”

Most of the candidates disagreed with that point, including McKinney,
who said “homelessness is the humanitarian crisis of our time.”

“We have a role to play because so many homeless people do come within
the jurisdiction of the district attorney’s office, either as offenders
or as victims,” McKinney said. “And when they come within our
jurisdiction, we have the ability to use diversion and other laws to
guide them inside, to guide them into places where they can get the
services that they need.”

Nearly everyone else on the stage agreed with the point, with some
nuance as to how closely the DA should be working with local and county
services.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/district-attorney-candidates-soun
d-off-on-crime-homelessness-in-debate/ar-BB1gYfx2