“Everyone Hates Soros-Backed LA DA George Gascon…Including His Own Prosecutors’
That’s the title of this piece at BattleSwarm Blog about the possible recall of George Gascon.
I submit, however, that it actually should read “especially his own prosecutors.” Lawyers don’t – or at least, until the last few years, didn’t – go into the prosecution biz to wink at criminals, coddle them, and set them free to commit more crimes.
When Gascon was elected as LA’s top prosecutor, he immediately issued a pack of directives that sent the prosecutors under him reeling:
“So, filing deputies are forced to choose between obeying the special directive and decline filing the prior strike allegations — or — follow the statute and file the strike allegations. So the choice is horrible: Line DDAs (those with active cases) either decline to join the motion to dismiss the strikes, or make the motion to dismiss the strikes. In other words, here’s the choice as a sworn DDA: Disobey a written directive by your elected boss, or violate your oath and risk bar discipline for not following clear statutory and decisional law.
“No one should be put to this choice–and yet, 1,200 DDAs are now being asked to make these choices on the hour during the workday.
“This is wrong.”
Please also see this post of mine from shortly after his election.
Here’s a recent article at Substack:
In February, the prosecutors’ union, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, conducted a vote to see where its members stood on the recall: Nearly 98 percent supported it…
To a person, these prosecutors said that the problem was that Gascon had portrayed himself on the campaign trail as a progressive, and they thought that was a lie. They thought that he was captive to a radical agenda; that he wanted to blow the whole place up; that Black Lives Matter was now in charge of the criminal-justice system in Los Angeles; and that all of this was hurting the people the activists claimed to care about the most…
Gascon didn’t see it that way, of course. He imagined himself a man of the future—forward-looking, free of the old assumptions about cops and prosecutors and the meaning of criminal justice…
Gascon…had caught a killer, 30-foot wave in the summer of 2020. “I think that it was something that helped Gascon get elected, but I don’t have any confidence that that’s who Gascon is,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now runs Loyola Marymount University’s Project for the Innocent, which seeks to overturn wrongful convictions. “I think that’s the big question: do we know who Gascon is?”
Actually, everyone should have already known who Gascon was. There was no excuse for ignorance on that score. It’s not as though Gascon had never been a DA before; he had. He was the San Francisco DA from 2011 to 2018 (although he didn’t resign till 2019). He had a track record:
During Gascon’s time as District Attorney, property crime increased by 49%. Some of Gascon’s critics have blamed this increase on his office’s reluctance to file charges against “High-level” offenders; during Gascon’s tenure, misdemeanor charges were only filed in 40% of cases presented by the San Francisco Police Department. Having worked with Gascon, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and City Attorney Dennis Herrera declined to endorse him in his bid to become the District Attorney of Los Angeles County; Breed and Herrera instead endorsed his opponent, the incumbent Jackie Lacey.
There’s lot more at the link about his tenure as San Francisco’s DA, and all of it is very much in line with his performance in LA. If it’s a tad less extreme, that’s only because the left hadn’t gone full out yet, but it was certainly extreme enough to let the voters of LA know what they were in for.
Not only that, get a load of this:
…Gavin Newsom appointed him the interim District Attorney when Kamala Harris was elected to Attorney General. Even though he’d never tried a case, let alone prosecuted a case…
That fact alone should have been a red flag the size of LA itself. Apparently it didn’t matter. If you read the article from which it came, written on his departure from the San Francisco DA office and entitled “Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out: A former San Francisco prosecutor reflects on George Gascon’s time as District Attorney,” you get an idea of how awful his tenure was there and how much he was hated by prosecutors.
If no one in LA knew, they certainly should have known.
From the Substack article:
Since Gascon took office, roughly 300 deputy D.A.s have left. On top of that, job applications are down. The D.A.’s Office usually hires every two to three years, and it gets about 2,000 applications each hiring season. This year, 240 people applied for 60 spots, a longtime deputy D.A. told me. “And you should see who these people are,” he said. “It’s people who no one else will hire.”
Even if Gascon is recalled, his successor will have his or her work cut out trying to repair the destruction Gascon has wreaked.
Unfortunately, many Democrats still support the unhinged ideology behind the coddling of criminals by Soros-funded DAs (there exist at least two dozen, in major cities), imagining it to be admirably “progressive” as “criminal justice reform”. Even the mother who was savagely attacked in Venice while pushing her toddler in a stroller admitted that she had voted for Gascon, although now opposed to his insanity. Boudin may have been recalled, but forty percent of those who bothered to vote in SF still considered that his performance was at least adequate. It would seem that, for a variety of reasons, far too few Democrats are willing to acknowledge the destructive nature of the left.
Same deal in Lancaster County (Lincoln), Nebraska. Adam Morfeld is the Democrat nominee. He’s never tried a civil or criminal case. He’s never worked as a practicing lawyer. He set up this pressure group called Civic Nebraska and he runs that. (Susie Buffett probably is the donor.)
The Nebraska GOP filed a lawsuit to kick him off the ballot per Nebraska law that requires that only a “practicing lawyer” is qualified to run for that office. Morfeld won his case.
The weird thing was that the Nebraska Bar had a program where lawyers could volunteer in eviction court doing the covid days. Morfeld never volunteered.
Morfeld is a state Senator and pro-crime radical. He’ll turn Lincoln into LA or Chicago if he wins. And he could win.
Patterico banned me from his blog a few years ago or I’d like to see his reaction. I knew him personally and disagreed with him on some things. I’d been banned from lefty blogs but that was a first for me. Patrick Frey is/was of course an LA County DDA. He really hated Trump.
Gascon, and his counterpart in SF, Chesa Boudin, as well as the DA’s in NYC and Philly , and probably a host of other cities , should be arrested and indicted for aiding and abetting murder , attempted murder, assault (with or without a deadly weapon, and other felonies (robbery, destruction of property, etc.).
They really deserve to spend at least 30 years in jail for EACH count of the above and the sentences should be served consecutively.
Oops, I guess that means life in jail; oh well, even that would be too lenient.
One can only hope that each of these DAs gets viciously assaulted by criminals they themselves have refused to prosecute.
One can only hope.
Same deal in Lancaster County (Lincoln), Nebraska. Adam Morfeld is the Democrat nominee. He’s never tried a civil or criminal case. He’s never worked as a practicing lawyer. He set up this pressure group called Civic Nebraska and he runs that. (Susie Buffett probably is the donor.)
That should not be lawful. Anyone who is a candidate for DA should be able to demonstrate he was employed as a local prosecutor for a minimum of four years (pro-rating p/t and seasonal employment). You might substitute work as an employee of the state attorney general or in the US Attorney’s office, but at a 3-1 ratio. Ideally, non-metropolitan DA’s would have multi-county jurisdictions and DA’s in general would be voted into office by a convention of county councillors and then subject to retention-in-office referenda every four years or so, subject to mandatory retirement, and subject to rotation-in-office rules.
Gascon, and his counterpart in SF, Chesa Boudin, as well as the DA’s in NYC and Philly , and probably a host of other cities , should be arrested and indicted for aiding and abetting murder
The conduct of Gascon and Boudin makes the case for subjecting politicians to frontier justice. Let’s have Mike K. as judge Roy Bean.
Patterico banned me from his blog a few years ago
Banned me too, pre Trump.
he banned me twice, he has written two obligatory posts, one prompted by bari weiss’s piece, but he still makes it clear that orange mad bad eleventy, in the hyperbolic language of luttig and tribe
As we all know, Gascon’s lack of professional experience was no barrier to his appointment as the interim District Attorney. His bonifides lie in the policies he supports.
“Even if Gascon is recalled, his successor will have his or her work cut out trying to repair the destruction Gascon has wreaked.”
Wreaking untold destruction upon innocents must carry personal consequence.
When will that arrive for Gascon? Will it ever arrive? Or is he another Bill Ayers, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird!”
Gascon is the son of cuban immigrants he served in the army then the lapd upto assistant deputy chief this is why hes an enigma if he were any whiter hed be plaid
2 cops dead because of unwillingness to enforce gun laws against favored populaces https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/california-cop-killer-justin-flores-received-slap-on-wrist-after-weapons-arrest/
}}} Even if Gascon is recalled, his successor will have his or her work cut out trying to repair the destruction Gascon has wreaked.
Isn’t this true of MOST of those elected on The Left, these days?