Campaign News

THE FACTS

Jan 30, 2020

Crime Statistics

Lacey’s Office’s Outdated Approach to Criminal Justice Hasn’t Improved Public Safety 

  • Violent crime increased in Los Angeles from 2012 to 2018 by 29.46% under Lacey’s leadership, while the violent crime rate nationwide only increased by 8.6%. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, Universal Crime Reporting Statistics, 2012; 2018; California Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General, 2012; Sacramento Bee, 9/17/2017]
  • Drug possession incidents increased 4.57% in Los Angeles during Lacey’s tenure. [Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Incidents Part I and Part II Crimes, 2012; 2014; 2018; All years, Accessed 12/9/2019]
  • Under Lacey, Los Angeles runs the largest jail system in the world. Just the health care budget for LA County’s jails cost taxpayers more than $300 million. 30 percent of the roughly 18,000 inmates housed in LA County’s jails are mentally ill, making it the largest population of mentally ill inmates in the country. [The Daily News, 8/2/2019; NPR, 5/4/2018; Justice LA, Accessed 11/20/2019]
  • In 2016, Los Angeles sent 608 people per 100,000 to state prison. San Francisco County sent 130.7 per 100,000 to state prison in 2016, while the state average was 486.2 per 100,000 that same year. [California Sentencing Institute, Accessed 10/27/2019; California Sentencing Institute, Accessed 10/27/2019]

Gascón Oversaw Crime Reductions and Introduced Programs that Reduced Recidivism 

  • Gascón has overseen reductions in violent crime in every leadership position he’s held, including a 14 percent drop in violent crime in Los Angeles after Gascón’s first year as assistant LAPD chief in 2004, and a decrease from 504 per 100,000 people in 2005, the year before Gascón became Chief of the Mesa Police Department, to 424.8 violent crimes in 2009, the year Gascón left the position. [Los Angeles Times, 4/21/2006; Congressional Research Service, 6/20/2018; LA Times, 7/10/2011]
  • Drug possession incidents decreased by 45.67% in San Francisco during Gascón’s tenure as District Attorney between 2011 and 2018. [City and County of San Francisco, Police Department Incident Reports: Historical 2003 to May 2018, Accessed 11/18/2019; Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to Present, Accessed 11/18/2019]
  • The violent crime rate fell in San Francisco by 1.9 percent from 2012 to 2018, sinking to “historic levels.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, Universal Crime Reporting Statistics, 2012; 2018; SFist, 7/10/2019; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/21/2019] 
  • Gascón’s District Attorney office prosecuted twice the national average of sexual assault cases, prosecuting 47 percent of all arrests compared to the 19.6 percent national average. [San Francisco District Attorney’s Office; RAINN, Accessed 11/19/2019]
  • Gascón implemented a restorative justice program in 2014 that cost less than traditional incarceration and greatly reduced youth recidivism. Of the 47 youths who completed the program, about 13% re-offended within two years, compared to 53% of the 43 youths in the control group. [San Francisco Chronicle, 10/18/2019]

Prosecuting Public Corruption

Lacey’s Office Failed to Prosecute Multiple Public Corruption Cases

  • Lacey’s ‘elite anti-corruption unit’ mishandled evidence and “undermined their own case” against events manager Todd DeStefano and had to settle for restitution and six months in jail. According to the Los Angeles Times, “In an unusually sharp rebuke, Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said the division seemed incapable of handling complex prosecutions involving large numbers of documents.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/9/2016; Los Angeles Times, 8/6/2016]
  • Lacey’s office dropped corruption cases against three Irwindale officials for “partying on the public dime” when a judge ruled that the D.A.’s office waited too long to file criminal charges. [Los Angeles Times, 3/4/2016]
  • Lacey’s office dropped voter fraud and perjury cases against Richard Alarcon and his wife. LA prosecutors alleged that they lied about where they lived so Alarcon could run for a council seat. [Los Angeles Times, 5/9/2019]
  • Lacey’s office was accused of using “intimidation and an excessive show of force” on Malibu Mayor pro-tem Jefferson Wager when he was the only dissenting vote on the City Manager’s contract. [The Local, 6/1/2018]

Gascón is Committed to Fighting for a Clean Government that Works for the People

  • Gascón partnered with the FBI to establish an anti-corruption task force. [San Francisco Chronicle, 2/26/2016]
  • Gascón charged six San Francisco Unified School District employees for misappropriating $15 million in public funds for personal use. [San Francisco Chronicle, 5/14/2013]
  • Gascón prosecuted a San Francisco utility electrician who was convicted of theft of public funds, forging and altering requests for payment, submitting false invoices to government agencies, and submitting false insurance claims. [SF Gate, 9/20/2011]
  • Gascón brought felony bribery and money-laundering charges against former city Human Rights Commissioner Nazly Mohajer, former HRC employee Zula Jones, and political consultant Keith Jackson, who faced additional charges of grand theft and campaign finance fraud. [KQED News, 1/22/2016]

Criminal Justice Reform

Cash Bail

Lacey Defended Cash Bail While Accepting Contributions from the Bail Industry

  • Lacey resisted cash bail reform in 2017 when she issued a letter expressing opposition to Senate Bill 10, which “would create a presumption of own-recognizance release and significantly changes monetary bail.” [Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, 4/14/2017]
  • Lacey implied that she opposed a provision of the original draft of Senate Bill 10 because it jeopardized public safety. [Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2019]
  • The Los Angeles Times remarked her opposition was “disheartening,” given Los Angeles had a higher incarceration rate than the state average. [Los Angeles Times, 2/27/2019]
  • Lacey has accepted at least $7,950 from the bail industry since 2011. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, 6/14/11; 11/7/11; 11/7/11; 12/16/11; 12/16/11; 4/24/12; 4/30/12; 5/11/12; 8/9/12; 8/25/12; 8/30/12; 9/26/12; 10/30/12; 11/6/12; 11/6/12; 11/6/12; 2/26/15; 5/13/15; 4/12/19]

Gascón Led the Charge to Replace Cash Bail with Risk-Based System

  • Gascón advocated for eliminating cash bail and implemented the Public Safety Assessment in 2016 which makes custody decisions based on risk rather than a defendant’s ability to pay bail. [San Francisco Chronicle, 10/21/2019; KQED, 9/27/2017]
  • Statistics suggest that defendants released on money bail are about twice as likely to commit another crime pretrial compared to defendants released based on a recommendation from the Public Safety Assessment tool. [KQED, 9/27/2017]
  • Polls indicate that 50 percent of likely California voters support replacing cash bail with a risk-based system. [KQED, 12/19/2019]

Death Penalty

Lacey Overuses the Death Penalty and Opposed Repeal

  • Lacey’s office sent more people to death row between 2014 and 2019 than any other prosecutor’s office in the United States except for one. [Los Angeles Times, 2/26/2019]
  • Every defendant sent to death row in Los Angeles since Lacey took office was a person of color. [Los Angeles Times, 6/19/2019]
  • Lacey supported Proposition 66 to maintain the death penalty and expedite the capital punishment process. [Los Angeles Times, 3/21/2019; The Sacramento Bee, 8/30/2017]
  • In 2019, Lacey “continued to seek the death penalty” despite California Governor Gavin Newson’s “moratorium on capital punishment. [The Appeal, 11/12/2019]
  • Lacey accepted $3,000 from the Long Beach Police Officers Association between 2015 and 2017. Long Beach POA’s website claims to support a California resolution urging the Attorney General to “take all necessary actions to enforce the death penalty.” [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 10/12/17; 3/30/15; Long Beach Police Officers Association, Accessed 1/29/2020; California State Senate Bill 555, Introduced 7/3/2019]

Gascón Seeks to Abolish the Death Penalty

  • Gascón has called for replacing the death penalty with life sentences, recognizing that state-sanctioned killings do not deter crime, but in light of the unequal application of the death penalty to communities of color, it does inflict an extraordinary amount of harm to the moral authority of our justice system. [The Sacramento Bee, 10/14/2012; The Mercury News, 5/12/2014; Safe California, 10/16/2016] 
  • California has spent more than $5 billion since 1978 prosecuting death penalty cases and maintaining a death row that currently houses 737 inmates. During that time, however, only 13 death sentences have been carried out at a cost of $300 million per execution. The death penalty wastes taxpayer resources and creates an unnecessary risk that the state will put an innocent person to death. [New York Times, 3/12/2019; Safe California, 10/16/2016] 

Marijuana

Lacey Opposed Legalizing Recreational Marijuana

  • Lacey opposed Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana, while 59.5% of Los Angeles voters supported the measure. [Los Angeles Times, 2/26/2019]
  • According to the Fair Punishment Project, Lacey relied on “scare tactics” to discourage voters from supporting Proposition 64 by warning that the measure would make it more difficult to convict someone for driving under the influence without any empirical evidence to support that claim. [Fair Punishment Project, 8/20/2017]

Gascón Proactively Cleared 9,000 Marijuana-Related Convictions 

  • Gascón issued a statement in support of Proposition 64, stating that San Francisco “is once again taking the lead to undo the damage of this country’s disastrous, failed drug war.” [New York Times, 1/31/2018]
  • Following the passage of Proposition 64, Gascón partnered with Code for America to find every marijuana-related case eligible for expungement or resentencing under Proposition 64, making San Francisco the first city in the country to clear all eligible marijuana convictions in what the San Francisco Chronicle described as an “unprecedented step.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 2/25/2019]

Criminal Justice Reform

Lacey Supported Expanding the Surveillance State

  • Lacey sponsored Senate Bill 439, which was reportedly designed to “allow law enforcement to use intercepted phone calls, emails, Facebook Messenger chats, and other electronic communications to build cases for a wide swath of crimes that current state law deems ineligible for such surveillance.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/26/2019]

Gascón Implemented Cutting Edge Criminal Justice Reforms

Gascón has been at the forefront of implementing criminal justice reforms that seek to reduce over-incarceration, including:

  • Co-authoring Proposition 47, to unwind California’s involvement in the war on drugs and reinvest in K-12 education and victim, substance abuse and mental health services. [Los Angeles Times, 10/26/2015; Stanford News, 11/2/2015; San Francisco Chronicle, 11/23/2018]
  • Proposing a Sentencing Review Unit to revisit excessive sentences. [San Francisco Chronicle, 6/4/2019]
  • Moving petty offenders to neighborhood courts, which prioritize community-driven solutions to crime and saved the city $330,000 in one year. [SF Gate, 1/24/2011; 8/24/2013]
  • Addressing children in the justice system in programs like Make it Right and Young Adult Court. [San Francisco Chronicle, 10/18/2019; New York Times, 4/17/2017]
  • Implementing a Crime Strategies Unit to use a data-driven approach to resourcefully address chronic crime and repeat offenders. [Albuquerque Journal, 4/29/2019; San Francisco Examiner, 1/18/2015; San Francisco District Attorney, 6/2016]

Police Accountability

Lacey Failed to Find Justice for Hundreds of Victims of Police Shootings

  • Since Lacey was elected in 2012, “roughly 400 people have been killed by on-duty officers or died in custody, according to Black Lives Matter LA.” [The Guardian, 8/24/2018]
    • Lacey’s office declined to charge the LA police officer who shot and killed Ezell Ford, a Black man with a mental illness, in 2014. [Los Angeles Times, 1/24/2017; The Washington Post, 8/16/2018]
    • Lacey concluded that police officers “used reasonable force” in subduing Reginald Thomas Jr, a black man who died in police custody in 2016. A report commissioned by the family attorney included an interview with an officer who relayed an account of officers “using a taser on Thomas multiple times, repeatedly striking him with a baton, kicking him in the head, punching him and ultimately restraining his hands and ankles as he laid face down on the ground.” [Pasadena Star-News, 4/4/2018]
    • Lacey exonerated two Torrance police officers who fatally shot Christopher DeAndre Mitchell when officers allegedly mistook the air rifle in his lap to be a firearm. Both of the officers had been involved in shootings prior to the incident. [Daily Breeze, 11/18/2019]
    • Lacey declined to charge California Highway Patrol officer Daniel Andrew when he beat a woman next to the 10 Freeway in July 2014 by sitting on top of her and punching her in the head. Lacey wrote, “In our analysis, his use of force was legal and necessary…” [Los Angeles Daily News, 12/3/2015]
    • Lacey’s office declined to charge Edduin Zelayagrunfel, a security guard who opened fire on a transgender activist, Zhoie Perez, while she was filming outside a synagogue. Lacey’s office said that prosecutors could not prove that the security guard was not acting in self-defense, despite the incident being documented from beginning to end on video and audio tape. [Los Angeles Times, 3/14/2019]
  • When writing about officer-involved killings in 2016, Lacey expressed that “acting out of policy and using improper tactics are not crimes.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 2/25/2016]
  • The Appeal wrote in 2019 that Lacey “hasn’t taken the steps to address the racial disparity in the system.” Lex Steppling, the campaign and policy director for Dignity and Power Now, described Lacey as “a Black woman who claimed her roots openly and publicly, but has carried on the same racist, deadly legacy that preceded her.” [The Appeal, 11/12/2019]
  • An op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times in February 2019 stated that, while there is a movement of reform minded prosecutors around the country working to investigate police shootings by appointing independent prosecutors, Lacey has not followed suit. The article stated, “An impartial investigation helps ensure justice is served and police are held accountable. Lacey has not taken this route.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 2/25/2016]
  • Lacey accepted $1,500 from the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, an LAPD group that opposed the passage of California Senate Bill 1421 which “allows the public to view investigations of officer shootings.” [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, Committee to Re-Elect Jackie Lacey for District Attorney 2020, Form 460, 1/1/2019 to 6/30/2019; Los Angeles Times, 1/26/2019; 9/30/2018]

Gascón Seeks Justice for Victims of Police Brutality 

  • Gascón established a panel to review racial bias in the San Francisco police department. The task force examined 3,000 cases, inclduing 1,600 convictions, related to contacts or arrests made by the 14 police officers who exchanged racially inflammatory and homophobic texts. [The New York Times, 5/7/2015] 
  • As District Attorney, Gascón charged over 30 police officers with crimes ranging from excessive force to embezzlement.
  • Gascón supported a bill backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Lives Matter activists, and members of the California legislature’s black caucus that would have allowed prosecutors to take into account whether officers tried to de-escalate before shooting, and whether they contributed to the confrontation by any negligent actions or bad tactics in court. [SCPR, 4/5/2018]
  • Gascón  launched a ‘first-of-its-kind’ site to publish prosecution data and increase accountability. The website provides data on prosecutions, caseloads, and trial outcomes. The San Francisco Chronicle characterized the effort as part of “a growing trend among reform-minded law enforcement agencies around the country to increase accountability by releasing raw data and statistics.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 5/29/2019]
  • Gascón implemented police training measures to protect the rights of civilians after disgraced former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez told authorities he and other Rampart Division officers routinely planted evidence, framed suspects and covered up unjustified shootings. Michael Gennaco, the former head of the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division in Los Angeles, said Gascón “fundamentally changed the way the LAPD teaches its officers about civil rights.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/4/2004; LA Times, 7/4/2004]

Behavioral Health

Lacey’s Los Angeles Has the Largest Population of Mentally Ill Inmates in the Country

  • Under Lacey, Los Angeles runs the largest jail system in the world. Just the health care budget for LA County’s jails cost taxpayers more than $300 million. [The Daily News, 8/2/2019]
  • 30 percent of the roughly 18,000 inmates housed in LA County’s jails are mentally ill, making it the largest population of mentally ill inmates in the country. [NPR, 5/4/2018; Justice-LA, Accessed 11/20/2019]
  • Lacey’s office routinely charged the mentally ill with new crimes once they were detained. [The Appeal, 6/7/2019]
  • Lacey opposed diverting individuals convicted of violent crimes to her mental health diversion program. Advocates criticized Lacey’s position, stating it is “leaving out the people who need it most.” [The Appeal, 6/7/2019]
  • Lacey supported “Laura’s Law” in 2014, a measure accused of criminalizing the mentally ill for allowing a “family member, treatment provider or law enforcement officer” to “ask the county to file for a court order requiring someone to undergo treatment.” Those who did not comply could be taken into custody in a 72-hour psychiatric hold. [Los Angeles Times, 7/15/2014]

Gascón Has Worked to Break Cycles of Incarceration

  • Gascón proposed a “Behavioral Health Justice Center” in San Francisco, which would have provided “mental health services designed to interrupt the cycle of homelessness, addiction, and criminal activity.” [San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, 6/15/2016]
  • Gascón advocated for $500k per year to set up a “specialized unit to handle crimes when mental competency is in question.” Gascón stated that the unit would ensure “that we provide humane services to people, and we pay attention to it.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 5/24/2014]
  • Gascón co-authored and filed to get Proposition 47 on the ballot in 2013. Proposition 47 reduced most nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and used the money saved on prisons to fund crime prevention, trauma recovery services, and mental health and substance abuse treatment. [SF Gate, 12/19/2013; Los Angeles Times, 10/26/2015; San Francisco Chronicle, 11/23/2018]
  • After the incarcerated population fell by 8,100 the year after Proposition 47 passed, the state awarded $103 million of the money saved to provide services such as substance abuse and mental health treatment to prevent future crimes. [KQED, 6/8/2017; Public Policy Institute of California, 6/2018]

Sexual Harassment

Lacey Failed to Ensure ‘Safety’ of Victims of Sexual Harassment in Her Own Office

  • In 2017, an employee in the LA District Attorney’s office blew the whistle on prosecutor Edward Miller for sexual harassment. The whistleblower later wrote to Lacey, stating, “I don’t feel that this office is expending any effort to ensure my safety and the safety of others related to this investigation.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 8/16/2019]
  • A prosecutor in Lacey’s office wrote to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and U.S. Reps. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, Adam B. Schiff, D-Burbank, and Ted Lieu, D-Manhattan Beach, asking them to withdraw their endorsements of Lacey for her 2020 reelection race. The prosecutor stated, “I have seen how (the accused) have been allowed to retaliate and intimidate the accusers. I have seen whistleblowers punished for reporting conduct.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 8/16/2019]

$1M Paid to Victims of Sexual Harassment in Lacey’s Office 

  • In 2017, two prosecutors in Lacey’s office received $700,000 to settle a 2015 lawsuit alleging that their supervisor “[subjected] them to regular harassment and [fostered] an abusive, sexually charged workplace.” According to the prosecutors, they were penalized for rejecting Hearsberger’s advances while female prosecutors who tolerated the harassment were rewarded with “high-profile cases.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/19/2017]
  • In 2019, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized a $300,000 settlement for Deputy District Attorney Karen Nishita, a woman who accused prosecutor Edward Miller of sexual harassment. An anonymous prosecutor spoke out about the settlement, stating, “It provides no consolation to anyone, except for Jackie Lacey and Edward Miller, because she gets to avoid having all of this damaging information come out and he gets to keep his job.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 9/3/2019]

Lacey: Funded by the LAPPL

Lacey Took Thousands in Gifts and Contributions from Police Unions and Organizations 

  • Between 2012 and 2016, Lacey accepted more than $10,000 worth of gifts from sources that might create a conflict of interest, including criminal defense attorneys, police-unions, business owners, prosecutors from her office, and others who could have an interest in influencing her decisions. [Los Angeles Times, 8/28/2016]
  • Lacey accepted $3,000 from Association for LA Deputy Sheriffs, an LA Sheriff’s union that sued to prevent disclosures of police dishonesty and misconduct: $1,500 in September 2012, and another $1,500 in March 2015. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 9/22/12; 3/6/15; Los Angeles Times, 12/8/2017]
  • Lacey accepted $3,000 from the Long Beach Police Officers Association between 2015 and 2017: $1,500 in March 2015 and $1,500 in October 2017. Long Beach POA’s website claims to support a California resolution condemning Governor Newson’s “blanket reprieve to death row inmates.” The resolution “urg[es] the Attorney General to take all necessary actions to enforce the death penalty.”  [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 10/12/17; 3/30/15; Long Beach Police Officers Association, Accessed 1/29/2020; California State Senate Bill 555, Introduced 7/3/2019]
  • Lacey accepted $1,500 from the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, an LAPD group that opposed the passage of California Senate Bill 1421 which “allows the public to view investigations of officer shootings.” [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 4/22/19; Los Angeles Times, 1/26/2019; 9/30/2018]
  • Lacey accepted $1,500 from Dr. Paul Whisenand, the president and founder of police training group PMW Associates. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 3/3/19; PMW Associates, accessed 12/11/2019]

The LA Police Union Contributed $1 Million to Anti-George Gascón PAC 

  • The Los Angeles Police Protective League contributed $1 million to defeat Gascón this election cycle after he committed to bring progressive reform to Los Angeles. [The Appeal, 1/20/2020]
  • Between 2012 and 2014, the Los Angeles Police Protective League contributed at least $4,500 directly to Lacey’s campaigns. Specifically, the union made $1,500 contributions in 2012, 2013, and 2014. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 9/25/12; 5/20/13; 12/15/14]

Lacey Took Money from Problematic Police Officers and Their Attorneys  

  • Lacey accepted $1,500 from Burbank police chief Royal Scott LaChasee, who in 2016 was criticized for not holding deputy chief Tom Angel accountable for emails mocking women and minority ethnic and religious groups. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 3/26/19;; Burbank Police Department, accessed 12/11/2019; Burbank Leader, 5/6/2016]
  • Lacey accepted $3,000 from Bill Seki and Andrew Pogracz, attorneys who defended an LA cop accused of sexually assaulting a minor. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 2/21/19; 3/13/19; Los Angeles Times, 7/21/2017; Chicago Tribune, 7/14/2017]
  • Lacey accepted $1,000 from Doug Haubert’s campaign for city prosecutor of Long Beach. In 2014, Haubert’s office controversially arrested a gay man, charging him with indecent exposure. In 2016, a superior court ruled that the Long Beach Poliice Department “unfairly targeted gay men when it carried out lewd conduct stings,” but Haubert said he disagreed with the decision. [County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder, 11/17/18;; Doug Haubert, accessed 12/12/2019]