LOS ANGELES — Today, George Gascón, the former District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco and a former Assistant Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), filed papers declaring his candidacy for Los Angeles County District Attorney. He made the announcement outside of Twin Towers Correctional Facility with his wife, Fabiola Kramsky, along with dozens of community leaders.
“There’s another way,” exclaimed Gascón as he announced his candidacy. “The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office is relying on 20th century tools to solve 21st century problems. Their dated approach is wasting precious resources, its plagued with inequities, and most importantly, it hasn’t made Angelinos any safer.”
Los Angeles has the biggest jail system in the country and operates the nation’s largest mental health facility. At a time when the country is confronting the ills of mass-incarceration, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office sends people to state prison at twice the rate of California prosecutors’ offices, and at nearly four times the rate of San Francisco. Despite this, violent crime has fallen to historic lows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and across California, suggesting the L.A. DA’s Office has seriously and unnecessarily misused government’s most expensive intervention; incarceration.
“Taking on the status quo and reforming our most important institutions requires leadership, strength, and a commitment to doing the right thing, even when it comes at great personal cost,” said former Los Angeles Chief of Police, Charlie Beck. “Those are qualities that define George, and I’m excited he’s returned home to implement modern policies and practices that are proven to enhance safety and trust.”
“What LA has been doing is breaking the bank and leaving a trail of collateral consequences that disproportionately impacts black and brown communities,” said Susan Burton, a prominent civil rights activist. “Los Angeles has become the poster child for everything that’s wrong with America’s criminal justice system – and it’s a system that sits on the front lines of our nation’s ongoing debate on race and equality. We need a changemaker, we need George Gascón.”
Gascón started his law enforcement career as a beat cop in the LAPD’s Hollywood Division and rose to the rank of Assistant Chief of Police. In 2006, he was named Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, one of the country’s most conservative cities. There he famously clashed with then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, leading to his testifying before Congress about the dangers to community safety posed by local police engaging in immigration enforcement.
Gascón was subsequently tapped in 2009 by San Francisco’s then-Mayor, Gavin Newsom, to be Chief of the San Francisco Police Department. As Chief of Police in San Francisco, one of the country’s most progressive cities, he significantly increased the murder clearance rate, and homicides in San Francisco fell by half, from 98 cases in 2008 to 45 the next year.
In 2011, Newsom tapped Gascón again to be San Francisco District Attorney when then-District Attorney Kamala Harris vacated her seat to be sworn in as California Attorney General. During his nine years in office violent crime in San Francisco continued to drop to lows not seen since the 1960s. He was elected to two terms and, late last year, announced his intent not to seek a third in order to care for his elderly mother who lives in Los Angeles. In addition to his mother, Gascón’s two daughters also live in Los Angeles. Gascón originally came to LA in 1967 when he was 13 years old after escaping Fidel Castro’s Communist regime on a freedom flight. He left Cuba with nothing but the clothes on his back and an extra pair of underwear.
Gascón and his team will announce a broader policy platform in the months ahead, but, if elected, he has committed to bringing some of the landmark initiatives he developed previously that are already being duplicated by other District Attorney’s Offices across the nation. Those include:
- Make It Right, a program for justice involved juveniles which sees participants reoffend at less than ¼ the rate of those who go through the traditional process.
- Young Adult Court, a program designed to address the unique needs of young adults ages 18-25, an age group that is disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.
- The Crime Strategies Unit (CSU), a multi-disciplinary team of prosecutors, analysts and investigators that use a data-driven approach to resourcefully address chronic crime and repeat offenders. CSU’s approach in San Francisco has been credited with multiple major organized crime takedowns, including Operations Wrecking Ball and Cold Day, the latter of which netted the most arrests in a single day ever for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a federal agency.
- Blind Charging, which is an implicit bias mitigation tool he developed with Stanford University’s Computational Policy Lab. The tool leans on artificial intelligence to eliminate race and race proxy information from police reports when prosecutors make charging decisions.
From the international Secure Our Smartphones coalition he led which has been widely credited with ending a global epidemic of violent smartphone robberies, to the national movement he started when he proactively cleared eligible marijuana convictions following legalization, and much, much, much, more, Gascón is incredibly excited to bring his brand of modern justice back to his hometown of Los Angeles.