Los Angeles – Today, George Gascón released the following statement following Jackie Lacey’s uncharacteristic opposition of Proposition 20 during an event last week. Jackie Lacey has made a career of rejecting commonsense criminal justice reforms–including all three that Proposition 20 seeks to roll back–making the motivations for her sudden change of heart in the waning days of an election highly suspect. In response to her flip flopping on reform, Gascón released the following statement:
“This is the DA that called realignment ‘a terrible mistake,’ who opposed Propositions 47, 57, 64, and that supports the death penalty. She prosecutes kids as adults and can’t bring herself to hold law enforcement accountable. She must have whiplash from changing her position so quickly. The bottom line is that there’s a tidal wave of reform coming, and no matter how creatively she attempts to reinvent her record at the 11th hour Jackie Lacey is not getting a life raft. She has been one of California’s greatest impediments to criminal justice reform.”
An analysis by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice found that Proposition 20, would drive up prison and jail populations, increase public spending on law enforcement and incarceration by hundreds of millions of dollars a year, in addition to diverting resources from programs that rehabilitate former offenders, and generally hurt communities of color. Maureen Washburn, a policy analyst at CJCJ, noted in an interview to KQED that, “crime has continued to fall in California as reforms took place over the past decade — and any reversal of those changes would disproportionately impact communities of color in California, who are incarcerated at higher rates than whites.”
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George Gascón is the Democratic Party’s nominee. He is endorsed by the LA Times, the LA Daily News, U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Governor Gavin Newsom, Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, former Chief of the LAPD Charlie Beck, and many more.
Mr. Gascón grew up in Los Angeles after his family immigrated from Cuba. An army veteran, Gascón served as a Los Angeles Police Department Officer for 30 years, rising to the rank of Assistant Chief of Operations. In 2006 he became Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, where he stood up to the hateful and anti-immigrant policies of then Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In 2009, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Gascón Chief of Police. Newsom turned to Gascón again in 2011 when he tapped him to be District Attorney to fill the seat vacated by an outgoing Kamala Harris who had been elected Attorney General. During his tenure Gascón implemented reforms that are being duplicated across the country while overseeing violent crime and homicides drop to rates not seen in 50 years. After being elected to two terms, Gascón returned to Los Angeles to care for his elderly mother and to be closer to his two daughters and grandchildren in Long Beach. Gascón is married to Fabiola Kramsky, a three-time Emmy Award winning journalist and recipient of the “Premio Nacional de Periodismo,” the highest recognition given to journalists in Mexico.