Campaign News

LOS ANGELES – In the wake of mass protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, a coalition of current and former elected prosecutors representing millions of Californians in diverse counties banded together to call on the California State Bar to cure the conflict of interest created by police unions’ outsized influence in local elections. […]

Earlier this year, without raising money for incumbent Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey directly, the union put up $1 million to defeat her reform-oriented opponent, George Gascón. (The Times has endorsed Gascón.) It was an independent expenditure, and as such it backed the candidate without necessarily creating the same kind of conflict of interest as a direct […]

June 1, 2020 Alan Steinbrecher Chair, Board of Trustees State Bar of California 180 Howard St. San Francisco, CA 94105 Donna Hershkowitz Interim Executive Director State Bar of California 180 Howard St. San Francisco, CA 94105 RE: Ethics rule change request to reduce conflicts of interest for prosecutors. Dear Chair Alan Steinbrecher and Interim Executive […]

LOS ANGELES, CA – LA District Attorney candidate George Gascón criticized the current DA’s approach to excessive force cases among officers in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), especially in regard to an excessive force case in Boyle Heights. He stated, “Angelenos need an independent advocate who knows the law and is unafraid to hold […]

Outbreaks of coronavirus in jails and prisons are turning lethal for the accused and sheriff’s deputies alike. The situation is another fatality of mass incarceration, a system of injustice that led us to cram thousands of non-violent offenders into cages. For better or worse, this dynamic will define the arc of criminal justice reform. But […]