In six weeks, Los Angeles County voters will decide the fate of District Attorney George Gascón. In 2020, he unseated incumbent Jackie Lacey in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests and a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement. Voters wanted a departure from tough-on-crime policies from someone who billed himself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Gascón previously had served as the San Francisco DA and was a long-time LAPD officer. Now he faces off against former federal prosecutor and defense attorney Nathan Hochman.
Gascón speaks with KCRW about the impact of his progressive policies on Angelenos, Prop 36, and his standing among members of his own office.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
KCRW: When you took office nearly four years ago, you implemented changes per your progressive prosecutor philosophy. You promised not to charge juveniles as adults for some or all crimes, to stop seeking life sentences without the possibility of parole. And you severely restricted sentencing enhancements. You’ve since walked some of these policies back. Why?
George Gascón: Well, it's important that we continue to evaluate our work, and that we address areas where there may be gaps. When I was first elected and took office, I did not have a team with me. I inherited the team that was there before, and I wanted to make sure that the campaign promises that I got elected on were going to be honored. And part of that was reflected in those directives, but I also recognize that there will be an evolution. And there were some that were very quick. When you talk about sentencing enhancements for instance concerning hate crimes, immediately I have people that I trust in their judgment that came to me and said, ‘Look, we understand that enhancements are not going to reduce hate crimes, but it’s sending a message at a time when hate crimes are going up.’ So I unwound that immediately, within less than two weeks.
Since then, the law concerning juveniles actually has changed. Actually what my policies were in 2021, when I first actually started to do the work, are now state law. So transferring a juvenile now is very, very difficult. Quite frankly, the law caught up with my policy. So it's a process of evolution, but not a departure from the principles that got me elected and hopefully will get me reelected.
Do you think that those policies have translated into a better quality of life for citizens of LA County? [The California Department of Justice says] violent crime is up 12% between 2020 and 2023, robberies up nearly 16%, property crimes up 20%, and auto thefts are up 23%.
So let's unpack the numbers. … When you look at the crime in the city of LA, for instance, we are now on a downward trend. There was an increase during the pandemic. And there was a national increase, by the way, not just in LA County. And then we started to see a return to normalcy in ‘22 and ‘23, and when you look at the county picture of crime numbers today, it’s very mixed. So you have LAPD sort of coming back in the last two years.
The one crime that continues to remain a constant, that is up, and by the way it's a national problem, is auto theft. Violent crime has come down, auto theft continues to go up nationally. And there are many different hypotheses as to why that is happening. But the other part of all this … which is really often unspoken: Crimes do not go up or down because of who the district attorney is. If that were the case, then we would blame district attorneys around other counties, or, quite frankly, even my predecessor, who actually, during her eight years, saw an increase in crime.
But didn’t you blame [Jackie Lacey] when you were running for office?
If you recall, it was a process where people were blaming me for crime in San Francisco, and some of the policies that I was espousing would cause a crime increase. And we very quickly pointed out if that were the case, her policies clearly were not working.
Here's what it is clear, by the way: We have been doing business for decades the same way, and we have seen incarceration going to levels that [are] unparallel[ed]. And while we have some initial decreases, and then things became stable, we continue to incarcerate at rates that do not correspond to the level of crime. And then our recidivism rate has continued to go up. And those are things that there's a direct correlation between that and so many of the high levels of incarceration.
So I say all this to say, look, there are complexities to this. A prosecutor has a lot of influence on the micro-level, holding individuals accountable when they're causing harm, and we do that. Police investigate arrests. A prosecutor cannot prosecute unless there is an arrest, and then juries determine guilt and judges sentence. Since I've been in office, we have prosecuted over 100,000 felony and violent crimes. That's on par with the rate of prosecutions for the last 10 years.
When we saw a problem, and we got caught flat-footed, and when I say we, I'm talking about police and everybody else with organized retail theft, it took about a year and a half for task forces to be implemented. We participated in all that. We have now prosecuted approximately 11,000 cases of organized retail theft, about 1300 that are clearly organized retail theft. We became very, very creative in the charges that we did. According to the LAPD, organized retail theft has come down. So it's really important to break this stuff down. Because it's very easy to say, well, crime is up so it must be the DA. Well, if that's the case in Kern County, San Bernardino, Riverside, we must blame their DAs for the same thing.
People have to hold somebody accountable, and you campaign on the issue of reducing crime for the greater County of Los Angeles. If you’re saying the DA doesn’t really have responsibility over crime, then what are you doing?
What I'm saying is crime has been decreasing, right? The City of LA is … on a downward trend for the last two years. What I'm telling you is I'm not taking credit for the decreases that LAPD has brought up. I am a partner in that. I contribute to that. It just is a process, and we play a role in this puzzle.
And absolutely, the people have to be responsible. But again, let's go back to a basic premise. Even if you subscribe to this, unless there is an arrest, a prosecutor cannot prosecute. We don't patrol communities. We don't make arrests. We react [to] the work of the police, and we have had very high-level filing rates on the things that are being brought to us because we're responding to the environment as it evolves.
One of the things the public blames for the rash of retail theft, so-called smash and grabs, is Prop 47, which voters approved a decade ago. It reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors, and raised the threshold for felony theft to $950 [from $400]. The thinking is thieves know this very well and will steal up to that amount. You were an author of Prop 47. Do you think it was a mistake?
No. I mean, look, let's unpack Prop 47. Number one: There were two components to Prop 47. One was the war on drugs and sending people to prison for simple possession of drugs for personal use. The other component had to do with a threshold for theft. The $950 threshold was one that was really an evolution from [$400] that was created in the early 1980s, and bringing it up to not even full adjustment for inflation. But the part dealing with drugs is a really interesting piece, because even as we're looking now at Prop 36 —
— which will be on the ballot in November.
On the drug piece of it, they say we're going to have, instead of mass incarceration, we're going to have mass treatment. But what they're not telling you is what Prop 36 will do. First of all, under Prop 47, we have nearly $100 million each year coming back for treatment and for after-school programs. That money, mostly, will go away, and that's according to the chief legislative officer of the state. Those are not my words, and that money is going to go back into incarceration. We're going to fill up our jails again, which there's a monetary interest in doing that by some. We're going to take money away from treatment, and we're basically, if that were to pass, which appears that it could pass, we're going to go back to the days of the war on drugs. So it's a very interesting set of dynamics that are playing up today when it comes to Prop 47. The issues that relate to the low level theft, especially when it comes to retail theft, have been addressed by the legislature.
Governor Gavin Newsom opposes Prop 36, along with you. But it appears that when voters are polled, an overwhelming level of them support it — 71% according to a recent survey by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
An August poll also didn’t go well for you. A UC Berkeley survey found that only 20% of likely voters would cast their ballots for you, versus your opponent Nathan Hochman, who received 45%. Another 35% are undecided. When it comes to your favorability, you’re also underwater: 21% favorable, 45% unfavorable. Why do you think that is?
Well, look, there have been attacks against me from the very beginning, right? When I got elected, there were two recall attempts. Millions of dollars have been spent to misinform the public about my policies. But here's the other interesting piece that that poll did not do. That poll basically compared me with all my unfavorables against kind of an unknown person. What we're finding out, and by the way, we know there are polls out there, they're showing that when the public knows what my opponent's history is, he tanks and I win. So the only poll that counts, as far as I'm concerned, is the one that happens on Election Day. And we'll wait to see what happens there.
One final question. You’re not too popular in your own office. You’ve been sued by more than two dozen members of your office. The union of the Association of Deputy DAs — they held a vote of no confidence that was nearly unanimous. Why do your own employees not like you?
First of all, I think you're making a very broad statement. The vote of no confidence, this is the association that put a lot of money against me on independent expenditures in 2020. Then they again supported two different recalls. The reality is that I've hired now about 150 new lawyers. We have promoted over 100 lawyers. It's a much more nuanced environment.
There's a lot of people that support the work that I'm doing, including people, not only new people that are coming in, but people that are in the office. It is true that there are lawsuits, and there was about 20 of them, and they again come from the very same people that have been supporting recalls and were supporting my opponent in 2020. So to just simply say that I'm very unpopular, I think it overlooks that there is a much deeper story here to be told.
So you think that this is more of a political thing, even though they’re accusing you of workplace retaliation and demotions because they disagreed with your policies? You think it’s more politically motivated?
It's 100% politically motivated, but understand that you cannot separate politics and policy. You have folks that grew up in an organization that was extremely carceral, that have fought tooth and nail to keep the death penalty, have fought tooth and nail to send juveniles to adult prisons. And all of a sudden you have somebody that's coming from the outside and say we're going to start moderating this.
And for people [who] have been in that world for a very long time, it's a very difficult part to adjust. And I recognize that. Look, I grew up as a police officer, believing in many other things. I've evolved in a different direction. And we have many people in the office that have evolved, but you cannot walk away from politics on this. So let's call it for what it is. Let's also acknowledge the things that are working, because there are many men and women that are working very hard supporting this policy. There are many men and women that are coming even from other district attorney's offices to work here, to do the work the way that we're doing.”
