A new breed of prosecutors has been elected in urban centers all over the country in the last four or five years, virtually all of them heavily supported by billionaire George Soros. They have politicized their offices and the criminal justice system, picking and choosing — based on “social justice” considerations — which laws they want to uphold and which to let slide.
The latest of these prosecutors to make headlines (other than St. Louis’s Kim Gardner getting tossed off of the McCloskey case) is new Los Angeles D.A., George Gascón. After being sworn in, he promptly announced that he’ll ask for no bail for most offenders and listed a raft of crimes he’ll no longer bother to prosecute at all.
These prosecutors, combined with the defund-the-police movement and activist city councils, mean the crime surge that most American cities have seen since the start of the pandemic and that accelerated with the George Floyd protests, isn’t going to get better any time soon. And some people wonder why many gun stores are still selling out as soon as each new shipment arrives.
Former New York mayor Ed Koch, on the occasion of his defeat in the 1989 Democratic primary by the late David Dinkins, was asked if he would again seek public office. “No,” he said. “The people have spoken . . . and they must be punished.”
Well and properly punished they were, as things turned out. During Dinkins’s single term as mayor, crime and disorder in New York City reached their horrifying zenith. In 1990, 2,245 people were murdered in the city, one factor among many that earned Dinkins the reputation as the most feckless man ever to occupy City Hall. (Only recently has a challenger emerged.)
Now stepping up to be similarly punished are the voters of Los Angeles County, who in their wisdom have installed George Gascón as district attorney. Gascón is the latest of the so-called social justice prosecutors to win election in some of America’s major cities, following in the path of Kim Foxx in Chicago, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. …
The cumulative effect of these policies will be threefold: fewer criminals will be sent to jail or prison; those who are imprisoned will serve shorter sentences; and many already convicted and behind bars will be released years before they might have been. Even some inmates now serving life without parole for murder will be allowed to petition for resentencing and even release under Gascón’s new guidelines.
— Jack Dunphy in Social ‘Justice’ Comes to Los Angeles