Hilda Solis
Los Angeles County supervisor Hilda Solis (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

In Los Angeles, the local transit agency has resorted to the desperation tactic of playing classical music in a downtown subway station to see if it has any impact on the crime, vagrants, drug users, and calls to police from transit customers. Even as violent crime (robbery, aggravated assault, and rape) in the metro system increased 24% in 2022 compared with 2021, some politicians feel that ramped-up music is preferable to ramped-up policing.

Hilda Solis, for instance, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, reportedly issued a statement to The Los Angeles Times indicating she supports “safety interventions” that “introduce alternatives to deploying additional armed law enforcement on the system.”

A Fox News reporter has highlighted another initiative by Supervisor Solis, being a motion she co-authored appearing on the April 4 agenda of the County Board of Supervisors. Agenda item no. 22, as originally proposed, contains a lengthy list of directives that, among other things, would require the County to “move with all deliberate speed” to “prioritize decreasing the number of individuals entering the Los Angeles County Jails,” “prioritize increased opportunities for pre-trial release,” and “prioritize increased opportunities for post-sentence release and re-entry.”

It would expand pre-trial releases, including a proposal that the County Sheriff “release individuals with aggregate bail amounts set at $50,000 or below,” and a more general proposal to “expedite release of individuals being held in local custody on behalf of the State.” It also directs the Board to reaffirm its commitment “to depopulate and decarcerate through legislative advocacy” by supporting measures like “a zero-bail schedule for individuals accused of low-level offenses, infractions, misdemeanors, and some felony offenses.”

Supervisor Solis, unsurprisingly, is also a big supporter of gun control. In March, she joined President Joe Biden as he announced a new gun control order, tweeting that, “I was proud to join @POTUS today … as he announced a new Executive Order on comprehensive gun control focused on keeping Americans safe.”

To follow up, Solis authored a motion requiring the county’s counsel to review Biden’s executive order and report back with recommendations on further gun control measures the Board could take.

Solis may have problems reconciling her “decarceration” program with her anti-gun stance and “making our communities safer.”

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (LAADDA), a group representing prosecutors, points out that Solis’s motion would require “law enforcement to cite and release suspects for offenses such as illegally carrying a gun, domestic violence, possession of child pornography and some violent crimes, including residential burglary, robbery, and assault with a firearm.”

In fact, the LAADDA representative had nothing positive to say about the plan, calling the motion

…to gut parts of the criminal justice system without input from stakeholders … dangerous and reckless. The authors sought no advice from those who know and understand public safety issues. The proposal sought to lower the jail population without addressing the root causes of crime or protecting the public. This catch-and-release program comes without any plan or infrastructure to protect the community from violent criminals apprehended by law enforcement. It creates no lockdown facilities for the mentally ill. It benefits no one except career criminals.

Others who quickly registered their concern included the California Contract Cities Association, the “premier advocacy association in Los Angeles County” for local governments, and the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association.

A letter by the police chiefs association indicated that it had been “blindsided” by the proposal and summed it up as worse than useless:

In the midst of surging crime rates, pre-arrest decriminalization policies, and a complete shift away from sound public safety responses, it appears the County [Board of Supervisors] is poised to exacerbate our current plight.

By April 3, Ms. Solis advised she was withdrawing the motion, for now, due to . . .

…concerns from a variety of stakeholders — those who feel the motion is not doing enough and those who feel it is doing too much. To that end, I will be referring the motion back to my office so that I can continue to gather input from all stakeholders.

While her statement mentions balancing public safety with federal obligations, nothing in it is a clear recognition of the need to “prioritize” protecting law-abiding residents from “our pre-trial population” and those “languishing in County jails.”

The plight of the actual victims of these “progressive” public safety experiments isn’t completely overlooked by Los Angeles politicians. Another April 4 agenda item is a proposal that the Board “Proclaim the week of April 23 through 29, 2023, as ‘National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.’”

A resident responded, “But yet you want to depopulate and decarcerate the LA County Jail?”  “This is hilarious,” wrote another. “You want a National Crime Victim’s Rights Week, but you, the Board of Supervisors continue to ignore the victims of crimes.”

 

This article originally appeared at nraila.org and is reprinted here with permission.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. The big one, that will drop California into the pacific, can’t happen fast enough for the rest of real America.

      • Some decades back one of the stop ‘n rob chains experimented with classical music to drive away loiterers around their stores who were inhibiting people who actually had money to spend. They reported success with the program but for quite some time now I haven’t heard J.S.Back or Mozart at the Stop ‘n Rob, so maybe long term the creeps who like to hang around such businesses have become accustomed to Mozart. Of course, the problem with having more law enforcement on the busses and subways would mean more of her voters would be in jail and might lose their right to vote because they were convicted of felonies.

    • Hey! Watch that…my pension is from there. Most have no idea that before the turn of this last century, Kali had first dibs on your California pension, even if you became a resident of another state. At 13% state tax, thankfully that changed! Really cost Kali a chunk of change. Of course anyone moving to California has to pay that 13% tariff. And, while my pension may come from there, I have no desire to cross the border for a visit. Might as well go to Mexico, not much difference.

      • It was all the kallyfornicators in Arizona who got AZ to go to court and cut CA off from taxing retirees. So they then turn around and vote for the same type of sleezeballs who ruined CA.

  3. hey soup, let the obidens stay in your crib, eat your food, access your home & body in every way. that’s what you want for the law-abiding, taxpayers, right?

  4. The Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (LAADDA), the California Contract Cities Association, the “premier advocacy association in Los Angeles County” for local governments, and the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association need to get on board with “Progressives” such as Supv. Hilda Solis.

    Total Anarchy and the Zombie Apocalypse can’t happen in the City of Angeles unless everyone pulls together.

  5. lt’s the commie way. Owning property is a crime, therefore jailed thieves are martyrs, and setting them free is crime fightin’…

    Violent types are either soldiers of the revolution or useful idiots…

    Enabling them is progressive.

    And if you split CA into three states, and FL into two, that makes 53. Puerto Rico and DC makes 55, and Guam and USVI make 57…

    When Leftists say or do stupid stuff, ya gots to put your head on a swivel, and watch your six.

    • To many stars, Our new flag is going to have 5 and we are doing away with the white stripes. Yep .

  6. To many stars, Our new flag is going to have 5 and we are doing away with the white stripes. Yep .

  7. We make being a criminal waaaay to comfortable. Geez whats wrong with these people!?!?

    My grandfather is probably turning over in his grave. He’s probably way past dizzy.

    One of these days the pendulum is gonna swing way back the other way, and i cant wait.

  8. Well one good aspect of this zombie apocalypse is that Fentanyl is slowly wiping out the addicts and the low lifes using illegal drugs. Hopefully if this trend continues it will slowly decrease the thefts and robberies as these people die off. Trouble is in places like Seattle, San Fran and Portland is that young dims still keep voting for the same ignorant policies against their welfare and quality of life. It may take a decade but things will change.

  11. Very Shakespearean, the two faces of a Liberal. So, what we need is more gun control when it is proven that no amount of gun control has any effect. Orin Hatch came up with this jewel years, heck, decades ago: “If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying – that they must sweep under the rug the southern Democrats attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period [prohibition], the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 – establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.”

    If the Left really wanted to keep the children safe, then they would support doing what we know works – hardening schools against intrusion and adding policing. Instead, the Liberals continue to go after firearms, an inanimate object that requires a person to operate it. Does that make anybody but me wonder if, just maybe, it is not the safety of children the Leftists want, but rather a disarmed and easily controlled People. That is the Communist and NAZI way of doing things. In a funny way, Leftist tend to swing two ways – they want unicorns and rainbows or, on the other, they want unfettered power to impose their ideology and will on everybody else. As I said, two faces, one harmless, the other vile and dangerous. Whatever you do, remember this, Liberals pass “gun control laws” that are intended to make law-abiding citizens fearful of guns, owning guns and using guns, thus making them open to, and compliant for the confiscation of all firearms; but these laws have no effect on criminals or criminality, the object being to make law-abiding citizens felons if they make an innocent mistake that is “against” the newly created law. These laws are so convoluted and all encompassing that it is unlikely there is any other purpose than creating fear of entrapment, and controlling or forcing compliance through this fear. Very Communistic. I hope that all made sense.

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