Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
The roughly 700 Los Angeles County prosecutors will support the recall of District Attorney George Gascón following a nearly unanimous union vote on the issue, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
The Association of Deputy District Attorneys vote was 98% in favor of the recall of the DA whose progressive policies and lenient punishment standards have called into question his fitness for his position.
“This vote is by those who are intimately familiar with how Mr. Gascón’s policies actually play out on a day-to-day basis,” ADDA President Michele Hanisee told POLITICO. “We believe the vote of our members will resonate with the voters of Los Angeles as they decide whether to recall Gascón from office and restore public safety as the priority of the District Attorney’s Office.”
In addition to the ADDA vote, more than 30 Los Angeles County cities have issued no-confidence votes for the district attorney, and former Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck withdrew support for Gascón earlier in the month according to the Daily News.
Gascón, who took office in December of 2020, has refused to speak to prosecutors directly regarding his policies. However, during his campaign, he met with Los Angeles County public defenders to take questions, according to the ADDA.
“Over a year ago, Gascón began a massive social experiment by redirecting prosecutorial resources away from enforcing the law while simultaneously ignoring large portions of the penal code,” ADDA Vice President Eric Siddall said. “The result is an emboldened criminal element that knows the DA will not hold criminals accountable. This experiment needs to end.”
According to the Daily News, the vote came after Gascón again refused an invitation to address the prosecutors in his county and explain to their union what they described as his “serious breach of the public trust.”
One of Gascón’s most concerning cases was his controversial decision on Hannah Tubbs, a biological male who identified himself as a trangender female, who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl inside a Denny’s restroom just two weeks before his 18th birthday.
Until last week Gascón defended his stance on the case, which included his office’s decision not to file a request to transfer the case to adult court, which limited the maximum sentence to two years. Judge Mario Barrera cited the DA’s decision several times during the sentencing where Tubbs was given the maximum, according to The New York Post.
Prior to sentencing, Tubbs was heard telling his father that he expected to receive very little punishment, saying, “They’re gonna stick me on probation, and it’s gonna be dropped. It’s gonna be done. I won’t have to register, won’t have to do nothing.”
Just days ago Gascon expressed his first concern about the Tubbs’ sentencing, saying, “We learned a lot from the Hannah Tubbs case about the need for a policy safety valve,” he said in a statement. “After her sentencing in our case, I became aware of extremely troubling statements she made about her case, the resolution of it, and the young girl that she harmed. If we knew about her disregard for the harm she caused, we would have handled this case differently. The complex issues and facts of her particular case were unusual, and I should have treated them that way.”
However, prosecutors told the Southern California News Group that Gascón’s aides were informed of the recordings before Tubbs was sentenced.
The prosecutor “respectfully declined” to address the ADDA following his decision in the Tubbs case, saying that their “fear tactics” would not work and said he preferred to “focus on the issues facing the women, men, and gender nonconforming deputy district attorneys that go to work each day to pursue justice.”