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Jan. 15, 2021 - Epoch Times
36:09
Los Angeles' Relaxed Approach to Crime; Police Budget Cuts, Explained | Steve Cooley
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We want to talk to you about the new DA in LA that doesn't want to prosecute a lot of different crimes.
Yeah, his name is George Gascon and he was put in LA because George Soros donated two and a half million dollars, I think, to his campaign.
And immediately went to work essentially destroying L.A. County's justice system.
What are his policies?
Revolutionary, literally.
And unconstitutional too, which he doesn't realize.
Illegal, which he doesn't quite appreciate.
And unethical, which will be dealt with in due course.
So it's a lot relaxer approach on crime.
It is so unusual what he's doing that people are still trying to absorb it.
They're shell-shocked with his policies.
So with this defining the police, what's happening to LA? It's a very simple proposition.
If you don't have enough police, you're going to have more crime.
Criminals are going to feel empowered.
What do you think is going to happen to LA? I think it's going to be a complete meltdown over time.
Can you tell us more about what LA residents should do?
This is a perfect scenario for the ultimate crime wave and a failure of the justice system.
So they ought to realize that.
And if they care about themselves, Their family, their friends, and their society.
They should wake up and vote against George Gascon when he's up for recall.
Kick him out of office.
Get rid of him.
That is a step in the right direction.
Los Angeles' new district attorney, George Gascon, is changing the county's criminal justice system.
My guest today is Steve Cooley.
He's the former district attorney of Los Angeles County and the author of multiple books, including Blue Lives in Jeopardy.
Today, he discusses LA's new approach to crime, police budget cuts, and the ideology behind defunding the police.
Welcome to California Inside Out.
Steve, it's great to have you on.
Welcome.
Great to be back.
Thank you.
And we want to talk to you about the new DA in LA. There's a new DA in LA that doesn't want to prosecute a lot of different crimes.
Yeah, his name is George Gascon.
He's a puppet of George Soros.
He believes in the whole George Soros kind of ideology.
And he was put in LA because George Soros donated $2.5 million, I think, to his campaign.
And a couple of other out-of-county wives of billionaires from some other county threw in another couple million.
And so George Gascon won the election and immediately went to work essentially destroying LA County's justice system.
What are his policies?
Well, his policies are...
At 12.02pm, on the day he was sworn in, 12.02pm, which is two minutes into his term, he issued nine directives.
The directives essentially tell his prosecutors they are to strike, A whole array of sentencing enhancements which add time based upon misconduct or prior criminal history, get rid of those.
No special circumstances can be alleged so the death penalty cannot be sought.
Nor can life without the possibility of parole.
When it comes to parole, there will be no more representation of the people of the state of California from LA County at parole hearings.
DA's are barred from going to parole hearings.
And then there's a number of other permutations in terms of how prosecutors are handling juvenile court.
Blessing issued an edict that certain very common misdemeanors will not be prosecuted whatsoever.
In any of the jurisdictions where the LA County DA prosecutes misdemeanors, which is 78 cities and the unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County.
So this is revolutionary, literally.
And unconstitutional too, which he doesn't realize.
Illegal, which he doesn't quite appreciate.
And unethical, which will be dealt with in due course.
So what does it mean?
So if certain crimes people committing, they can get away with it?
Yes.
Like what?
Well, or they get a much, much lesser sentence.
I'll give you an example in juvenile court.
He says that except for rape or murder, prosecutors are barred from filing any offense that could serve as a future strike.
Strikes are certain violent and serious crimes.
So if a 16-year-old goes out with a gun, commits armed robbery, the DA cannot file robbery because that's a potential strike.
It is crazy what he is doing.
And he is taking away a lot of the tools That brought Los Angeles County to the lowest crime rate in 60 years.
When I was DA, it was the lowest crime rate in 60 years because the system worked.
He is taking away all those tools from prosecutors and from law enforcement and from judges through his fiat.
Which, by the way, it's unconstitutional.
Now, what about, there was something I saw about domestic violence, he doesn't want to prosecute that as well?
No, that's still on the books, but there may be a lessening of the penalties because you won't be able to allege priors, you won't be able to allege great bodily injury, if there's a weapon used you won't be able to use a weapon.
The crime will still be prosecuted, but the enhancements that provide for additional sentence based upon very serious factors or prior criminal history, those will not be alleged.
So it's a lot relaxer approach on crime.
So crime is not getting treated the same way it used to be.
Well, it's not getting treated the same way it's being treated throughout most of California.
He's not obeying state law.
This is so unusual what he's doing that people are still trying to absorb it.
They're shell-shocked with his policies.
Now, there's a couple other weird screwball DAs in California, particularly the one in San Francisco, who have adopted this sort of an approach to the criminal justice system.
But they're also all over the country.
Chicago, They have a George Soros DA, Chief Prosecutor, State's Attorney.
Philadelphia, they have a George Soros Chief Prosecutor, DA. St.
Louis has two of them.
Brooklyn has one.
Contra Costa County, California, we got one up there.
So, George Soros has spent his money strategically.
And wisely to essentially take over DA's offices throughout the country.
Los Angeles County is by far his biggest prize because Los Angeles County is huge.
The largest county in the nation in terms of population.
It doesn't have multiple DA's offices.
It has one DA's office, which is the largest by far in the country.
George Soros' puppet now controls that.
Now, is this coming from an ideology?
I think it's coming from an ideology and a philosophy.
They call themselves progressives or whatever, but essentially it's an ideology.
They've taken an ideology and they're forcing it onto a system of laws.
And I think that their approach is going to be challenged in various ways.
And it's not like putting a square peg in a round hole.
It's not going to fit.
It's not legal.
Not ethical.
So what's going to happen is there will be challenges in court.
When I go to court in a few of my cases, these death penalty cases, we're going to be filing motions.
Challenging what is going on and eventually that may go up to an appellate court if we have a case or controversy and all of that.
And then the other thing is there's a very robust effort to recall him.
It started the day after he was sworn in as it should have because Within two minutes of him being sworn in, everyone knew this is a terrible, terrible prosecutor who is a threat to public safety, who is doing unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical things as a matter of his fiat.
So, the recall thing will take place.
And that takes time.
You know, there's a grace period, you have to collect signatures, 45 days until the election after you get the election certified.
That'll take time.
But it'll happen.
He's a dead man walking when it comes to being an elected official.
Do you think the average voters in LA that vote for him, do you think they knew that they're getting the...
No.
If they knew, they wouldn't have done it.
You know, the electorate, they're not always as well informed as they should be.
And in this instance, between George Soros and his other billion dollar friends from Silicon Valley, who donated millions of dollars in the election, they were able to put a lot of ads on television.
Making George Gascogne look good and making the incumbent, Jackie Lacey, look bad.
That has an impact on your uninformed voter.
And that's what happened.
Now, do you see the movement to defund the police?
Do you see a connection between this ideology that's behind funding these DAs?
Yeah, it's all pretty well connected.
You've got groups, supported by George Soros, by the way, financially, that are pushing the deep on the police.
It kind of started in Minneapolis, and now it's spread throughout the country in certain cities, including Los Angeles.
And it's just a concept, but it sort of caught on fire among the left-wingers and some of our very weak, weak politicians who felt they had to do something to respond to all the riots and the turmoil and Black Lives Matter and all that stuff.
So with this defunding the police, what's happening to LA? LA is losing funding, right?
Well, first of all, LA has Mary Garcetti.
Without doing any real thoughtful analysis, when the defund the police cry was out there and LA was going through its turmoil and riots and vandalism and arson, he kind of catered to the radical group and said, oh, we'll just cut the LAPD budget by $150 million.
Why not 200 million?
Why not 75 million?
He picked a number.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
But he catered to that element, that violent, riotous element, and maybe people in the movement who were marching around all over the place.
In terms of the county of Los Angeles, the supervisors there They wanted to respond to the defund the police call, and rather than just vote to defund the police themselves, they took another way out.
They put a proposition on the ballot called Proposition J, where it would cut the D's budget, the Sheriff's Department budget, and the Probation Department's budget, and take those funds, which is hundreds of millions of dollars, And divert them to other programs that they think will deal with the issues that were otherwise being dealt with by the criminal justice system.
And look at Minneapolis.
Look at Seattle.
Look at Portland.
Look at where they defund their police.
They can't recruit police.
Look at the crime rate.
Out of control.
Murder, attempted murder, rape, all sorts of crimes are occurring because there's no adequate police presence or response.
So the criminals are not deterred.
They know they can get away with it.
And they are getting away with it.
It's a very simple proposition.
If you don't have enough police, you're going to have more crime.
The criminals are going to feel empowered.
So, combined these two with lower police force and the new DA's approach to crime, what do you think is going to happen to LA? LA, I think it's going to be a complete meltdown over time.
But I think Angelinos will wake up, realize that the election of Gascon was a disaster.
A train wreck.
And they'll fix it.
And they'll fix it by recalling him.
But in the meantime, the system is in complete turmoil.
Complete turmoil.
Gascon is threatening his deputy DA's to do what he says or he'll punish them.
Gascon and his little minions are threatening judges saying that if they don't do exactly what Gascon says, they will be challenged in a future election.
So there's all sorts of turmoil and what he's ordering people to do in terms of his prosecutors and what he's urging the court to do is unconstitutional in many respects.
Illegal in many respects, and asking his prosecutors to do unethical things.
So there's going to be pushback in an array of areas, in different arenas.
But in the meantime, it's going to be complete, unadulterated turmoil.
And what do you say when Gascon would say he's doing these decisions by science?
I'd say, B.S. Just ask him, Mr.
Gascon, you say this is science-based.
Well, Who's the scientist?
What is the publication, the scientific publication upon which you justify this decision, this policy?
Just point me towards the scientist and the publication, Mr.
Gascon.
Not going to happen.
He's making that up.
The criminal justice system is not governed by science, per se.
It's governed by real-life experiences.
What worked, what doesn't work.
And a constant effort to improve the system.
Enterprising reporters have to just ask him, tell me who the scientist was or is.
Tell me about the publication.
I want to read it.
I want to see if there are other people who have different views of the world.
You know, science is something that can be very precise, very precise, whether it be DNA, that's based on science.
You know, the vaccine for COVID-19, that's based on science.
What he's saying, what he's doing is not based on science.
It's a fraud.
That's what I say to that.
So some of these concepts have become political, right?
Some people are for it because of the politics they're involved with and some people are against it because of the politics that they're in.
What are your thoughts on that?
Politics coming into the police force and the DA? Well, politics is everywhere.
But politics should be removed sometimes from certain arenas and be displaced by more important things.
Take the blue and the red and the purple and all that and put it aside.
When it comes to criminal justice, that's a non-partisan, should be a non-partisan affair, not a political one.
And public safety is nonpartisan.
It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat, declined to state, Republican or whatever, if you or your family or your neighbors or your neighborhood are being impacted by serious crime.
That is nonpartisan.
And you, If you're a normal human being, don't worry about how it fits into your political thinking.
You worry about how am I going to protect my family, protect myself, make sure crime is low, reduce the odds of being victimized.
And that's when you look to the criminal justice system to do that for you.
And over time, we've had great criminal justice systems that have been very effective in terms of keeping crime low.
Right now, America is in an era where you have these movements and these concepts like defund the police where a lot of people are going to be put in jeopardy.
Just look at Portland.
Minneapolis and some of these other places where these movements have kind of taken hold.
Seattle.
Crime is out of control.
Murders are skyrocketing.
The local yokel city council people are trying to impose their little political social philosophy And they're not going to be able to recruit police officers.
Police officers are going to retire.
Crime is going to soar.
And people are going to be like really victimized.
Because some socialist city council person decides, I really think we can do something different than having police.
Well, maybe they should just do the numbers.
Are murders up?
Attempted murders up?
Gang activity up?
Violent crimes up?
Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to get rid of your police or reduce their numbers or attack them.
What about cases that where some of these people that, some of the people that really believe in defunding the police, they see cases where officers, and there are a small number of cases where officers are shooting unarmed people.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, first of all, you stated it correctly.
It's a small number of cases.
The number of cases of officers shooting unarmed people is infinitesimal, incredibly small.
And some of them are criminal acts.
And they're being prosecuted.
We know about that.
But the numbers are really, really, really small compared to all the rest of the murders that are out there.
Let's take Chicago, for example.
Look at all the murders that occur daily.
And the shootings where people are shot daily.
The numbers are phenomenal.
Phenomenal.
And in comparison to officer-involved shootings where the person is unarmed.
And by the way, there can be shootings by an officer of a so-called unarmed person that are justified.
That is for trained prosecutors to sort out the facts.
Sometimes officers make mistakes.
A suspect may have...
A flashlight or a telephone, cell phone that looks like a gun in the dark, in the shadows, and because a person's already committed criminal acts, a robbery, a burglary, a this or a that, the officer shoots them and the person's unarmed.
That has to be governed by the law.
And the Supreme Court has set the standards for when those cases, when they arise, should be dealt with with the criminal law or not.
Sometimes are dealt with in the civil courts.
Sometimes what the officer did is perfectly reasonable and justified.
You know, in the penal code, it has two other homicides besides criminal homicide.
Justifiable homicide, excusable homicide.
That's the law.
That's what should be applied to these situations by honest prosecutors who are not trying to advance their ideology.
Their phony ideology.
Behind the movement of defunding the police and not being as tough on crime, a lot of people think that's good.
I think a lot of the public that get behind it, they may not understand it well or they think that this is a better approach.
What are your thoughts?
It may sound very appealing that rather than have traditional policing and then followed up with punishment and incarceration in prison or jail or probation, that they do something different.
Get a social worker out there, maybe a psychiatrist or someone who can bring some sort of restorative justice to the scene.
Well, you know what?
That's fine and dandy in certain situations, but when there's a domestic violence occurring, when there's a crime occurring, when there is a disturbance between neighbors that could lead to violence occurring, when there's rampant dope sales occurring, when there are gang members intimidating a neighborhood, when that's occurring, Who are you going to call?
The social worker?
The intervening psychiatrist guy?
Or trained, experienced, armed, Law enforcement officers.
It's a simple choice based upon what you're trying to deal with.
There are elements in our society right now that would like to make police, law enforcement, the villains.
And that is part of their effort to deconstruct society.
It is not a great secret That many of these movements are dominated by people who would like to change society in a revolutionary way.
For example, some of them are communists.
And they're proud of it.
They're very proud of it.
They don't hide it.
They say, I'm a Marxist communist.
And I'm going to use this movement to destabilize society.
And part of what they're saying is, defund the police.
Do something else.
Disarm the public.
So it's part of an overall...
And I think that right now in society, in terms of public safety, we probably face the biggest threat we ever faced in recent history because of the defund the police movement, the overall effort by George Soros and others.
To take over DA's offices and change the way they do their work.
And that'll affect judges.
And that'll affect public safety.
So we're in a terrible time.
Is there certain people that think defunding the police is ridiculous, but they think that there needs to be a reform to how the police...
There's always thoughtful reforms occurring in the justice system.
Jackie Lacey, the former district attorney of Los Angeles County, she had a number of proposals They were well thought out and designed to improve how individuals are treated in the justice system and punished.
Law enforcement really, as a whole, is by and large open to anything that improves the system.
The system of policing, the system of justice, they're open for it.
There are all sorts of well-conceived notions to reform and improve law enforcement and the justice system.
That's happening all the time.
It's just not as revolutionary as defund the police and give the money to some other undetermined entities.
I mean, you watch Minneapolis, you watch Portland, you watch some of these other places, and watch how bad things get.
And then you can realize that maybe that revolutionary approach of defunding the police is not the best way to go.
Maybe we need someone who's actually committed to obey the law, according to the Constitution, and actually knows his craft, actually knows what he's doing.
Some of these people do not know what they're doing.
The DA in St.
Louis, I think her name is Kim Gardner.
She was a Soros-supported DA in St.
Louis.
She does not know what she's doing.
All the professional prosecutors, or a significant number, left that office because they knew that she was a radical, left-winger, unqualified to be the DA. So all of a sudden you have The linchpin of the justice system, the DA's office, essentially not being staffed by good people, knowledgeable people, experienced people, people that know the law.
That's a disaster.
That's a disaster.
How can people know, how can people find out more information when it comes to these things?
How can they think?
Okay, I'll give you an example.
Let's say you have a leader of a movement who is saying certain things that seem a little radical, like defund the police or the criminal justice system is racist.
Take that person's name and Google them.
You know what you're going to find?
They're longtime revolutionaries, Marxist communists, and their friends and associates are of the same ilk.
And they're not good people.
Just research them.
You know, find out more about them.
And then sort of pay attention to what's going on around you.
Like, are crime rates going up?
Well, maybe that's because of this guy George Gascon.
Or the DA in San Francisco, where George Gascon made a mess of it.
Or the DA in St.
Louis, or the DA in Philadelphia, you know.
Make the connections between who's in charge, what they're trying to accomplish, and how it's impacting you as an individual and society in general.
And then vote accordingly.
So, Steve, you've written multiple books.
You have one of them with us.
Can you tell us more about it?
Well, I've written, along with my co-author, Bob Shearn, written three books.
Two are published.
One is finished and awaiting publication, but we kind of put that on hiatus because of the COVID and the pandemic and hard to market and All of that.
But the second book that's out now is hardcover, and it's similar to our first book.
As you recall, the first book was called Blue Lives Matter in the Line of Duty.
Nonfiction and detailed a variety of murders of police officers in Los Angeles County.
This book is the same in the sense that it details in a nonfiction way The murders of police officers in Los Angeles County, the circumstances, what went wrong, who was involved, what was her background?
Much more intense in terms of the public learning about these horrible cases than they would ordinarily at the time of the murder.
At the time of the murder, there's coverage, You know, helicopters flying around, then there's the funeral, and then, you know, summaries, you know, news stories, but nothing as in-depth as these books.
Now, this book here has a certain theme.
In the stories of this book here, the officers were assassinated, Or executed.
And we decided to pull cases out of the many murders in Los Angeles County of law enforcement officers, pull cases out, because that was sort of a phenomenon going on in the country at the time, in different states where officers were being shot because they're officers.
And we thought, okay, that'll be our theme.
It's a horrible theme.
But you know what?
Maybe the public should realize what's going on.
And the book does that.
It tells them these stories.
And this is just Los Angeles County.
And they're very dramatic stories.
And I think it's very good for the public, too.
After I read your book, I actually realized what the police officers go through.
Every second, they could be a target.
And every traffic pullover...
You know, when we're getting pulled over in a car, we try to behave, right?
And on the other end, the officers, this could be a murder.
The officers don't know.
And that's kind of the theme in a lot of these murders of police officers.
The officers just don't know what they're up against.
The bad guys always know that they're the bad guys.
They know they've got a gun in their back pocket.
They know they've got a warrant for their arrest.
They know they're in this country illegally and are on parole.
The bad guys have a lot of information.
The officer thinks, well, I'm just going to do a routine stop and see what's going on.
I'm just going to approach them and talk to them.
I'm just going to do a vehicle stop.
They were over the limit line.
Well, what the cop doesn't know is the suspect was on his way to commit an armed robbery that he had planned out, and he had already committed other armed robberies, so the officer, thinking he's going to give a traffic ticket, ends up getting shot and then executed.
Well, thank you for writing these books.
Well, I hope the public buys them.
Do you have any other examples of officers that have been executed?
Yeah.
One case that's quite contemporary is the murder of Sergeant Steve Owen, who was with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
And he responded to a burglary call and the burglar was armed with a stolen gun.
He had a prior criminal history.
He was on parole and he had an advantage over the sergeant and he shot him and he wounded him.
Sergeant Steve Owen went down.
The burglar, ex-con, parolee with the stolen gun, then came up and shot Sergeant Owen four times in the face and killed him.
Now that case, Jackie Lacey and the Los Angeles County DA's office, after a thorough analysis and review, decided to seek the death penalty.
George Gascon gets elected, he is sworn in December the 7th, and two minutes after he's sworn in, he issues directives that eliminate the death penalty, eliminate the possibility of life without the possibility of parole, because there's no more special circumstances of killing a police officer.
Eliminates the prior conviction, any additional enhanced sentence for the prior violent conviction, and effectively takes away everything that would increase the sentence for the perpetrator.
That is just one example, one of many examples of the impact of Gascon's new policies.
That's just one example.
There's going to be thousands.
That's just one example in a very high-profile case.
And then now, do you have any remarks for the LA residents?
And based on your background, your experience in the criminal justice system, can you tell us more about what LA residents should do?
The LA residents should appreciate, they may not realize this quite yet, they should appreciate they are in for the worst crime wave in the history of Los Angeles County.
Los Angeles County has been around 170 years.
In terms of recent history, between 2000 and let's say 2010 or 12, They had the lowest crime rate in 60 years.
And it's been creeping up ever since because of changes in the law.
Governor Brown, Harris, Becerra, the legislature, changes in the law.
And now they've got probably the worst person that could ever be their district attorney.
And then you have this movement to defund the police.
This is a perfect scenario for the ultimate crime wave and a failure of the justice system.
So they ought to realize that.
And if they care about themselves, their family, their friends, and their society, they should wake up And vote against George Gascon when he's up for recall.
Kick him out of office.
Get rid of him.
That is a step in the right direction.
There's other things that can be done, but that's the biggest thing that can be done.
Thank you for being here.
I'm always happy to come down to see you.
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