Group slams Los Angeles district attorney for rising crime in county
A group supporting the opponent of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is making a six-figure ad buy blaming him for rising crime in the county.
The organization, which bills itself as a coalition of labor unions, first responders and small businesses, is supporting Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney general during the George W. Bush administration. The ad was released exclusively to The Hill on Monday.
The group behind the ad is sponsored by the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, a union for deputy sheriffs and district attorney investigators in the county. Its supporters include numerous police groups and Gascón's predecessor. The group made the ad independent of Hochman’s campaign.
The narrator in the ad says the county has seen an increase in violent crime under Gascón, including homicides and armed robberies, smash-and-grabs, property crime and retail theft.
Data from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department shows that overall violent crime and property crime increased from 2021, Gascón’s first year in office, to 2023, though homicides have dropped. Through August of this year, violent and property crime are both up somewhat compared to the first eight months of 2023.
“Gascón’s soft-on-crime policies led to more crime and less safety,” the narrator says, pointing to two instances in which one person convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl and another who was arrested on charges of carrying a loaded firearm were released earlier than they could have been.
The person convicted of sexual assault was allowed to plead guilty in juvenile court because they had been a minor at the time of the offense, giving them a reduced two-year sentence. Gascón has implemented a policy as district attorney against trying juveniles as adults.
The person was later charged with murder and robbery, over an incident alleged to have happened after the sexual assault but before they were first arrested for that crime.
The person who was arrested on the firearm charge was able to avoid a felony charge and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, receiving probation and no jail time, but they were accused of murder months later.
The ad also referenced a convicted felon who was on probation for a firearms charge who killed two police officers before taking their own life.
“George Gascón failed us once. Don’t let him fail us again,” the ad states.
The race, which is considered nonpartisan, between Gascón and Hochman has become the latest battle over how to best manage public safety and criminal justice in one of the country’s largest cities.
Gascón, who previously served as district attorney of San Francisco, was first elected as the same post for Los Angeles County in 2020, defeating incumbent Jackie Lacey on a message of reforming the county’s criminal justice system.
He ran on issues like opposing the use of the death penalty and juveniles being charged as adults.
But Gascón has faced pushback over his policies as district attorney with crime rising in the city, mostly an outlier with crime falling in other major cities. Critics have attempted to call a recall election to remove him from office, but they have fallen short of the necessary signatures for their petition each time.
Gascón and Hochman advanced from the nonpartisan primary and are facing each other in the general election. Hochman’s campaign has criticized Gascón’s record and called for restoring “integrity” to the office.
Hochman had been a Republican and ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general as a Republican in 2022 before running for district attorney this year as an independent.
The ad will play on digital and connected television. Its release comes after the editorial board for The Los Angeles Times endorsed Gascón on Saturday, arguing that he is being unfairly blamed for “every failure of policing and lawmaking” that he has no purview over.