Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is in trouble facing a recall election. He doesn’t have the support of his own prosecutors, and now, he is reportedly retaliating against them for their disloyalty.
According to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, Gascon is looking to disband the Major Crimes Division. This is being done as retaliation against the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles. Prosecutors represented by the union overwhelmingly voted to back his recall — 98% in favor!
Michele Hanisee, the union president, is part of the MCD, as are John Lewin and John McKinney, two especially vocal critics of Gascon.
The MCD handles complicated cases. This includes the murder trials of O.J. Simpson, Robert Durst, and Lonnie Franklin Jr., the serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper. More than half of the unit’s cases are homicides.
Gascon is allegedly going to ax the unit at a time when LA is still dealing with homicides that are well above pre-pandemic levels.
Gascon previously downsized the city’s “Hardcore Gangs” unit at a time when homicides and gang violence were surging. He has had to back away from some of his previous policies as the recall looms. For example, Gascon will finally allow prosecutors to seek life sentences without the possibility of parole for some defendants and will now allow prosecutors to try some violent juvenile offenders as adults. But those small steps do little to change the fact that Gascon is chiefly concerned with how he can make criminals’ lives easier. He is also extremely dismissive of victims of crime.
If Gascon is truly planning to disband the MCD, he is once again proving how unfit he is to serve as a district attorney. If he is doing this to get back at his political opponents. He is showing that he is, in fact, unfit to serve in any elected office.
Gascon has already put his warped ideology of helping career criminals above the residents who pay his salary. Now, he would be putting his own political ambitions above those residents as well, in retaliation for a recall that he brought on himself by failing to serve his constituents.
