By Sally Kim and Linhchi Nguyen
LOS ANGELES – Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and its ally organizations released a statement late this past week supporting LA District Attorney George Gascón in response to prosecutors seeking to block his justice reform policies—a similar support statement by other progressive groups was released earlier.
The statement announces: “We support transformative change in the LA District Attorney’s Office and the commitments made by George Gascón to enact reforms during his first 100 days.”
The Los Angeles District Attorney was sworn into office on Dec. 7, pledging sweeping reforms that came as a mandate from the overwhelming majority of Angelenos who elected him. His win was the result of their plea for transformative change which incumbent District Attorney Jackie Lacey refused to deliver.
These changes include “an end of mass incarceration, the prison-industrial complex, and a system that unjustly criminalizes, targets, and harshly penalizes Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color.”
Gascón ran and won on a platform of progressive reforms which centered around the presumption of innocence and restorative approaches to the criminal legal system. One of the issues he plans to address is 
police violence, and he seeks to hold law enforcement accountable while increasing transparency.
As former San Francisco District Attorney, Gascón has a history of successfully prosecuting more than 30 police officers for criminal conduct, including excessive force. He also created the state’s first independent investigations bureau to enhance transparency and eliminate the conflict of interest that occurs when police investigate themselves in the aftermath of a critical incident.
The reforms he would like to implement for LA County include the adoption of a countywide deadly force standard that allows lethal force to be used only when necessary, and a requirement for law enforcement to publish public reports on their use of force.
Chief among the reforms are an end to sentencing enhancements and punitive sentencing, like three strikes—that critics charge has been used to harm Black defendants and communities disproportionately.
However, his efforts have been met with pushback by the LA Prosecutors Union and other law enforcement associations. Despite the California Supreme Court granting the district attorney the authority to run the LA County criminal legal system, current attempts have been made by these law enforcement associations to override that authority.
According to the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’ statement, these attempts “are blatantly self-interested in seeking to uphold a racist system for the sake of job security and institutional preservation. Police and Deputy District Attorney Associations are working to undermine the will of the people and democracy in order to preserve a fundamentally unjust system that overcriminalizes Black people and other marginalized groups.”
Furthermore, there is strong support for the new policy directives that DA Gascón has committed to, as recently demonstrated by a letter from the National Lawyers Guild. Among those who signed this letter in support are civil rights attorneys, public defenders, social justice organizers, religious leaders, movement partners, crime survivors, and directly impacted communities.
The letter discusses DA Gascón’s commitment to “reverse the tides of mass incarceration and… shift from the decades long tough on crime approach.”
On DA Gascón’s first day in office, the letter states that he enacted policies and reforms such as “the elimination of sentencing enhancements, youth no longer sent to adult criminal court, cash bail drastically scaled back, non-prosecution of low-level misdemeanors, expanded opportunities for parole and resentencing, and the reopening of some cases of police killings.”
These reforms will enhance public safety and align with the national push to no longer accept the social issues produced by inequality, racism, and poverty in the justice system, supporters insist.
This pushback for a progressive approach to crime and safety that DA Gascón brings is very strongly supported by Black Lives Matter and their ally organizations as they hope to take the first step in unseating Los Angeles as the capital of mass incarceration in California.
Sally Kim is a senior at UCLA, majoring in Sociology. She is from the East Bay Area.
Linhchi Nguyen is a fourth year at UC Davis, double majoring in Political Science and English. She currently lives in Sacramento, California.
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