LA’s crime problems are not as bad as those of San Francisco and Oakland, where the latest piece of irony is that officials have advised workers at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building to work remotely if possible due to “public safety concerns”.

But if LA is not doing as badly that’s likely only because it’s a much larger, sprawling city. Certainly the crime theories being applied by Democrats are the same, partly because the DA, George Gascón, already implemented them in San Francisco before handing over the job to the even more radical, Marxist son of Weather Underground terrorists, Chesa Boudin.

Unlike Boudin, Gascón is a former LA cop so you would think he knows better than to push this crap:

Gascón now views “justice” entirely through the prism of rehabilitation, without any trace of punishment—that mental illness is the basis of many crimes, and that the city should always consider that alleged factor when sentencing or even deciding to prosecute.

In late 2020, soon after getting voted into the job, he laid out the specifics in a memo to his staff:

[The] “do-not-prosecute” list—include trespassing, disturbing the peace, a minor in possession of alcohol, driving without a license, driving with a suspended license, making criminal threats, drug and paraphernalia possession, being under the influence of a controlled substance, public intoxication, loitering to commit prostitution and resisting arrest.
…
Gascón also declared the death penalty to be off-limits as a punshment and that misdemeanors and minor felonies will no longer carry a prison sentence, but enrollment in remedial courses. Juveniles won’t be prosecuted at all. “Our prosecutorial approach should be biased towards keeping youth out of the juvenile justice system, and when they must become involved, our system must employ the ‘lightest touch’ necessary in order to provide public safety,”

That last was part of his campaign for DA so voters can’t say they were fooled. But as is always the case with these theories things began to backfire on Gascón, especially with his own prosecutors and the cops. The former were not allowed to pursue a death penalty charge against a woman and her boyfriend who tortured and murdered a 10-year old. Same in the case of a cop who was executed while investigating a burglary – and execution is not too strong a word since, after wounding Sgt. Steve Owen the perp stood over him and repeatedly shot him.

And that was just specific cases. Through 2020 and 2021 the murders and other violent crimes just kept growing at rates not seen since the 1970’s, leading to this in December 2021:

“My message to anyone thinking about coming to Los Angeles, especially during the holiday season, is don’t,” Jamie McBride, the head of the LA Police Protective League, said in an interview. 

“We can’t guarantee your safety. It is really, really out of control. I said it to people before, it’s like that movie ‘Purge,’ you know, instead of 24 hours to commit your crime, these people have 365 days to commit whatever they want,” McBride said, per CBS LA. 

Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all.

I did laugh at Powerline’s reference to this:

One of the signs that Ronald Reagan noted as an indication that the Soviet Union had entered a state of advanced decrepitude socially and economically were news reports in late 1980 in both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times about three separate freight trains bound from Moscow to Odessa that simply disappeared, victims apparently of piracy.

By then a recall petition for Gascón was in full swing, and with backing from none other than the good little Democrat power players of Hollywood:

“The spin that Gascón has used effectively before, that it’s all Trump supporters, is not going to work this time,” says Irene Medavoy, who with her husband helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obamas and other prominent Democrats. A major studio executive told Los Angeles, “People can be liberal in ideology but they don’t want crime in their city.”

Perhaps not but they never got the chance as Gascón summoned the sort of legal resources he couldn’t be bothered applying to crime to go after the petition via analysis of the signatures (interestingly this is not a feature of Democrat ballot harvesting processes in elections).

Having beaten his enemies he then went after them in good old Biden fashion, getting key prosecutors suspended and demoted. One of them won a $1.5 million lawsuit against him as a result. However that’s cold comfort to residents, who are still suffering from violent crime rates well above the two decades up to 2019, plus all the thefts and other crime:

In the downtown area in 2022, there was a 25% rise in violent crime, such as rape, compared to 2019.” In just one neighborhood, Rancho Park, violent crime “rose 114% between 2019 and 2022.” The Wire adds that “LA police say mental illness, rampant drug use, and homelessness are to blame.”

And in the face of all this:

“Starting at midnight tonight, the sheriff’s department will no longer detain people for crimes such as theft, shoplifting, drug use, vandalism, battery, and a whole host of other non-serious, non-violent crimes that affect the quality of life of people here in Los Angeles County.”
…
Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig explained the real effects of zero bail policies: “I mean, we have more people being shot at, stabbed, assaulted, robbed, beaten. These are real victims — and the numbers are staggering under zero bail.”

This led even a famous rap musician, 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson), to declare on his Instagram page (read by millions of fans): “LA is finished watch how bad it gets out there. SMH.” There was also the same irony as with the Nancy Pelosi building in SF:

Sources in Gascón’s office told The Post even his own staff feel unsafe, after a female employee was attacked by a homeless man earlier this year as she was walking to her commuter train at the Downtown LA Union Station after work.