{"id":106848,"date":"2022-02-22T14:59:33","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T22:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/?p=106848"},"modified":"2022-02-22T15:21:05","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T23:21:05","slug":"prosecutors-association-overwhelmingly-backs-gascon-recall-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/2022\/02\/22\/prosecutors-association-overwhelmingly-backs-gascon-recall-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors’ association overwhelmingly backs Gasc\u00f3n recall effort"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
George Gasc\u00f3n [Image via prosecution.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Members of the association representing Los Angeles County prosecutors voted overwhelmingly in support of an effort to recall their boss, District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n<\/strong>, the organization announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Association of Deputy District Attorneys<\/strong>, the collective bargaining group for more than 800 deputy district attorneys in the county, had previously invited Gasc\u00f3n to speak to the organization as it considered whether to back the recall, but he declined.<\/p>\n

The ADDA contends that Gasc\u00f3n has “refused” to speak with his prosecutors since taking office to explain policies that have sparked the recall drive.\u00a0Roughly 83.3% of ADDA members took part in the vote, with 97.9% voting in support of the recall.<\/p>\n

“This vote is by those who are intimately familiar with how Mr. Gasc\u00f3n’s policies actually play out on a day-to-day basis,” ADDA President Michele Hanisee said in a statement announcing the vote. “We believe the vote of our members will resonate with the voters of Los Angeles as they decide whether to recall Gasc\u00f3n from office and restore public safety as the priority of the District Attorney’s Office.”<\/p>\n

A new effort to oust Gasc\u00f3n from office began in December, just months after a similar recall campaign fell short. Recall organizers must collect 566,857 signatures from registered voters in Los Angeles County by July 6 to force a recall vote.<\/p>\n

The city councils of more than 30 cities in the county, including Lancaster, have issued “no confidence” votes involving Gasc\u00f3n.<\/p>\n

Last September, organizers of the prior recall attempt said the effort was hampered by COVID-19 pandemic health mandates, along with a “premature start” and vowed to re-launch their bid to recall the county’s top prosecutor, who was sworn into office in December 2020.\u00a0Despite the failure of the original effort, organizers said they remained committed to recalling Gasc\u00f3n, who has come under fire from critics for a progressive agenda that has included directives against seeking the death penalty and dropping sentence-enhancing allegations in some criminal cases.<\/p>\n

Gasc\u00f3n has repeatedly defended his policies, saying his stances were well-known during his campaign and his election signified public support of his agenda.<\/p>\n

The Association of Deputy District Attorneys filed a lawsuit in December 2020 challenging Gasc\u00f3n’s directives to eliminate three-strikes allegations and some sentencing enhancements, alleging the moves are “unlawful.”\u00a0A judge ruled mostly in favor of the association last February, but subsequently put the case on hold while Gasc\u00f3n appeals. A trial date is scheduled to be set for the case in April.<\/p>\n

Late Friday, Gasc\u00f3n issued a memo<\/a> walking back some of his most- debated policies — bans on special-circumstance allegations that could result in life-without-parole prison terms and on transferring juvenile-defendant cases to adult court.<\/p>\n

In a news conference done via Zoom on Tuesday, Gasc\u00f3n’s special adviser, Alex Bastian<\/strong>, declined to forward a reporter’s question to the district attorney for his response to the association’s vote.<\/p>\n

But Gasc\u00f3n acknowledged that the case of a 26-year-old transgender woman, Hannah Tubbs — <\/strong>who was prosecuted under his office policy as a juvenile for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a Palmdale Denny’s restaurant bathroom in 2014 — would be handled in adult court if he had to do the case all over again.<\/p>\n

Tubbs pleaded guilty last month to the child sex assault, which took place when Tubbs was 17 years old and identifying as a male named James Tubbs<\/strong>. The convicted assailant is now identifying as female, Hannah Tubbs.<\/p>\n

Gasc\u00f3n said he became aware through a reporter last Thursday of a jailhouse call with Tubbs, which Gasc\u00f3n said was “extremely disturbing to me because it showed a level of callousness and a level of disrespect for humanity from an individual that I had previously felt that given her conditions and when the crime had originally occurred she needed to be prosecuted as a juvenile.”<\/p>\n

“I, as a result of reviewing the contents of that particular jail call, I came to the conclusion that this person was gaming the system,” Gasc\u00f3n said. “I had not had that information available. Neither did my executive team until we found out, you know, through a particular news outlet<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The district attorney said last week’s changes in policies will give the office “the vehicle for exceptional cases and exceptional conduct.”<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the association representing Los Angeles County prosecutors voted overwhelmingly in support of an effort to recall their boss, District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n, the organization announced Tuesday. The Association of Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining group for more than 800 deputy district attorneys in the county, had previously invited Gasc\u00f3n to speak to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":106849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1499,1496,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106852,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106848\/revisions\/106852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theavtimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}