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Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has been criticized for his liberal approach to crime.
He took office with promises of sweeping criminal justice reforms, which critics say put the interests of criminals ahead of community safety.
There have been numerous instances where his soft-on-crime approach has resulted in dire consequences for victims.
Brianna Kupfer, 24, was murdered in January in a Los Angeles furniture store where she worked. Her alleged killer, Shawn Laval Smith, 31, was tracked down in Pasadena a day after Los Angeles police named him as the prime suspect in the random, unprovoked murder.
Smith – who has a criminal record that spans two coasts – was out on bail when he allegedly stabbed Kupfer to death.
A week before the murder, Smith was arrested and charged with violent crimes in at least three states.
At the time of Kupfer’s murder, he was free on $50,000 bail after allegedly firing a weapon into an occupied vehicle in Charleston, SC, in November 2019.
Jonathan Hatami, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor who has been an outspoken critic of Gascon and even charged him with retaliation last year, lashed out at his boss in the wake of Kupfer’s murder,
He argued that his progressive policies are failing the community and that he deserves to be voted out along with other ‘awakened’ DAs in cities with rising crime rates.
“So now you have a large group of people who are at large, who commit theft, who are addicted to drugs … who are not held accountable for their actions,” he said. “And now they’re hunting innocent individuals.”
The city has also faced a shocking wave of chase thefts and organized smash-and-grab attacks on retailers.
Brianna Kupfer, 24, was stabbed to death in January in a random assault while working alone at a luxury furniture store in Los Angeles. Shawn Laval Smith, 31, was out on bail at the time of the alleged attack
In another incident highlighting Gascon’s “soft” policy, transgender pedophile Hannah Tubbs was caught in February bragging about her light sentence in a juvenile detention center.
Tubbs was sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom.
After the Supreme Court became aware of troubling comments Tubbs made in prison — including that she would not be required to register as a sex offender and that “nothing” would be done to punish her — Gascon said he is reconsidering his approach.
“It’s a shame she played the system,” Gascon told the… Los Angeles Times. “If I had to do it all over again, she’d be prosecuted in adult court.”
However, his critics say his apparent remorse is just a public stunt as efforts to recall him mount.
Tubbs was 17 when she committed the attack.
Tubbs also made rude and derogatory comments about the child she was abusing.
Before she was sentenced, prosecutors had insisted that she remain in a Los Angeles County jail and tried as an adult, but Gascon refused to file a petition to take the case out of juvenile court, where it was filed because of Tubbs’ age at the time of the violation.
The recording indicated that Tubbs also made rude and disparaging comments about the child she had abused, talking jokingly about her sexual attraction to the 10-year-old.
The prosecutor has admitted that Tubbs may have received too lenient a sentence after he refused to prosecute her as an adult for the crime she committed as a male minor.
Gascon’s critics said he knew about the recordings before they were released publicly and that he didn’t take them seriously until they made him look bad.
The convict, now named Hannah Tubbs, was 17 when she committed the crime. While in juvenile detention, she bragged that she didn’t have to register as a sex offender
In another case, Gascon is trying to commute the death sentence of a career criminal who kidnapped, robbed and shot and killed a father of three in 1992.
Scott Collins, 21, kidnapped and murdered Rose in 1992. Collins (pictured in 2007) used Rose’s debit card to withdraw $200, shot him in the head and dumped his body in North Hollywood, where he was later found by a jogger
Scott Forrest Collins, now 51, kidnapped 41-year-old Fred Rose and held him at gunpoint as he left his work office in Palmdale for a lunch break three decades ago.
Collins used Rose’s debit card to withdraw $200, shot him in the head and dumped his body in North Hollywood, where he was later found by a jogger.
Rose died in a hospital a day later, and Collins used Rose’s car to participate in a gang-related shooting before crashing and being arrested and charged with murder.
Now Gascon, a fierce opponent of the death penalty who is also facing a second recall attempt from opponents who have criticized his soft-on-crime approach, is trying to reduce Collins’ sentence from the death penalty to life without the possibility of parole. .
Rose’s family claims they were blinded by Gascon’s push and accused the embattled prosecutor of “fighting for the killer.”
Gascon’s office argues that Collins’ good behavior, the lack of “serious rule violations in more than 20 years” and the fact that his crime had only “one victim” should give him a chance to avoid the death penalty.
Last month, Gascon backtracked on some of its most controversial policies, including not pursuing life sentences without the possibility of parole, and not prosecuting minors charged with serious crimes as adults.
Gascon’s sudden change of heart comes when he faces a second recall staged by his critics, who claim his vigilant policies are responsible for the rising crime rate in Los Angeles.
Fred Rose, 41, was robbed and murdered in 1992. Now his killer can get his death sentence commuted. Above Rose with his wife and children, Julian, Amy and Heather