So-called progressive prosecutors and policies under fire

Discussion in 'Politics' started by ipatent, Feb 19, 2022.

  1. Mercor

    Mercor

  2. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    California is about to experience a political earthquake. Here's why
    https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/california-primary-election-da-race/index.html

    An earthquake is building in Tuesday's California elections that could rattle the political landscape from coast to coast.

    In Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the nation's most liberal large cities, voters are poised to send stinging messages of discontent over mounting public disorder, as measured in both upticks in certain kinds of crime and pervasive homelessness.


    That dissatisfaction could translate into the recall of San Francisco's left-leaning district attorney, Chesa Boudin, likely by a resounding margin, and a strong showing in the Los Angeles mayoral primary by Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer and former Republican who has emerged as the leading alternative in the race to Democratic US Rep. Karen Bass, once considered the front-runner.

    Linking both these contests -- as well as several Los Angeles City Council races and an ongoing effort to recall George Gascon, Los Angeles County's left-leaning district attorney -- is a widespread sense among voters in both cities that local government is failing at its most basic responsibility: to ensure public safety and order. It's a sentiment similar to the anxiety over urban disarray that inspired the "broken windows" policing theory during the 1980s, and contributed to the election of Republican Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Richard Riordan in New York and Los Angeles, respectively, amid the cascading violence of the crack epidemic in the early 1990s.

    Tuesday's California results will likely send a stark message to the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House. The outcome will again underscore how much danger a party in power can face when voters feel that certainty has been stripped from their lives -- a dynamic that extends beyond crime and homelessness to inflation, soaring gasoline prices and continued disruption from the unending Covid pandemic.

    "In the broadest perspective, the voters and residents are feeling that the governing regime, the liberal Democratic regime that has dominated LA for the last 30 years, and California and San Francisco, is not meeting the moment," says Fernando Guerra, a political scientist who directs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

    Zev Yaroslavsky, who served on the LA City Council and then the LA County Board of Supervisors for almost 40 years starting in 1975, says the only time he can remember Los Angeles voters as discontented as they are today was in the late 1970s, an era of high inflation and soaring property tax bills that produced California's Proposition 13 and the tax revolt that helped elect Ronald Reagan president in 1980.

    "What people used to take for granted they can no longer take for granted -- on your ability to pay your rent, your ability to walk the streets safely, on your ability not to be accosted by a homeless person," says Yaroslavsky, now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California Los Angeles. "It's a lack of confidence in government's ability to respond."

    Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who took office in 2013, feels those gusts too. "I've never seen a more angrier electorate than this particular election," she told me. "I think all of this is just at a boiling point."

    A flipped agenda
    The dominant role of crime and homelessness in the Los Angeles and San Francisco elections represents an inversion of the political agenda since the summer of 2020. Like dozens of other cities, both places saw protesters for police reform fill the streets following George Floyd's murder. In Los Angeles, that energy helped propel Gascon to a narrow victory over the law enforcement-backed District Attorney Jackie Lacey in November 2020 and also powered voter approval of a ballot initiative to combat racial inequities by shifting county funds toward social services and alternatives to incarceration.

    Boudin, the San Francisco district attorney, who was narrowly elected in 2019, and Gascon have pursued largely parallel agendas centered on reducing incarceration through measures such as a virtual prohibition on trying juveniles as adults, the rejection of "enhancements" (for such factors as gang involvement or use of a gun) that extend sentence lengths and a policy of not prosecuting "quality of life" misdemeanors associated with homelessness, such as trespassing and public urination.

    That agenda quickly faced fierce resistance from other elements in the criminal justice system committed to traditional approaches, including the unions representing police in both cities. Law enforcement interests are backing the recalls against Gascon and Boudin, and in LA the police union is spending heavily against Bass, a leader in the House of Representatives' passage last year of sweeping federal police reform legislation. The recall efforts against Boudin and Gascon, as well as Caruso's mayoral bid in Los Angeles, have also drawn support from big Republican donors, who constitute a distinct minority in both cities.

    The role of both law enforcement insiders and conservative donors and activists has frustrated advocates for police reform, who see the backlash across these many fronts as an attempt to restore hardline approaches before new alternatives are given a chance to demonstrate whether they can succeed.

    (Much more at above url)
     
    #42     Jun 7, 2022
  3. VEGASDESERT

    VEGASDESERT

    Who thought it was a good idea to elect the son of a cop killing gang mom and
    bomb dropping dad? lol.

    the collective stupidity of the american people is starting to scare me.

    is japan taking in us citizens? haha
     
    #43     Jun 7, 2022
    smallfil likes this.
  4. smallfil

    smallfil

    The communists in the educational system of the US have done a hell of a job indoctrinating future generations of Americans to hate the US and their parents. In any other civilized, country which enforces its laws, it will never allow those seeking to destroy it from within to actually, succeed. They would have rounded up the traitors, charged them all in court and given them long prison sentences or even the death penalty. In the US, traitors continue to enjoy blanket immunity without even being punished for their crimes. Maybe, in 50 years when our generations has died of and most of the swamp creatures have died off, there would be some hope as the patriots who love and care what happens to the US will find and root out the traitors still in their ranks and clean and drain the swamp. There used to be a time where being a communist barred you from entry into the US. What happened? Communists, Socialists and Islamists are now members of the US Congress and continue to subvert, repeal and change US laws not to their liking.
     
    #44     Jun 7, 2022
    ids and VEGASDESERT like this.
  5. ipatent

    ipatent

    DA Alvin Bragg dodges NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ ‘laughingstock’ criticism

    Embattled Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg refused Tuesday to address Mayor Eric Adams’ complaint that the city’s criminal justice system has been turned into a “laughingstock” by prosecutors, judges and legislators whose soft-on-crime policies put shooting suspects right back on the streets.

    During a news conference about a gun-trafficking probe, Bragg dodged questions from The Post about Adams’ remarks and a new poll that found more than seven in 10 New Yorkers fear becoming victims of violent crime.

    “As the commissioner said, we are law enforcement partners rowing in the same direction, focusing on the types of cases that we are here today to talk about and that’s what we’re here today to talk about,” he said at NYPD headquarters in Manhattan.
     
    #45     Jun 7, 2022
  6. #46     Jun 8, 2022
    traderob likes this.
  7. traderob

    traderob

    Finally some good news for the poor, benighted San Franciscans.
     
    #47     Jun 8, 2022
  8. Snarkhund

    Snarkhund

    The next DA will be picked by Mayor Breed, not a special election. And she is saying that Boudin was recalled due to mismanagement, not his policies.

    She will pick a literal clone. The policies that encouraged raging crime will probably continue.
     
    #48     Jun 8, 2022
  9. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    In an environment in one of America's most liberal cities where over 60% of the voters are demanding the current soft-on-crime DA be re-called --- I think the mayor will be cautious in making sure that the next DA pick is not a duplicate of the current one. This would lead to other progressives being removed from local office either by upcoming elections or re-call.
     
    #49     Jun 8, 2022

  10. A majority of likely city voters disapprove of the job Mayor London Breed is doing, according to a poll commissioned by The San Francisco Examiner. The results indicate Breed could be vulnerable to a challenge should she choose to run for reelection 2023.

    Of those surveyed, 52% disapprove of Breed, 42% approve and the rest were not sure.


    https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/bre...cle_423b0890-e368-11ec-a797-43b8f2805f69.html
     
    #50     Jun 8, 2022
    traderob likes this.