I have my favorite TV D.A.s. Lately the object of my hero prosecutor’s desire is Sonny Carisi . He is the Staten Island good boy Italian Catholic cop turned A.D.A. in the long running Law and Order: Special Victim Unit series. He is a good guy with a deep morality. Before Carisi his mentor and longtime prosecutor on the series was Rafael Barba the Harvard educated Cuban born A.D.A with a dry wit and underlying empathetic heart. I love those two prosecutors, root for them without a second thought, and could probably recite their lines in my sleep. I ask myself does life imitate art and are there hero D.A.s in real life?
Enter George Gascon. Gascon may be a little bit Sonny Carisi and Rafael Barba rolled into one. A former beat cop who like Sonny Carisi earned his J.D. degree while working as a cop, Gascon quickly rose through the ranks of the LAPD to Assistant Chief of Police. Carisi took the leap to A.D.A. after years as a plain clothes and undercover detective in sex crimes.
Gascon’s upbringing has given him the unique perspective to experience life on the receiving end of feeling targeted by the police. Perhaps similar to Rafael Barba who in the episode, “December Solstice”, it was revealed Barba grew up in the Bronx “projects” there is the backdrop of an immigrant low income Hispanic upbringing that brings with it the fear of targeting and bullying.
In 2006, Gascon was appointed Chief of Police for the Mesa Police Department. There he had frequent run-ins with the infamous Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over immigration sweeps targeting Latinos. For those readers who may have forgotten, Joe Arpaio was the anti-immigration buddy of Donald Trump’s who was pardoned by Trump for a “federal contempt of court conviction”.
In 2009, Governor Gavin Newson appointed Gascon Chief of Police for the San Francisco Police Department. In 2011, after Kamala Harris became the Attorney General for California, Governor Newson appointed Gascon as the San Francisco District Attorney. Fast forward to December 7th, 2020 , when Gascon was sworn in as the District Attorney of Los Angeles after a bitter race.
George Gascon ran on a platform of much needed criminal justice reform after a long hot summer of activism over police brutality and George Floyd’s killing.
But not one year later Gascon is facing pushback on the very policies that he was elected for.
With that pushback comes the obvious recall bandwagon that impatient voters and other naysayers love to jump on when things don’t quite go their way in that, “I have to see things change overnight in order not to kick you out of office.” Yet, the initial recall efforts did not seem to go their way and the bandwagon fell short of the needed 580,000 petition signatures before a looming Oct. 26 deadline to force a recall election.
Why is it always the liberal or Democrat who gets recalled?
Yet, they did not take a hint and the recall organizers decided to start anew. Whatever happened to “just find someone to run against him in the next election cycle” if you are dissatisfied? Isn’t that the point of democracy?
As if this wasn’t enough on the embattled D.A.s plate in mid-October the Association of Deputy District Attorneys representing Los Angeles County prosecutors sought an injunction to bar Gascon from hiring public defenders who contributed to his election campaign rather than going through the “county’s merit employment system” alleging he was passing over prosecutors eligible for promotion.
With all this negativity people tend to forget that George Gascon made good on his campaign promises and took office at a difficult time for Los Angeles one short year ago.
Maybe people need to take a step back and not be so quick to kick someone out before they even let the ink on their policies dry. This practice of hashtag impatient democracy is going to lead us into no democracy at all.
Perhaps those naysayers should follow the advice of Wayne Dyer and “Change The Way You Look At Things And The Things You Look At Change.” Maybe they can give George Gascon more than a year to prove himself the right man for the job.
Author: Sherri Margolin (Dark Matters)