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According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 715,000 signatures have been added to a petition to recall Los Angeles’ widely criticized District Attorney George Gascón - well more than the 566,857 signatures needed to put him up for an official recall vote.
As the Convention of States Project previously reported, Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s DA, was recalled just last month by a majority of voters. “The recall came just over two years into his term amid wide disapproval over the city’s increase in many problems, such as murder rates, violent crimes, shoplifting and burglaries.”
Chesa had been financially backed by billionaire leftist George Soros and his defeat was hailed as a referendum on why progressive billionaires should not be allowed to dominate state elections.
Soros reportedly poured $17 million on DA races between 2015 and 2019, supporting candidates who would go soft on crime including Chesa Boudin and George Gascón. Like Boudin, Gascón has been slammed for his progressive stance on criminal justice.
The organization behind the effort to recall L.A.’s current DA noted that “[a]s soon as he was sworn into office, District Attorney George Gascon began issuing directives to his prosecutors, instructing them to go soft on crime, coddle criminals, and trample upon the dignity and rights of crime victims” and that he “REFUSES to prosecute many crimes altogether, including trespassing, theft, making criminal threats, drug possession, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest and more.”
Los Angeles - like many far-left cities especially in California - has experienced a glaring increase in crime. As of March of this year, “robberies involving firearms were up 57% from 2020” and vehicle thefts were up 44%. Homicides in 2021 hit a more than ten-year high.
Gascón defenders point out that the DA can not be held solely responsible for the uptick in violence, but at a time when crime is out of hand, going soft on criminals is objectively a dangerous idea.
The good news is that the residents of L.A., as evidenced by the more than 700,000 petitions to recall Gascón, are beginning to see the correlation between how they vote and the terrible policies being implemented in their city. They are sick and tired of living in fear in their own homes and are willing to do something about it.
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