The Los Angeles’s district attorney, George Gascon, has been criticized for his liberal approach to crime.
He came to office with promises of sweeping criminal justice reforms that critics say put the interests of criminals before the safety of the community.
There have been numerous instances where his ‘soft-on-crime’ approach has led to terrible consequences for victims.
Brianna Kupfer, 24, was murdered in January at a Los Angeles furniture store where she was working. Her alleged killer, Shawn Laval Smith, 31, was tracked down in Pasadena, a day after the Los Angeles Police Department named him as the top suspect in the random, unprovoked slaying.
Smith — who has a rap sheet spanning two coasts — was out on bail when he allegedly stabbed Kupfer to death.
One week before the killing, Smith was arrested and charged with violent crimes in at least three states.
At the time of Kupfer’s murder, he was free on a $50,000 bond after allegedly firing a weapon toward an occupied vehicle in Charleston, S.C., in November 2019.
Jonathan Hatami, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor who has been an outspoken critic of Gascon and even sued him for retaliation last year, hit out at his boss in the wake of Kupfer’s killing,
He argued that his progressive policies are failing the community and that he deserves to be voted out, along with other ‘woke’ DAs in cities with rising crime rates.
‘So now you have a large group of people who are out of custody, who are committing thefts, who are addicted to drugs… who are not being held accountable for their actions,’ he said. ‘And now they’re preying on innocent individuals.’
The city has also suffered a shocking wave of follow-home robberies and organized smash-and-grab attacks on retailers.
Brianna Kupfer, 24, was stabbed to death in a random attack while she was working alone in a luxury furniture store in Los Angeles in January. Shawn Laval Smith, 31, was out on bail at the time of the alleged attack
In another incident highlighting Gascon’s ‘soft’ policies, transgender pedophile Hannah Tubbs in February was caught bragging about her light sentence in a juvenile facility.
Tubbs was sentenced to two years in jail for molesting a 10-year-old girl inside a restaurant bathroom.
After the top prosecutor became aware of troubling comments Tubbs made in jail — including that she wouldn’t have to register as a sex offender and ‘nothing’ would be done to punish her — Gascon said he’s rethinking his approach.
‘It’s unfortunate that she gamed the system,’ Gascon told the Los Angeles Times. ‘If I had to do it all over again, she would be prosecuted in adult court.’
His critics, however, say his apparent remorse is just a public stunt as recall efforts against him grow.
Tubbs was 17 when she committed the assault.
Tubbs also made crude and disparaging comments about the child she abused.
Before she was sentenced, prosecutors had pushed for her to stay in a Los Angeles County jail and be tried as an adult, but Gascon declined to file a motion to move the case out of juvenile court, where it was filed because of Tubbs’ age at the time of offense.
The recording indicated that Tubbs also made crude and disparaging comments about the child she had abused, jokingly talking about her sexual attraction for the 10-year-old.
The DA has admitted that Tubbs may have been given too lenient a sentence after he refused to prosecute her as an adult for the crime she committed as a male juvenile.
Gascon’s critics said he knew about the recordings well before they were publicly released and he didn’t take them seriously until they started making him look bad.
The convict, who now goes by the name Hannah Tubbs, was 17 when she committed the crime. While serving time in juvenile detention facility, she bragged about not having to register as a sex offender
In another instance, Gascon is seeking to commute the death penalty sentence of a career criminal who kidnapped, robbed and shot ‘execution-style’ a father-of-three in 1992.
Scott Collins, 21, kidnapped and killed 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 a day later at a hospital, and Collins went on to use 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 seeking to reduce Collins’ sentence from the death penalty to life without the possibility of parole.
Rose’s family claims they were blind-sided by Gascon’s push and accused the embattled prosecutor of ‘fighting for the murderer.’
Gascon’s office argues that Collins’ good behavior, lack of ‘serious rule violations in more than 20 years’, and the fact that his crime only had ‘one victim,’ should grant him the opportunity to avoid the death penalty.
Last month, Gascon backtracked on some of his most controversial policies, including not pursuing sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and not prosecuting juveniles accused of serious offenses as adults.
Gascon’s sudden change of heart comes as he faces a second recall effort organized by his critics, who contend that his woke policies are to blame for Los Angeles’ rising crime rates.
Fred Rose, 41, was robbed and killed in 1992. Now his killer might have his death penalty sentence commuted. Above, Rose with his wife and children, Julian, Amy and Heather