Letter: 'George Gascón is Unfit for the Office of Los Angeles District Attorney'

LOS ANGELES, February 27, 2020 (Newswire.com) - ​​​​​​The following is an open letter from Liberals Against Gascón, a social media page founded by Chris Bucchere.

Democrat George Gascón is running for District Attorney in Los Angeles and claims to be a progressive criminal justice reformer. But is he? Not according to Liberals Against Gascón, whose founding member wrote the book Bikelash: How San Francisco created America’s first bicycle felon. Gascón, when he was San Francisco’s D.A., used Bucchere’s bicycle accident to send a message to the cycling community, in the process refusing to acknowledge what the defendant believed was exculpatory evidence. In choosing L.A.’s next D.A., Bucchere asks voters to look past Gascón’s messaging and instead pay attention to his record.

1. Gascón was a Republican before moving to San Francisco.
2. He has never tried a case in a courtroom.
3. Gascón failed to get endorsements from anyone who worked closely with him in San Francisco. A prosecutor he supervised, Nancy Tung — as well as Interim D.A. Suzy Loftus, the D.A.’s union of Los Angeles, and the SF Police Union — all wrote scathing reviews of his performance. San Francisco Mayor London Breed and City Attorney Dennis Herrera endorsed the incumbent over Gascón.
4. In a sworn video affidavit, the San Francisco Police Union president accused Gascón of using offensive racial slurs directed at Blacks and Mexicans. 
5. ​Gascón said that members of San Francisco’s Afghanistan and Yemen communities “could park a van in front of the Hall of Justice and blow it up.”
6. Gascón never once brought charges against any SFPD officers in the high-profile shooting deaths of five people of color in San Francisco: Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, Amilcar Perez Lopez, Luis Gongora, and Jessica Williams. The SFPD shot and killed 24 civilians while Gascón was DA—13 of them Black or Latino—and he did not file a single charge against any of the officers involved.

To send a message to the city’s cycling community, Gascón pursued unprecedented felony vehicular manslaughter charges for Bucchere’s bicycle accident. “I finally understood Gascón’s view of politics over justice,” said Bucchere, “when he called a press conference after my sentencing and said, ‘This was not so much about Mr. Bucchere. This was about preventing future collisions and death.’”

L.A. needs a principled D.A. who will prosecute cases according to the law, not to fulfill a political agenda and advance their career.

Source: Liberals Against Gascon