L.A. COUNTY DA WANTS TO CUT USE OF CASH BAIL

New Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, seeking to revamp the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office with progressive policies, said Monday after taking office that cash bail will be ended for many offenses and sentences in thousands of cases will be re-evaluated.

Gascón, in remarks Monday after taking his oath of office, took aim at his predecessors in recent decades, calling Los Angeles “a poster child for the failed tough-on-crime approach.”

“The status quo hasn’t made us safer,” he said during a livestreamed ceremony.

A former San Francisco district attorney and assistant Los Angeles police chief, Gascón has already drawn the ire of prosecutors in his own office, as well as members of the Los Angeles Police Department. His first major meeting upon winning his race was with Black Lives Matter organizers, who were critical of outgoing District Attorney Jackie Lacey.

He beat Lacey, the first woman and Black person to run the office, in a fraught election last month as part of a wave of progressive prosecutors elected nationwide.

Gascón also said his office would re-evaluate and potentially resentence defendants who had been convicted with enhancements or California’s three-strike law, which requires a state prison term of 25 years to life. Gascón estimated such a move could affect at least 20,000 cases.

Gascón additionally vowed to stop charging juveniles as adults and to cease using sentencing enhancements.