The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Who should be the next DA of L.A.?
Tough compassion of Jonathan Hatami deserves support Lifetime law-enforcer George Gascón deserves reelection
While there are a number of well-qualified candidates running for Los Angeles County district attorney, the candidate who has most impressed me is Jonathan Hatami.
Hatami has been a prosecutor in the D.A.’S office for more than 17 years and has handled thousands of cases, specializing in child abuse cases. As a child, he was himself abused by his father. His parents divorced, he was raised by a single mom, and he became what he described as a “troubled teen.” After graduating high school he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving for seven years before going on to attend junior college at College of the Canyons, transferring to CSUN and then earning a scholarship to law school at the University of Nebraska.
That personal background has made Hatami an interesting mix of empathy and toughness.
These qualities were on display when protesters disrupted the Westside Bar Association’s D.A. candidates debate, held in Beverly Hills on Feb. 8.
The incident began with a question from the audience. Emma Rivas, whose son was shot dead four years ago by a gang member who was on parole, confronted incumbent District Attorney George Gascón over his decision to remove sentencing enhancements that would have kept her son’s killer in prison longer. The case had first been filed with gang and gun enhancements when Jackie Lacey was district attorney.
Gascón gave a meandering answer about what he called “sustainable safety.” When moderator Elex Michaelson asked him, “Why take away the discretion?” Gascón asserted, “The discretion hasn’t been taken away.”
Hatami asked for the microphone. “So, for all of you who don’t know, that’s Emma,” he said, indicating the questioner in the audience. “And what George Gascón just said was a straight-out lie. You may agree or disagree with his policies, and I respect that. But you don’t stand up here and straight-up lie to everybody here in the audience. That is a lack of integrity. And so, when George Gascón took office, Eric [Siddall, prosecutor and candidate] knows this, he ordered all of us to remove allegations and enhancements on every single case. There was no discretion .... ”
A protester interrupted him to scream that enhancements are “racist.”
“No,” Hatami said. “It wasn’t racist. Ask Emma. I’m a person of color, Emma’s a person of color...”
The shouting from the audience resumed. Order was eventually restored and Michaelson tried to move the debate along.
“I’m not done,” Hatami said. “Emma is a person of color, her son was a person of color, and he was murdered. It’s not racist when you’re fighting for justice for individuals.”
More shouting and screaming. “I’m not done,” Hatami repeated. “An
You know those anti-george Gascón mailers that show the Los Angeles district attorney sporting cool, movie-star sunglasses — perhaps overly cool for the person you want to be your DA?
Yeah, those shades aren’t any reason to vote against Gascón in his bid for reelection.
You know the fact that so many of his prosecutors are obviously willing to bad-mouth their boss, forever saying that they should be the DA instead, that they and only they know how to put the bad guys in the slammer?
Well, just imagine being the nominal chief executive of an office in which the nearly 1,000 deputy district attorneys who nominally work for you are so
entirely unioned up, so fully protected as “civil servants,” that they can essentially say anything they want about you and run zero risk of being fired?
George Gascón, who I’m voting for March 5 for a second term as L.A. DA, is being painted by the wily opponents and the nutball extremists as somehow soft on crime. The nice thing about being able to spread the truth is that his brilliant career has been precisely the opposite: serving his country and then putting crooks behind bars.
That career began as a soldier in the United States Army, which he joined at 18 after growing up here in working-class Bell, where he was promoted to sergeant. He came home from the service to graduate from Cal State Long Beach, and then immediately became a Los Angeles police officer, working his way up to become deputy chief of the LAPD. New chief William Bratton appointed him as his assistant chief, overseeing all of the LAPD’S daily operations. That sound soft on crime to you? Think you get promoted up its ranks by being pro-lawbreaker? He became chief of police in Mesa, Arizona. He was a Republican before being appointed chief of police in San Francisco and then district attorney there, changing his registration after moving because — well, you would, too, to survive in San Francisco.
And, yes, after all these years in law enforcement, Gascón became a proponent of justice system reform. He’d seen plenty of heads get knocked by fellow cops and plenty of tough talk from fellow prosecutors, and it wasn’t doing any good. It was doing bad, in fact.
So he came back to L.A. and properly won the district attorney’s race here four years ago at a time when most of us were coming to realize that putting 16-year-olds in the Big House alongside monsters wasn’t doing us or the 16-year-olds any good.
Now, as the incumbent, he’s being