Ten candidates running to become the next Los Angeles County District Attorney, including incumbent George Gascón, came together last Thursday to square off at the Democratic debate moderated by Fox LA anchor Elex Michaelson and Los Angeles politics writer Jon Regardie, and hosted by Los Angeles Magazine.

The list of challengers included former federal prosecutors Jeff Chemerinsky and Nathan Hochman, prosecutors Jonathan Hatami, Maria Ramirez, Eric Siddall, and John McKinney, retired judge David Milton, and judges Debra Archuleta and Craig Mitchell.

Homelessness and the perception of rising crime were topics of debate on the stage. Every challenger agreed that the city feels less safe than it did three years ago, before Gascón’s election, and that his policies are too soft on crime, leading to the rise of smash-and-grab retail robberies that have plagued the city, as well as car thefts, burglaries, and personal theft.

Another topic of debate was Prop 47 — a statewide ballot measure co-authored by Gascón and passed by California voters nearly a decade ago, which reduced simple possession of drugs for personal use from a felony to a misdemeanor and increased the felony theft threshold from $400 to $950 to keep pace with inflation. The goal was to reduce the prison population.

When moderators asked if Prop 47 has made the city less safe, Gascón responded, “The reality is when Prop 47 passed in 2014, crime continued to go down at record levels and there have been multiple studies concerning Prop 47,” he said. “And there hasn’t been a single study that found causation between the threshold between a misdemeanor and a felony and Prop 47 and any type of crime.”

Prosecutor Jonathan Hatami said on day one of Gascón being in office, there were 12 misdemeanors they weren’t allowed to prosecute, such as resisting arrest, disturbing the peace, public drunkenness, solicitation for prostitution, and criminal threats.

“So when he stands up here and says in front of all of you that wasn’t true, it’s totally true. I can hand everybody his directive that he issued,” said Hatami. “As far as Prop 47 goes, it didn’t make our neighborhoods safer, it didn’t make our schools safer, and I didn’t vote for it, and it does need to be amended,” said Hatami.

Judge Craig Mitchell declared Prop 47 a disaster. “I would challenge anyone to research multiple thefts. What are these people being sentenced to? Time served, dismissed,” he said. “Before coming in here tonight, I walked down to the local CVS, half of that store, everything was behind locked glass cases. That was not the L.A. that existed three years ago.”

Homelessness and mental health was another issue brought up by moderators.  According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the City of Los Angeles currently has around 46,000 homeless people and L.A. County has around 75,518.

District Attorney Gascón said, “The reality is that we have a very limited role unless a houseless person committed some other crime, and when they do if they get arrested, we prosecute him.”

Chemerinsky agreed the District Attorney’s office can’t prosecute people for being homeless, but he did have a few ideas of what the office could do instead. “I absolutely believe that it’s part of the role of the district attorney, as the leader of our criminal justice system for the county, to be a real leader in promoting effective re-entry and rehabilitation programs,” said Chemerinsky. “Second, we should be promoting better policing and co-response teams around mental health issues, and third, we need more specialized courts, specifically mental health courts to address the mental health defendants that come before the system.”

Judge Archuleta agreed with Chemerinsky. “I know it’s the progressive point of view to let these people live under tarps and tents when it’s 38 degrees and raining like it’s going to be this weekend,” said Archuleta. “This is the attitude of the District Attorney – this is progressive; this is compassionate. No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s inhumane. These people are drug addicted, they need to be forced into treatment with consequences for failing to participate.”

McKinney argued that as the most consequential elected official in the county of Los Angeles, the District Attorney’s office has a role in getting people help. “We have a role to play because so many homeless people do come within the jurisdiction of the district attorney’s office either as offenders or as victims,” McKinney said. “And when they come within our jurisdiction, we have the ability to use diversion and other laws to guide them inside, to guide them into places where they can get the services that they need.”

McKinney is referencing a model of homeless courts created by Redondo Beach City Attorney Mike Webb. The homeless courts coordinate all the social services that homeless people receive.

“They meet outside, there’s a prosecutor, there’s a defense lawyer, there’s the judge, and then there’s all the social service providers, and the purpose is to graduate homeless from being on how to actually give them permanent housing,” said Siddall. “It starts off very simply with IDs, making sure that they get mental health services, housing services, eventually supportive housing, and then permanent housing and that’s how they graduate and that’s how we can actually have a role throughout Los Angeles County.”

The last day to vote in the Primary Election will be March 5. If a candidate earns more than 50 percent of the vote at that time, they will become Los Angeles County’s new district attorney and there will be no runoff. But it will be tough to achieve with so many candidates in the race.

Photo obtained via screengrab