Victims’ rights advocates on Saturday kicked off their recall campaign against newly elected Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who has vowed sweeping criminal justice reforms to the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office.
The recall campaign group held a “victims vigil” outside the Hall of Justice downtown and planned to gather the minimum of 20 signatures required to file a notice of intent to formally begin the recall process next month. About 100 people attended the event, organizers said.
The day he took office, Gascón announced an array of sweeping changes that included ending the use of sentencing enhancements, severely restricting when prosecutors can seek to hold defendants in lieu of bail, ending use of the death penalty in L.A. County and stopping the practice of trying juveniles as adults.
He vowed to make many of those reforms during a contentious election campaign against incumbent Jackie Lacey — one in which law enforcement and prosecutors unions across California spent millions in a failed bid to defeat him. …