LA County DA Gascón cuts ties with DA group, complains board is White, as association rips ‘publicity stunt’

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Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has cut ties with the California District Attorneys Association, saying the group’s all-White board indicates the group has failed to keep pace with changing times.

But a leader of the association is accusing Gascón of a "publicity stunt" and said he hasn't been a member of the group for several years.

"The absence of a single person of color on CDAA’s 17-member board is blinding," Gascón wrote Tuesday, in a letter to the group’s president.

"This is the leadership that sets the direction for an organization of elected prosecutors, all of whom disproportionately prosecute communities of color at a time when the nation is facing a reckoning over systemic racisim, and in a state with a plurality of minorities no less," Gascón continued.

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He later accused the DAs group of having "lost touch with the public."

In a statement to Fox News, Vern Pierson, the El Dorado County District Attorney and President of CDAA, fired back.

"Mr. Gascón cannot resign because he has not been a member of CDAA since October 2019 when he quit his job as DA of San Francisco," Pierson said.

He added: "On the ethnicity issue, his remarks are disingenuous, as he ran against the first sitting Los Angeles District Attorney who was both a woman and an African American. Incidentally, she was a CDAA board officer and in line to become president.  Shootings and other violent crimes are skyrocketing in LA. This appears to be a publicity stunt to divert attention from his favoring criminals at the expense of victims and growing calls for his recall."

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Earlier in the letter, Gascón accused the group of accommodating only "those willing to toe the ‘tough on crime’ line."

"For the rest of us," he adds, "it is a place that fails to support us, our communities, or the pursuit of justice."

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon takes the oath of office in downtown Los Angeles on Dec. 7, 2020. (Associated Press)

In January, Gascón became the target of a lawsuit filed by his own deputy DAs in Los Angeles County, who alleged that Gascón’s order for them to forgo sentencing enhancements was a violation of state law, The Appeal reported.

The Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles County (ADDA) has a history of opposing reform efforts, the report said.

In his letter, Gascón also denounced the state DAs group for supporting the county deputy DA group’s lawsuit against him, calling the decision "disappointing," though "it was not a surprise given the politics of the organization."

On Jan. 26, the state DA group announced it had filed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit that the county deputy DAs filed against Gascón.

"No constitutional provision and no statute vests any district attorney with veto power over the law," CDAA Chief Executive Officer Greg Totten said in the state group’s statement.

Last week a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles temporarily blocked Gascón’s efforts to do away with some sentencing enhancements, including prosecutors’ option for seeking longer sentences for offenders under the state’s Three Strikes law.

Gascón has argued that sentencing enhancements help increase recidivism.

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Gascón, 66, a native of Cuba, became DA of Los Angeles County in December 2020 after defeating incumbent DA Jackie Lacey. He previously served as district attorney for San Francisco, being appointed to that position in 2011 by then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, after San Francisco’s previous DA, Kamala Harris, became California’s attorney general.

With his withdrawal from the state DA group, Gascón joins only one other California district attorney in not participating as a member. The other is San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Salazar, who left the group last summer, according to LAist.com.