Los Angeles city controller candidate Rob Wilcox endorses Gascon recall campaign

Rob Wilcox, a candidate for city controller and a spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney's office, on Friday endorsed a recall campaign against LA County District Attorney George Gascon. 

The recall campaign told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that it has collected more than 400,000 signatures and raised $6 million. The campaign needs 566,857 signatures – 10% of registered voters – by the July 6 deadline to put the recall question on November's ballot. 

"In less than a year and a half, George Gascon has shunned victims and their families, shown contempt for his dedicated deputies’ hard work and judgment, and bent over backwards to accommodate violent criminals," Wilcox said in a Friday statement. "Gascon is a study in arrogance. While crime ricochets throughout our neighborhoods, he has spurned the advice of the dedicated career prosecutors in his office and instead, he has stubbornly doubled down on his failed and short-sighted policies of leniency for criminals."

City controllers handle city money, acting as both auditors and accountants that help manage different municipal departments.

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Wilcox, who is also a former deputy LA City controller, listed "three things" he believes are "wrongheaded moves" from Gascon, including "forbidding filing sentencing enhancements for violent crimes and use of guns in crimes"; "ignoring and abandoning victims of crime, both in new cases and at parole hearings"; and "pursuing multiple policies which blatantly ignore state law and propositions passed by voters."

"As City Controller, I have pledged to find a myriad of ways to make our city so much safer," Wilcox said. "However, it is a challenging task because the current DA puts the rights and interests of accused and convicted criminals well ahead of those of the general public and victims of crime. We must remove Gascón because his flawed experiment in criminal justice ‘reform’ is endangering every resident of the City of Los Angeles."

Gascon on Thursday reversed a policy barring his deputy district attorneys from seeking cash bail, which he wanted to eliminate, as criticism of his office continues to mount amid a rise in crime and calls for his ouster. 

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A memo to prosecutors from Sharon Woo, the chief deputy district attorney and second-in-command to District Attorney George Gascon, outlined a plan to create develop a pre-trial services program that would balance "both the rights of the accused while protecting public safety" as an alternative to cash bail. 

"After listening to the community, victims and members of this Office, I have decided to allow limited exceptions to the pre-trial release policy while such a program is finalized," the memo states. 

The most recent criticisms of Gascon came after his office declined to file felony charges against the man accused of attacking comedian Dave Chappelle during a May 3 performance at the iconic Hollywood Bowl with a replica gun-knife. 

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Additionally, a transgender LA inmate named Hannah Tubbs, who was previously convicted of molesting a child and sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility after being tried as a minor under Gascon's policies, was charged with murder and robbery earlier this week. 

"Tubbs had a very lengthy criminal record before George Gascón allowed Tubbs to be sentenced to minimal time in a juvenile facility, which included arrests and convictions for murder, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence and even a prior sexual assault of a 4-yr-old girl," Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami told Fox News Digital at the time.

Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.