The Daily Signal - LA Sheriff: Policies of Soros-Backed Prosecutor Profit Criminals

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Crime is on the rise in Los Angeles, and the soft-on-criminals policies of District Attorney George Gascon are a major cause, Sheriff Alex Villanueva says.  When Gascon took office in December 2020 as one of the successful candidates backed by liberal financier George Soros, he issued a list of crimes that the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office no longer would prosecute.  Those changes are “unleashing a wave of crime by not prosecuting criminals who are victimizing poor people, people of color, people that live in the toughest neighborhoods in our communities,” Villanueva says.  Villanueva, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department when he was elected sheriff in 2018, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how Gascon's policies led to criminals being released back onto the streets and how the "defund the police" movement has affected his workforce. Also on today’s show, we cover these stories: The Biden administration extends the mask mandate for many travelers, especially on planes and trains, for another 15 days. President Biden accuses Russia of committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott makes good on his promise to bus illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Homicides, a two-year jump of 38.46%. Assaults up 32%. Grand theft auto up 61%, arson up 48%. The only numbers that are down is forcible rape and robbery, and every other number is in the positive. So that's not very encouraging numbers, to say the least. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, April 14th. I'm Doug Blair.

And I'm Virginia Allen. That was Los Angeles Sheriff. Alex Villanueva, talking about crime rates in Los Angeles County since District Attorney George Gascon took office. George Gascon is a George Soros-backed prosecutor. On his first day in office, he issued a memo listing 13 crimes, his office would no longer prosecute. Sheriff Villanueva says Gascon's progressive policies are harming communities across L.A. The sheriff joins the show today to explain why Gascone won't prosecute crime, to the full extent of the law, and what implications that has on law enforcement and the people of

L.A. But before we get to Virginia's conversation with Sheriff Villeneweva, let's hit our top news stories of the day. If you are hoping to travel maskless this Easter weekend, I've got some bad news for you. The Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, announced Wednesday that the federal mask mandate on transit, such as planes and trains, will be extended for another 15 days. The mask mandate was originally set to expire on April 18th, but has now been extended until May 3rd. The CDC said that this was to give more time to study the new BA2 COVID-19 variant,

according to the Associated Press. The CDC released a statement on the extension saying, in order to assess the potential impact, the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care systems. capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time. The decision to keep the mask mandate for travelers came with some pushback. Airline companies previously had pushed the Biden

administration to drop both the mask mandate and a slew of other international travel restrictions. In a March 23rd letter to President Biden, a group of airline CEOs wrote, now is the time for the administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions, including the international pre-departure testing requirement and the federal mask mandate that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment. President Joe Biden says Russia is committing genocide against the Ukrainian people per NBC News. Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide and a half a world away. Biden delivered those remarks at an ethanol.

fuel plant in Iowa earlier this week. U.S. officials said Biden's comments do not indicate a change in America's policy towards Russia right now. Meanwhile, Russia is continuing its attack on Ukraine. The United Nations reports that Ukraine's water system is at risk of complete collapse. Water shortages in Ukraine are caused primarily by two factors, power cuts that have stopped water pumps and explosions that have led to damaged pipelines. The United Nations Humanitarian Organization UNICEF says 1.4 million people in Ukraine are without water, and an additional 4.6 million are at risk of losing their access to water. And food shortages are also a great concern right now among millions of people in Ukraine. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made good on his promise to bus illegal

immigrants to Washington, D.C. The first bus carrying migrants from Texas arrived in the nation's capital on Wednesday. The bus dropped the migrants off a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol building. The bus's arrival comes a week after Governor Abbott announced he was asking the Texas Division of Emergency Management to begin transporting the immigrants released from federal custody. According to Fox News, the migrants left the bus and were free to go after they briefly spoke with officials. There are still a number of buses making their way around the country. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Los Angeles. Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories that are of particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left.

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And we are also problematic on social media, so be sure to follow us on Instagram. Beautiful Los Angeles, California has a growing reputation for rising crime. And for this, some blame the progressive policy

of the county's district attorney George Gascon. So here with us to talk about that is Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Sheriff, thank you so much for being here. Oh, no, you got it. My pleasure. It's a tall order to keep a county of $10 million safe, and we need everybody doing their part. And right now, I don't have a DA I can trust. Yeah, so share with us a little bit more about that, because like you say, you have a large team.

You command the largest sheriff's department in the United States. And you're doing that in a time when Los Angeles has a district attorney who came to power in 2020. He was elected in 2020. Name is George Gascon. And he is what many call a progressive prosecutor or what we at the Heritage Foundation call a rogue prosecutor. So explain a little bit about what changed in Los Angeles. Angeles when Gascon was elected? Well, you got to realize that he, Gascon, was riding a wave of these progressive reforms,

if you want to call them reforms, that started way back in 2018. And some of the reforms accelerated in 2020. That was a call for defunding law enforcement. A lot of the policies from the Board of Supervisors, Care First, Jail, Last, alternatives to incarceration, diversion, diversion, re-entry. A lot of these policies that were not backed by any science that anyone is aware of.

And they just poured money into them because they sounded good and a bunch of 20-something-year-old woke wonders that worked for the Board of Supervisor, decided this how the taxpayer dollars should be spent. So along comes Gascon, and he just rode that wave into office on the heels of the George Floyd murder.

And it went downhill from there because he's been systematically trying to dismantle the legislative intent in Sacramento by Fiat. Okay. So explain what you mean by that, that he's trying to dismantle, you know, these kind of former systems that were set up. And how has crime been affected? I mean, get into some of these details here. Give us a picture of what it's kind of like on the ground and what has changed before. and after Gascon was elected?

Well, before Gascon was elected, the district attorney represented the people. And by representing the people, it was part of the adversarial nature of prosecution and defense. That's why you have the scales of justice, the blind lady with a blindfold. But he decided to represent defendants

while the defendants already have their own counsel. So now there's no one prosecuting on behalf of the people anymore. I have a defense attorney who's now masquerading his DA. So he started by nullifying a lot of the laws in Sacramento. For example, gun enhancements, gang enhancement, multiple victim enhancements, not trying juveniles as adults when the crimes they commit are adult-type crimes. For example, not allowing deputy deities. is to go to parole hearings to block the release on parole for people trying to sell the idea

that they were not responsible for their crime. So many of these things are having a very erosive impact on the ability to hold people accountable. And we're seeing it in the crime stats. We're leading, I think we led the nation last year, a two-year jump of 94% in homicide, a 60% jump in Grand Theft Auto. And I think those are national leading numbers. So you mentioned enhancements. Those are essentially factors that are taken into consideration in sentencing.

So if someone commits a crime and they're a part of a gang, there might be a harsher sentence, factors such as that. So you also mention Gascon's commitment to not try juveniles as adults. What do changes like that mean for you, for keeping peace on the streets, for the citizens of Los Angeles County? Why do those things actually matter? Well, one thing is that the public, if they don't see consequences for those who commit crime, they're not going to be inclined to report being victim of crime themselves because the bad guys are right back out on the street again, threatening their lives again.

I'll give you a prime example. So this was Ariad and Gascon's first year in office in 2021. There was a case where a catering truck, we know those food trucks, he was being extorted by a local gang. And there was like four or five suspects who were arrested, and they were being extorted with gun. And they were charged with the extortion. They were charged with the gun enhancement, the gang enhancement. And they were looking at, you know, serious time, you know, 10, 15 years in prison. Then as soon as they eliminated all the enhancements, the entire case was reduced to a simple extortion,

meaning the person was ready to be released, the suspects were ready to be released, time served. So the victim, you know, almost rescuing his life to, willing to be testifying against gang members, now is looking at the prospects of the same people being released from custody with no consequence. So he probably feels betrayed by Gascon. And that's one small example of how Gascon is allowing crime to pay. Well, and we know that this isn't happening just in Los Angeles. There's actually these progressive prosecutors in dozens of cities all over the United States that have really taken this very unique approach, you could say, to the way that crimes are or are not prosecuted.

Sheriff, why is a prosecutor like Escon? Why is he choosing to make these very drastic changes to laws that have been, you know, in place for years and years and years, into really the whole system of how we prosecute criminals in America's cities? Well, if you look at the relationship of George Soros and a lot of these Bay Area billionaires who probably have nothing better to do with their lives, maybe they're, I don't know, maybe they have a guilty conscience. They somehow think that by eliminating consequences for committing crime that they're going to,

you know, pay it forward or alleviate their guilt with those who are poor. segments of society. But what they're doing is, is they're unleashing a wave of crime by not prosecuting criminals who are victimizing poor people, people of color, people that live in the toughest neighborhoods in our communities. And they're having to make peace with their tormentors, with the people that assault them. Because it's a revolving door. They're in and out the same day, zero bail schedule, all these things are coming to play, and it's having a very big impact on the perceptions of justice in our criminal justice system. So you mean someone could commit a crime in Los Angeles, be arrested, but because of the

policies that Gascon has in place, they wouldn't be held. They would just be released even that same day. Yes, we have in East L.A. We have a case of a smashing grab at a local Nike store on Whittier Boulevard, four times the same store, the same two suspects who were released multiple times, go right back to the scene of the crime, repeat the crime all over again. And then I'm going to have someone like Gascon claim, well, the data in the science, you know, tells us that putting these two individuals behind bars is not going to work. This is going to make them more prone to committing crime. That's just a sick joke, really. So there is such an argument that you just said, you know, people argue, well, you know, we have all this incarceration and it's not helping people and we need to change the system and we need reform.

And I think to an extent on both sides of the aisle, you have a level of people saying, okay, yeah, we need reform. There's obviously disagreement on what that looks like. So if, you know, on one extreme side, you know, you have gas gone saying, we'll just let them back out onto the street. streets, and obviously you're saying, no, that that's not effective, that doesn't work. What is the answer? Are there solutions to how you can actually really be, I guess, quote unquote, reforming these individuals? Do you think that's possible? Well, the sad truth is that trying to modify adult behavior is not a likely task, and there's plenty of a real, you know, science behind that in different studies about modifying adult behavior. Because once your

personalities develop, I think probably about the age of seven, you're pretty much done in that regard. And you're going to continue maturing, developing, but there's a reason why we have, you know, Gladys are admonitions when someone is detained as a juvenile at the age of under 14. do they know right from wrong? And when we establish that, then we can detain them and petition the juvenile court for a trial, for example, for whatever the case may be. But imagine someone who's over the age of 14.

Now, what about a 16-year-old, the 17-year-old? How developed is their brains compared to full capacity? Gascon keeps saying, oh, they have to reach the age of 25. Well, I'm pretty satisfied once. at 80%, 90%, you know what you're doing. I mean, who are we kidding here? And they're just plain semantics with information. Yeah.

So talk a little bit about the safety and crime rates in Los Angeles County right now. How have they changed since 2020 when Gascon was elected? How have the percentages of violent crimes and property crimes changed in Los Angeles County? Well, if I compare the same time period from 2020 to 2022, I'm looking at a 16.62% increase in violent crime. If I do a one-year comparison, 21 to 22, I'm looking at 11% increase. Homicides, a two-year jump of 38.46%, assaults up 32%, grant theft auto up 61%, arson up 48%, and the only numbers that are down is forcible rape and robbery and every other number is in the positive. So that's not very encouraging numbers to say the least.

Which category of crime in L.A. are you most concerned about? Well, the Grand Theft Auto and the murder rate, you know, from pre-pandemic to put to, to, 19 to 21, it jumped 94%, as I said, and Grand Theft Auto up 60%. Those numbers are historically just enormous statistical jumps, but we've seen it throughout the United States. Ours is just that much higher than the national average for metropolitan areas. But now that the pandemic is settling, now we're starting to see a reemergence of traditional crime patterns. For example, burglaries are now up 22% comparing last year to this year,

the more people are going to work. Houses are empty now, homes are empty. Burglars are back at work doing their business as well. Whereas during the pandemic, burglaries were down quite a bit. The domestic violence down, rape down, because too many people at home, too many witnesses. I see. Okay. Interesting. So how, how, how, how, how? How does these kind of progressive policies and the policies of Gascon, how does that affect you and the men and women who serve under you as law enforcement? Because obviously, you know, there's the clear, obviously the individuals who become victims to these crimes. These effects are huge for them. From a law enforcement perspective, how does this change your kind of day-to-day and the way that,

you all have to go about combating crime on the streets of Los Angeles. Well, we're seeing in video after video of these smash and grab robberies. You see the one guy who goes on a mountain bike into a drug store, a CVS, and fills up an entire trash bag. It just pedals out of the store with it. I have friends in the restaurant business. They lose a fortune every night. You know, they'll have an entire table of six or eight, walk away and laughing.

and stiff the bill. So mom and pop businesses are suffering at the hand of this Prop 47 and Gascon's approach to Prop 47. And we're seeing that throughout the county. It's been taking an enormous toll on our working class families, our mom and pop businesses. Even the big retailers now are starting to feel the pinch. And they're starting to close down operations because it's hitting their bottom line as well. And all these progressive policies have been an absolute failure, and they have zero. And I have to emphasize this.

They have zero evidence of anything working. So they need to get out of their little woke bubble that they put themselves in and start explaining where's the evidence that their policies work. You mentioned Prop 47. Explain that for us briefly, if you would. Prop 47 was a voter initiative. They had a fancy title that was fake. somehow make California safer. I can't remember exactly how it was worded, but it lowered the consequences for being involved in crime. It made most drug possessions from felonies to misdemeanors.

It got rid of petty theft with a prior crime. It elevated the threshold for theft to make it from misdemeanor to a felony from $400 to $950. And it lowered the consequences to so many things. and the co-author of that was none other than George Gascone. You can't make this stuff up. So then when he gets into office, not only did it lower the consequences for so many crimes with Prop 47, then he decides as a DA not to prosecute the misdemeanor crimes either. So he really did a double whammy on L.A. County residents. Have you had any opportunity to sit down with Gascone and tell him how has,

policies are affecting you and the men, women who serve under you and all of the people of Los Angeles County? Well, apparently, I didn't rate high enough because he only sat down with Black Lives Matter, L.A., a few anarchists, public defenders who wanted L.A. to burn down. They became his senior advisors. I think he had one that said, wore a T-shirt, the red burn baby Berm or something to that effect. Those are the only people that had his ear. the criminal justice system and the partners were of no concern to George Gascon when he took office. So when he came into office, he met with Black Lives Matter, but he did not meet with you, correct? Nope.

Okay. In fact, he was very proud of that fact that he was not going to meet. He didn't even meet with his own personnel, his own district attorneys, which is so bizarre. I don't even know how to explain that. My first day in office, when I was sworn in, I met with all of my command staff at the rank of lieutenant and above. That was about 450 of us. And, of course, I had to meet with my personnel first. So if you could, if Gascon called tomorrow and said, hey, let's sit down, let's have lunch.

What would you say to him? Well, I'm real curious now. I take them up on the offer. I'd like to see what's wrong with his head. Are there any questions you would want to ask him? Yeah, why? I mean, he was an executive. He was a chief of police at one point,

and he was an assistant chief or a deputy chief with LAPD, so he knows how big organizations work. There's ways to reform, and just the path he chose is so destructive that ultimately he'll end up achieving less his way than he would have done and he used a collaborative method. So what's step one to make the streets of L.A. safer? Get rid of zero bail schedule. Definitely is step one. We need to get a new DA who's going to be willing to prosecute crime.

And in fact, probably ahead of all both of those. is stop defunding the sheriff's department. We're so understaffed right now. We're literally running out of Peters to rob to pay Paul. So your department has been defunded, has been affected by these calls to defund the police. Oh my God, we've been defunded massively. Right now, I lost 1,281 positions on my budget.

Then they did a hiring freeze, and now I have an additional 920. seven sworn vacancies that I can't fill because the board has given me a starvation diet of academy classes. It's not keeping up with attrition. So the gap is getting bigger every day and I just need more deputies. How do you keep morale up among your deputies when they're looking around and seeing that you're so short-staffed? Well, deputies are excited to work with the sheriff's department and I'm supporting their good work. I hold them accountable when they cross the line, but the fact that I actually will speak up on their behalf is something the political establishment

will never do because they're not considered, I guess, acceptable in their cocktail parties where they bash law enforcement. So I do the exact opposite. I think the folks on the front lines appreciate that. It's not an easy job under normal circumstances, but to have the whole anti-authoritarian streak from activists and then politicians echo their message and actually try to defund us. It's a tough call, but I think people underestimate the resilience of the department and just the hard work of deputies out there. Excellent. Sheriff Alex Villanueva of Los Angeles, thank you, sir, so much for your time today. We really appreciate you joining. You got it.

And that'll do it for today's episode. We won't have a show tomorrow in observation of Good Friday, but we look forward to being back with you all on Monday. And in the meantime, please be sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't already, we're available on all your podcast listening apps of choice, including Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. And please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe as well.

Thank you all once again for listening. Have a wonderful Easter, and we'll be back with you on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Doug Blair. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.