The Los Angeles County district attorney’s race is shaping up as the highest-profile 2020 local election in the nation with a criminal justice reform crusader resigning as San Francisco’s DA so he can run against the Los Angeles DA who has been a much more conventional prosecutor in her seven years on the job.

George Gascon, a former L.A. beat cop and assistant police chief, has relocated to Los Angeles in anticipation of the March primary. Gascon has supported reforms that have reduced penalties for many crimes and made it easier for prisoners to win parole and convicts to expunge their records. He is expected to get millions from George Soros, the billionaire progressive who has backed reformers in DA races in San Diego, Queens and Pittsburgh in recent years, winning in only the latter city.

Jackie Lacey, a former L.A. beat cop, has supported some reforms, such as the recent decision to throw out tickets given to poor homeless people that essentially make them go to jail when they seek government help. She has the backing of police unions and virtually the entire California Democratic establishment – including San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

But Lacey has repeatedly upset some minority leaders and civil rights activists by declining to ever seek criminal charges when law enforcement officers are credibly accused of abusive behavior.

A 2015 case in which an officer fatally shot an unarmed African-American homeless man in the back in Venice continues to anger activists and baffle even some in law enforcement. Surveillance video showed Officer Leonard Proctor, who is also black, had lied about victim Brendon Glenn reaching for his partner’s gun.

Lacey rejected police chief’s call to charge own officer

The details of the case were so egregious that then-Police Chief Charlie Beck urged that Proctor face manslaughter charges – the first time he had ever called for the DA to prosecute anyone at LAPD. But no charges of any kind were brought by Lacey, who in 2018 said she didn’t believe she had a provable case against Proctor.

But as Breed’s endorsement of Lacey suggests, Gascon remains a controversial figure in San Francisco. A front-page story in the Oct. 31 Chronicle looked at how a progressive prosecutor could make so many enemies in such a progressive city. The newspaper noted that he had faced criticism from both sides of the police conduct debate – bashed by police unions when he investigated police shootings, but also bashed by activists for failing to prosecute officers for some high-profile fatal shootings.

And Breed was only one of many San Franciscans who believed that Gascon’s tolerant policies toward street crime had both fueled homelessness and led to San Francisco becoming the large city with highest property-crime rate in the U.S. The Chronicle has reported that there are arrests in only 2 percent or less of car break-ins.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has also endorsed Lacey. In a statement, Herrera described Lacey as “the only candidate for L.A. County District Attorney who has the background, proven track record, and vision needed to continue creating positive change.”

Gascon is not the only DA candidate challenging Lacey from the left. Prosecutors Richard Ceballos and Joseph Iniguez are also running. Ceballos has hired the same political consultant who helped the poorly funded campaign of Sheriff’s Lt. Alex Villanueva stun incumbent Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell in November 2018.

Last year saw about 54,000 property crimes in the city – about 150 car break-ins, burglaries and thefts a day. But the San Francisco Police Department depicted the city as having turned the corner on the problem, using better coordinated responses to cut car break-ins by 14 percent. They said the criminal gangs who were behind most of the break-ins were less active.

Yet a San Francisco Chronicle story printed earlier this month suggests that police have exaggerated their progress.

“Politicians and police have bragged repeatedly that property crimes and car break-ins are down from last year’s epic high. But what they don’t mention is that they’ve actually gone up in the area patrolled by the Central Station, which includes most of San Francisco’s major tourist destinations: Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street, North Beach, Nob Hill and much of the Embarcadero,” the Chronicle noted.

“Through October, Central Station had seen 9,106 property crimes, a 13 percent increase from the same time period last year. Car break-ins are up 4 percent, and burglaries, which include home break-ins and shoplifting, are up a whopping 48 percent.”

Overall, the city is averaging 144 property crimes a day – only a slight drop from 2017.

Yet residents’ anger over the property crime epidemic goes far beyond the numbers and the criminals responsible. Letters to the editor and online posts show disbelief at how few consequences there are for the break-ins. In 2017, only about 1 in 60 cases ended with an arrest. Even cases where stolen credit cards are used illegally – a crime that usually provides investigators with strong, clear evidence – rarely end in prosecution.

Failure to use signs to warn tourists blasted

And citizens who try to help police report deep frustration and a belief the “smash and grab” break-ins are not taken seriously. In February, the NBC Bay Area television station interviewed a car break-in victim who provided police with videos of at least 50 car breaks-in near his home, with none apparently leading to criminal prosecution. His frustration with the police was backed up by a spokesman for San Francisco District Attorney George Garcon (pictured) who said officers needed to make more arrests.

But the visitors industry – which generates $9 billion a year – is also frustrated with Mayor London Breed and city supervisors. As Chronicle columnist Heather Knight wrote recently, the best insurance against a vehicle break-in is having literally nothing of value in sight within a car – the everyday practice of locals who drive. Yet instead of getting this message across by requiring that car rental agents directly verbally warn customers, the city merely requires that a warning be part of rental paperwork. Knight also called the city’s failure to put up warning signs at the most popular visitor sites “incredible.”

TV crew reporting on problem itself victimized

The national media has been reporting on the crime wave in San Francisco since 2017. In September, the “Inside Edition” show staged a sting in which valuables with GPS trackers were left inside a car at a tourist site. It was soon broken into, leading reporter Lisa Guerrero to later confront one of the two thieves.

But later that day, as Guerrero was interviewing a car break-in victim who complained about police indifference,  “a car belonging to the ‘Inside Edition’ crew was broken into, resulting in two broken windows and the theft of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment,” according to the show’s website.

Crime in San Francisco isn’t as severe in other categories, according to the FBI. The city had the 75th worst rate of violent crimes out of the 298 cities the agency tracked.

Seven months after her office released sweeping recommendations for reform of California’s bail system, state Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye may have a chance to force changes without going through the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown.

Last week, the state Supreme Court agreed to take up a January appellate court ruling that took dead aim at a bail system that some say turns county jails into “debtor prisons.” More than half of jail inmates are there not because of convictions but because they can’t raise bail, which usually requires providing a bail bonds office with cash or property worth 10 percent of the total bail sum. California has the highest cash bail rates of any state, according to Human Rights Watch.

“A defendant may not be imprisoned solely due to poverty,” Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said in a 3-0 decision of the 1st District Court of Appeal that ordered a new bail hearing for Kenneth Humphrey, a retired maintenance worker living in San Francisco who was accused of threatening a neighbor, stealing a bottle of cologne and $5, and demanding more money. Humphrey said he was seeking payment of a debt. But a judge followed a standard bail schedule that took note of Humphrey’s previous felony convictions and set his bail at $600,000, which was later reduced to $350,000.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case, which he had requested after state Attorney General Xavier Becerra chose not to appeal the appellate ruling. “We’re pleased,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’ve made it very clear that I’m not a proponent of money bail. But getting rid of money bail doesn’t entail that we will never have pretrial detention. There are still some people that are going to be either a flight risk or dangerous, and what we have now is a state of the law that is unclear, and the standard in terms of dangerousness may be way too high.”

Cantil-Sakauye urged bail changes in 2016 speech

While the appellate ruling was stayed pending the state high court’s ruling, criminal justice reformers were hopeful that Cantil-Sakauye’s history hints at the court’s eventual decision.

The chief justice conveyed her support for bail reform in her 2016 State of the Judiciary speech. A task force she convened issued a report in October that said the state’s system “unnecessarily compromises victim and public safety because it bases a person’s liberty on financial resources rather than the likelihood of future criminal behavior” and was “unsafe and unfair.” It called for pretrial assessments that would help judges gauge the risk posed by each defendant and for “pretrial programs [that] would also give judges more tools to supervise defendants, such as drug testing, home confinement, and text reminders for court dates.”

This approach was used with Humphrey, 64, after the appellate court ruling overturned his $350,000 bail. He was released from jail after agreeing to supervised around-the-clock detention at a substance abuse facility and to wearing an ankle monitor.

Despite lobbying from Cantil-Sakauye, Gov. Jerry Brown and progressive and civil rights groups, the Legislature has so far been mostly cool to two years of efforts led by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, to scrap the state’s money bail system. Their legislative proposals mirror the recommendations of the chief justice’s task force. One version passed the state Senate last year on a party-line vote before stalling; another was rejected by the Assembly.

But Suhr’s abrupt exit isn’t likely to yield a quiet interlude in San Francisco politics. Instead, the question for residents is this: Who will be the next city big shot to be taken down?

Mayor Lee is seen as a likely target of corruption investigations by both the FBI and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon.

The FBI’s long-running “Operation Whitesuit” probe focuses on political bribery, Chinese-American gangs, money laundering and booze- and gun-running. It has already yielded criminal convictions against now-former San Francisco state Sen. Leland Yee,  former San Francisco school board president Keith Jackson and its initial target, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a legendary gang figure who claimed to have gone on the straight and narrow in recent years.

Spinning bribery web around mayor?

Chow and Lee have long had many mutual acquaintances and were seen together on many occasions at city banquets and civic functions, leading to speculation about improprieties. But it was only in late January that a specific law-enforcement threat to Lee emerged. That’s when Gascon — apparently working in concert with the FBI — arrested two former employees with the city’s Human Rights Commission on allegations that they took bribes to set up meetings with Lee. An undercover FBI agent says that Nazly Mohajer, a former agency commissioner, and Zula Jones, a former staffer, took $20,000 from him in 2011.

Lee has flatly denied any wrongdoing. But he admitted meeting the undercover agent. Meanwhile, authorities also have a tape in which Mohajer and Jones can be heard talking about ways to use the apparent bribe to pay off Lee’s 2011 campaign debts without drawing attention.

Former city Supervisor Bevan Dufty and other Lee allies have floated the theory that he is the victim in the case, done in by overzealous, imprudent aides. But Gascon didn’t just accuse Mohajer and Jones of bribery and money-laundering. He also filed related charges against Jackson, the already-convicted school board president — clearly trying to depict the alleged bribery as part of the larger criminal conspiracy that the FBI’s been targeting for many years.

Fire chief accused of ignoring severe problems

But Schur and Lee aren’t the only San Francisco leaders in hot water. Joanne Hayes-White, the longest-serving fire chief, is accused of ignoring public concerns and of borderline incompetence.

Hayes-White joined the San Francisco Fire Department in 1990 and quickly moved up the ranks, becoming chief in 2004. Her defenders depict criticism of her as politically driven, especially by a fire union with whom she has locked horns.

But a KQED report last month — while noting the union’s key role in the criticism of the chief — pointed to several areas of legitimate concern. The short list:

• According to a 2015 grand jury report, Hayes-White has done a weak job of making sure emergency-response times meet acceptable standards and has failed for years to address the reason for delays: an aging ambulance fleet prone to breaking down.
• Her department has a backlog of investigations on cases large and small, with some dating back four years. Hayes-White is blamed for refusing to listen to outside voices who say she needs to beef up her arson task force.
• Her department is accused of doing a bad job of regularly performing adequate safety checks on San Francisco’s hundreds of older apartment buildings. Hayes-White’s top aide admitted problems after a fatal four-alarm fire in the Mission District in January 2015.

But she had little choice after a bombshell San Francisco Chronicle investigation documented that the building had passed its most recent safety inspection in August 2014 despite a number of obvious warning signs. At the building, the newspaper wrote, “fire inspectors found safety violations for years — missing fire extinguishers, blocked fire escapes, inoperable smoke alarms and locked exits … . The building also had no fire alarm or sprinkler system because state and local laws don’t require those protections for older buildings with more than 16 apartments. And though the building had a required smoke alarm that could have alerted tenants to the fire, it never sounded. Residents told The Chronicle that someone disabled it after repeated false alarms.”

Hayes-White’s defenders depict the criticism as being ginned up by the fire union to gain advantage in ongoing debates about pay, staffing and hiring. But KQED’s reporting suggests that there is more in play than just political jousting.

Over the last 16 months the department has come under criticism for doing a weak job of documenting fire safety violations in the city’s older apartment buildings after a series of deadly fires. It has also come under scrutiny for moving too slowly to reduce a backlog of hundreds of fire investigations going back several years.

Fire chief for 12 years as problems built

Hayes-White, who was appointed fire chief in 2004 and by some accounts is the longest-serving fire chief of a large city in the U.S., can’t say she inherited her department’s problems. A San Francisco native, she joined the department in 1990 after graduating from the University of Santa Clara and quickly moved up the ranks, being promoted to lieutenant in 1993, captain in 1996 and then acting battalion chief that same year.

During her 26 years with SFPD, the quality of department management has been increasingly questioned.

Last June, a civil grand jury report found, among other things, the Fire Department’s emergency medical response times fail to meet state standards, in part because of “a chronic lack of serviceable ambulances.” The grand jury also found that half the department’s ambulance fleet exceeded its expected service life of 10 years and that the agency lacks a strategic plan for replacing ambulances and other emergency equipment. …

One high-profile example of the equipment problems: the failure of the department’s “jaws of life” devices after last November’s tour bus crash in Union Square.

The complex tools, used to cut open vehicles in which victims are trapped, were unable to cut through the high-grade steel of vehicles involved in the accident.

That’s also from KQED.

Mayor and police chief also have many critics

Meanwhile, Mayor Lee appears to be the ultimate target of an influence-peddling corruption investigation by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon that is apparently piggybacking on information from the far-reaching FBI probe that led to the corruption convictions of former state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and legendary Chinatown gang figure Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, among others. In January, Gascon arrested two former employees of the city’s Human Rights Commission and alleged they had tried to sell access to Lee to an undercover agent.

Police Chief Suhr faces multiple problems. On Feb. 1, the Justice Department launched a probe into his department after complaints from the ACLU and African-American groups over police violence. In December, cellphone videos caught officers shooting to death Mario Woods, a 26-year-old crime suspect, as he walked away from them toward an open area. The contention that Woods was an immediate threat to public safety has drawn broad ridicule.

Suhr has faced criticism from both sides: from officers who say he doesn’t stick up for them in an era in which police feel under siege and from activists who say he has condoned bad behavior for years.

Suhr is also caught in the middle in a scandal that began a year ago over text messages showing officers using racist and racially charged language. Activists wants the 14 officers involved to be fired. Suhr’s most prominent response has been to ask his officers to make a seven-point pledge not to be racist and intolerant.

But a fresh round of racist texts from another group of officers emerged late last month, prompting national coverage of the disarray within Suhr’s department. Gascon, the DA, told The New York Times that he had profound questions about the SFPD’s internal culture, given that “officers involved in the new case were sending offensive texts even as the city investigated 14 of their colleagues last year for sending and receiving similar messages.”

Yee was not the initial target of what has been described as a “massive sting operation” launched by the Justice Department centering on Bay Area politics. Instead, he was only ensnared in a bribery probe involving a fake, FBI-created software firm seeking government contracts, which led to the discovery of his other crimes.

Meanwhile, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon is building off the FBI’s probe with his own prosecutions. In late January, he announced that two former employees with the city’s Human Rights Commission had been arrested for allegedly trying to sell access to Mayor Ed Lee. Nazly Mohajer, a former agency commissioner, and Zula Jones, a former staffer, allegedly took $20,000 from an undercover agent.

Although he met with the undercover agent, Mayor Lee has strenuously denied any role in the alleged bribery and money-laundering. But the fact that Mohajer and Jones were taped discussing how to break the money into smaller amounts to surreptitiously pay off Lee’s 2011 campaign debts has added to the loud whispering campaign that suggests the San Francisco mayor may be the FBI’s — and/or Gascon’s — ultimate target.

The FBI’s initial target was Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a leader of a San Francisco-based gang that had ties to Chinese business groups and politicians, including Lee. Chow was convicted in January on federal racketeering charges after his defense — claiming to be a reformed ex-criminal turned humanitarian and businessman — fell short.

It is not clear what sort of arrangement that the FBI and Gascon have — whether certain crimes will be prosecuted by the Justice Department and others by the San Francisco DA. But the most intense focus of the past month has been on Gascon’s attempts to keep a file of evidence related to the charges announced in January from being disclosed. He has so far persuaded a federal judge to keep it under wraps, arguing that its disclosure would reveal undercover agents and ruin promising corruption investigations.

“The evidence is a time bomb waiting to explode,” declared city Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who speculated that Lee or a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors might be implicated.

Lee appears to think he’s the target, or a target, of the investigations. According to campaign records, he spent $19,000 of his political funds last year on criminal defense attorneys. This year, he’s used allies to depict Gascon as launching a politically motivated smear effort.

Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard described Gascon as a craven publicity hound in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“If the DA has the goods on Mayor Lee, he already would have come out with it. There has never been one credibly sourced allegation of pay-to-play being brought forward,” Ballard told the Times.

But Gascon is winning plaudits from San Francisco’s alternative media, which has long seen the city as a hotbed of corruption and phony progressives.

The SF Weekly recently praised the Cuban-American DA for blasting Police Chief Greg Suhr — and Mayor Lee — for allegedly blocking attempts to reduce misconduct within San Francisco police ranks. The department has drawn sharp criticism since the Dec. 2 shooting death of stabbing suspect Mario Woods.

Though police had credible reason to believe Woods was armed and dangerous, cellphone video of him being shot as he walked away from officers has generated raucous protests.

Last November, voters approved Proposition 47 by a 20 percentage-point margin. The measure reclassified half a dozen drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. It also removed some degree of prosecutorial discretion for “wobbler” crimes, those that can either be charged as a felony or misdemeanor.

“We must devote our resources to keeping violent criminals off the streets, not cycling addicts in and out of jail,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon posted on Facebook following Prop. 47’s victory. “Nobody wins when we incarcerate someone at a cost of thousands to taxpayers, just for them to be released some time later and reoffend.”

If nobody won under the old system, critics say addicts could very well lose under the new law if it ends up undermining the state’s programs for treating substance abuse.

Prop 47: Prioritize violent, serious crimes

Proponents of the measure argued it was a necessary criminal justice reform to save money and reduce the state’s prison population.

“Proposition 47 invests in solutions supported by the best criminal justice science, which will increase safety and make better use of taxpayer dollars,” the measure’s proponents argued in their ballot statement. “Proposition 47 is sensible. It focuses law enforcement dollars on violent and serious crime while providing new funding for education and crime prevention programs that will make us all safer.”

In 2013, 1,212,801 people were arrested in California, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Drug-related violations accounted for 217,520 arrests, the largest category. Property crimes resulted in 139,624 arrests and ranked third after driving under the influence.

According to a report by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 188,790 Californians faced felony charges for the six offenses reclassified under Prop. 47. The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that roughly 40,000 offenders every year would be affected by the change in state law.

The substantial number of cases affected by the measure bolsters proponents’ argument that the measure will bring about major cost savings to the state.

Drug courts lose powerful threat

In recent years, California’s drug courts have been one of the most effective programs for addressing drug addiction. These programs are targeted at low-level drug offenses and provide substance abuse treatment instead of prison time.

“But at the heart of the program,” the Los Angeles Times recently noted, “is the threat of a felony sentence if participants flunk out.”

Prop. 47 effectively eliminated that threat by reducing the punishment for some drug crimes. In some counties, as much as “70% of the drug court population were charged with crimes listed in Proposition 47.”  Instead of getting help to tackle their addiction at an early stage, drug addicts are able to take the misdemeanor slap on the wrist.

“It’s a disorder of now, it’s a disorder of compulsions,” Dr. Doug Marlowe, the chief of science, policy and law for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, told the Times. “Without some substantial stick and carrot, the outcomes are quite poor.”

That’s already come to pass in San Diego County, where one judge has seen defendants take their misdemeanor charge instead of opting for treatment through drug court.

“They said, ‘Nope,'” said San Diego Judge Peter Gallagher, according to the Associated Press. “They’ll go back and take misdemeanor punishment.”

2014: Drop in property crimes

In addition to undermining the state’s drug courts, critics worry Prop. 47 could halt the state’s drop in property crimes. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the state’s property crime rate, despite an uptick in 2013, is near historic lows. “The 2013 property crime rate of 2,665 per 100,000 residents is down 3.9% from 2012 and close to the 50-year low of 2,594 reached in 2011,” PPIC observed in its report, “Crime Trends in California.”

That progress continued into 2014. The FBI recently released its preliminary crime statistics for the first six months of 2014. The first half of 2014 is an important statistical milestone in property crime because it’s the last period of data prior to when Prop. 47 took effect.

In all five of the state’s largest cities — from San Diego to San Francisco — there was a drop in the number of property crime offenses reported to law enforcement. Here are the number of property crimes in the state’s five largest cities, ranked by population:

• Los Angeles: down from 41,993 to 39,916, a decrease of 4.9 percent;
• San Diego: down from 15,767 to 13,759, a decrease of 12.7 percent;
• San Jose: down from 13,482 to 12,053, a decrease of 10.6 percent;
• San Francisco: down from 22,181 to 21,330, a decrease of 3.8 percent;
• Fresno: down from 11,295 to 10,517, a decrease of 6.9 percent.

As property crimes declined, violent crime rates in the five largest cities have remained flat, with the exception of Los Angeles. The LAPD recently announced that violent crime increased 14.3 percent in 2014.

The numbers that come in for 2015 will be key to how Prop. 47’s reforms are interpreted.