Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón joined local station KTLA 5 Saturday morning to defend his record as he faces a potential recall. Gascón was asked by news anchors Lynette Romero and Mark Meester to respond to those criticizing him as a “soft-on-crime” DA as L.A. has seen an 8.6% rise in violent crime over the past year. When pressed on if he believed L.A. county was safer because of what he had done, Gascón responded, “Yeah, in some areas it is.”

America's relentless crime wave continues, and many are holding soft-on-crime district attorneys like Los Angeles County's George Gascón accountable for the crisis. On Saturday, Gascón claimed his policies have helped make the L.A. area safer. Cortlyn Bridges, whose 28-year-old daughter Ky Thomas was murdered in a 2020 shooting incident, believes otherwise. Nearly two years later, Bridges is championing for justice for her daughter and is calling out Gascón's soft-on-crime policies she believes are contributing to ongoing concerns.

No one could have known, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón insisted, that the murderer of two El Monte police officers was suddenly going to become violent. “We all wish that we could predict violence,” he said, “but the reality is that we can’t.” The alleged gunman, Justin Flores, reportedly a known gang member with a criminal record that goes back to 2010, was arrested in 2020 and charged with possession of a handgun, ammunition and methamphetamine.

Progressive Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon defended his record against critics who have accused him of being soft on crime as violence in the city continues to surge. "Yeah, in some areas it is," Gascon told KTLA-TV on Saturday when asked if he believes Los Angeles is safer because of policies he has implemented. "I think it’s important to start out by saying that I was a police officer for many years before I was the district attorney. I know how to keep communities safe."

The National Police Association ("NPA") has filed a motion for leave to participate in Ninth Circuit case of Estate of Daniel Hernandez, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, et al., Nos. 21-55994 & 21-55995, which raises important questions about police use of deadly force. The NPA has filed briefs amicus curiae across the country in support of rules of law that recognize and support the discretion of police officers to respond to the difficult and often life-threatening circumstances to which they are exposed in their line of duty.

The Supreme Court lessened the impact of its landmark Miranda ruling Thursday, saying that while police must still advise suspects of their right to remain silent and consult a lawyer, they cannot be sued for damages for failing to do so. The court ruled 5-4 in 1966 that the constitutional rights to legal representation and against self-incrimination barred prosecutors from using evidence of statements by defendants who had not been advised of their rights while in police custody.

The Court of Appeal for this district held yesterday, over a dissent, that an assailant’s victimizing of a woman was so horrendous that it would be pointless to remand for a re-sentencing to allow the judge to exercise discretion under a recently enacted ameliorative statute. “Appellant sadistically terrorized M.Q. for two days, during which he repeatedly beat her and sprayed her with pepper spray,” Acting Presiding Justice Kenneth Yegan said in the majority opinion, in which Justice Steven Z. Perren joined.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reinstated an action by a man who was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife and spent 18 years in prison before being freed on orders of the California Supreme Court, with a three-judge panel declaring that a District Court judge erroneously granted summary judgment in favor of a Sheriff’s Department criminologist who, the plaintiff contends, planted false evidence against him. Claims against the County of San Bernardino were also revived.

The Court of Appeal has affirmed the decision of a superior court denying a prosecution motion to proceed on a perjury charge, after a magistrate declined to bind the defendant over for trial, in a case where a man was arrested for drunk driving and 10 days later, in a declaration under penalty of perjury in support of his bid to terminate probation in two unrelated cases, said he “had no trouble with the law in the last 2 years 9 months.”

A federal appeals court has directed a judge to reconsider a challenge to a California county's mandates forcing gun shops to close to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights. Wednesday's decision came from an 11-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had heard arguments over the constitutionality of Ventura County’s COVID-19 public health orders only two days before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The California Supreme Court today upheld a man’s conviction and death sentence for murdering two people, including a man run over with his own car in Long Beach and a fellow jail inmate who had testified against him. The state’s highest court unanimously rejected the defense’s contention that there were errors in the trial of Santiago Pineda, who is now 41 and behind bars at San Quentin State Prison.

A judge prejudicially erred when he denied an investigative journalist’s petition, without holding a hearing, to gain access to a welfare agency’s file on a 12-year-old girl who was murdered and tortured in 2014 by her adoptive mother, the Fifth District Court of Appeal declared yesterday. Garrett Therolf, who was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 2006-16 and is now with the University of California at Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, sought the records from the Madera County Department of Social Services/Child Welfare Services.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that district courts must look at defendants' rehabilitation and updated sentencing guidelines when considering a reduction of their sentences. With a 5-4 vote displaying an unlikely array of justices, the high court reversed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that affirmed the 19-year sentence of Carlos Concepcion, a convicted Massachusetts crack cocaine dealer who sought to reduce his prison time after the passage of sentencing reforms.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a former Washington state high school football coach had a right to pray on the field immediately after games. The 6-3 ruling was a victory for Joseph Kennedy, who claimed that the Bremerton School District violated his religious freedom by telling him he couldn’t pray so publicly after the games. The district said it was trying to avoid the appearance that the school was endorsing a religious point of view.

Justice Stephen Breyer sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday announcing his retirement from the Supreme Court will be effective Thursday at noon. “It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law,” the 83-year-old justice wrote. Breyer was appointed to the court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and is the court’s oldest member.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Georgia death row inmate can challenge the state’s lethal injection protocol under federal civil rights law. Reversing a decision from the 11th Circuit, the high court remanded the case of Michael Wade Nance, a convicted murderer who claims lethal injection, the Peach State’s only legal method of execution, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment due to his severely compromised veins.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a lawsuit filed by a man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 23 years should advance, overturning a federal judge’s summary judgment against the man. William Richards was tried four times for the brutal murder of his wife Pamela. The first and third trials ended in a hung jury. A judge declared a mistrial in the second during jury selection. In 1997, a jury convicted Richards and the judge later sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

A federal appeals court said a Kauai police official and state Child Welfare workers may have violated the constitutional rights of a Big Island mother and her 11-year-old daughter when they removed the girl in 2019. The mother’s attorney said the ruling exposes the state and the KPD to millions of dollars in potential damages. “We’re certainly talking about seven figures in damages but we’re also talking about appropriate changes so the social workers on their own don’t play God and just take children,” said Eric Seitz, attorney for Hanna David and her daughter.

The entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office cannot be barred from civilly prosecuting an action against two companies and three individuals in connection with performance under a $10.3 million public works contract, Court of Appeal has held, rejecting the contention that alleged misconduct on the part of that office in pursuing an earlier criminal investigation into the allegations requires a recusal. Justice Eileen C. Moore the Fourth District’s Div. Three wrote the opinion, filed Wednesday.

In a reversal for President Biden, a federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday agreed to reconsider its own April ruling that allowed the administration to require federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The new order from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans vacates an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel that upheld the mandate. The new order means a block on the mandate imposed in January by a Texas-based federal judge remains in effect, while the full court's 17 judges take up the appeal.

California legislators on Monday approved Texas-style lawsuits over illegal guns, mimicking the Lone Star State’s law aimed at deterring abortions and obliquely linking the two most controversial U.S. Supreme Court decisions from last week. The California bill would allow anyone to sue people who sell illegal firearms. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom sought the measure in part to tweak the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave preliminary approval to the Texas law allowing citizens to sue anyone who provides or assists in providing an abortion.

A man who allegedly fashioned a makeshift flamethrower out of a spray-paint can and lighter and hurled it at a police officer during a downtown abortion-rights march was charged Tuesday with two felony assault counts. Michael Joseph Ortiz, 30, was charged with one count each of assault with intent to commit mayhem and assault upon a peace officer or firefighter, along with allegations that he personally used a deadly weapon and that he had two prior convictions in 2016 for resisting an executive officer.

Upset with Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s refusal to prosecute misdemeanors, Whittier City Council members are expected on Tuesday, June 28, to start the process of asking voters to amend the city charter to allow the city to take on the job itself. But the DA’s Office says Whittier is ill-equipped to shoulder the burden. Council members will be asked to direct city staffers to bring to them in two weeks a resolution adding a charter amendment measure for the Nov. 8 general election.

A Los Angeles Police Department officer was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of forgery for allegedly submitting "altered doctor's notes" for medical benefits, authorities said. Officer Crystal Lara, a 12-year veteran assigned to the Southwest Area, was taken into custody on a felony arrest warrant for forgery, and was booked at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the LAPD reported. Lara was released after posting $20,000 bail, police said.

A Fullerton man is facing several felony charges for possessing enough fentanyl to kill 12 million people, nearly four times the population of Orange County, authorities announced Friday. According to the Orange County District Attorney's Office, 60-year-old Alfonso Gomez-Santana was arrested Wednesday when California Highway Patrol Officers pulled him over near South Lemon Street and Orangethorpe Avenue in Fullerton.

Benito Jamar Hugie, a corrections officer at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, was indicted by a federal grand jury for accepting thousands of dollars in cash bribes from an inmate to smuggle dental molds, jewelry and other contraband into the prison, including an expensive bejeweled “grill” for the inmate’s mouth. The indictment said Hugie smuggled the grill into the facility in early October, 2020, and delivered it to inmate Shawn Brown, who had custom ordered it from a jeweler in Houston, Texas, using a smuggled cell phone.

A veteran police officer was arrested in a fraud scheme that resulted in tens of thousands in payouts, officials said. Adam Eatia, a 15-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, was booked June 24 on various charges including grand theft by false pretenses, insurance fraud and identity theft, SFPD announced Monday, June 27. Information for Eatia’s lawyer was not immediately available, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office told McClatchy News.

A Van Nuys man who allegedly shot a California Highway Patrol officer multiple times during an altercation at a traffic stop in Studio City pleaded not guilty Thursday to attempted murder of a peace officer. Pejhmaun Iraj Khosroabadi, 33, remains behind bars while awaiting his next court appearance July 25 in Van Nuys. The shooting occurred just before 7:55 p.m. June 13 in the 4500 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, one block south of the Ventura (101) Freeway, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

A massive leak of personal information from a California state database for permits to carry concealed weapons is larger than initially reported, officials said Wednesday. The revelation came a day after the Fresno County Sheriff's Office said it was informed of a data breach affecting every person with a California concealed-carry permit. On Wednesday, the California Department of Justice said the leak was more extensive, affecting not only current permit holders but anybody who was granted or denied a permit to carry a concealed weapon between 2011 and 2021.

Over the last decade, Orange County issued 65,171 permits to carry a concealed handgun and both Fresno and Sacramento counties issued more than 45,000. San Francisco issued 11. That’s according to data published online Monday by the California Department of Justice, but which has since been removed after reporters discovered that the open database included the names, home addresses and other personal information of more than 200,000 concealed carry permit holders in the state.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times reads: “TV correspondent, accused of asking child for naked photos, hired ex-D.A. as consultant.” The June 21 story by staff writer James Queally says that a criminal defendant - who is seeking a plea bargain under which he would not have to register as a sex offender if convicted based on emails he allegedly sent to a minor - has “picked up an unlikely ally in that bid: former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who over the last year has emerged as one of the leading voices in the movement to recall current Dist. Atty. George Gascón.”

With the votes in the June city primary races mostly counted, and the combatants in the runoffs determined, the Los Angeles political set may be looking forward to an easy summer before things heat up again. That ain’t happening in Council District 10, and it has nothing to do with elections. Last Wednesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta dropped a bomb that looks likely to blow up both part of the ruling class in City Hall, and representation in the district that includes Koreatown, Crenshaw and Mid-City.

The California Assembly on Thursday approved a controversial bill allowing Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco to set up places where opioid users could legally inject drugs in supervised settings. The move follows more than a year of legislative consideration, with proponents saying it would save lives and detractors saying it would enable drug addiction. The Assembly’s approval sends the bill back to the state Senate for final consideration in August, after lawmakers return from a monthlong summer recess.

One man was charged for allegedly using a flamethrower against the LAPD. Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 News on Tuesday, June 28, 2022.

Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore denied on Tuesday, June 28, that an officer who was fatally injured during a training exercise was beaten by fellow officers or suffered any lacerations to the head, as alleged in a damages claim filed against the city by the officer’s mother. Officer Houston Ryan Tipping, 32, died May 29, three days after the training accident at the agency’s Elysian Park academy. Moore said previously that Tipping was working as a bike instructor in a scenario that involved grappling with another officer.

Justin Flores was on probation the night he shot and killed two El Monte police officers. But his probation officer hadn’t seen him in person in more than six months. In the days before the killings, the Los Angeles County probation department received concerning reports that Flores was in possession of a gun - which he was barred from having due to a felony conviction - and that he had beaten a woman he was romantically involved with, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case.

The City of West Hollywood narrowly voted to cut funds for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Instead, West Hollywood leaders are planning to set aside that money for other safety programs, including the Block by Block program. Block by Block features unarmed, blue-shirted security ambassadors that have been deployed on the La Brea Avenue side of the city. The budget was narrowly given the green light - three in favor, two voting against it.

An appraiser testifying against a real estate developer on trial for paying bribes to Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar conceded under cross examination Thursday that after he agreed to assist the FBI and cooperate with prosecutors, the government allowed him to keep $340,000 he obtained facilitating bribes, tax free.

A 93-year-old homeowner took matters into his own hands when he shot and critically injured a suspect who authorities say broke into the home in Moreno Valley. The incident happened in the 24300 block of Eucalyptus Avenue around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. When deputies arrived, they found one person with a gunshot wound.

As of June 30, 2022, at 5 PM, the Los Angeles County Superior Court (Court) rescinded the Emergency Bail Schedule Modification. The Court resumed its normal operations and all arrests are now guided by the 2022 Felony Bail and the 2022 Misdemeanor and infraction Bail Schedules.

Starting today, L.A. County courts will stop releasing most people arrested, from jail, without having to post bail. I-Team’s Eric Leonard reports on the NBC4 News at 5pm on Thursday, June 30, 2022.

About noon on May 5, Lee was sitting in his work van outside his South L.A. laundromat when a man came up behind him and stabbed him in the neck. Video captured Lee pulling himself from the van to get help and people rushing to his aid, but his wounds were too severe. He died soon after at a local hospital. To Cathy Lee, 40, her father’s killing was so random and vicious that it at first seemed like some bizarre nightmare too outrageous to be real.

Authorities arrested a man in connection with the shooting deaths of a woman he had been dating and another man in Hollywood last week. The Los Angeles Police Department discovered the 32-year-old suspect, Marvin Francell Williams, Wednesday in Hesperia. Williams is accused of fatally shooting 40-year-old Ajani Patridge and 35-year-old Nadia Campbell. The pair was shot about 11:15 p.m. on June 16 at Carlos Avenue and Gower Street and died at the scene, according to LAPD and the LA County coroner's office.

Dear Editor, I believe many Santa Monicans, rattled by an epidemic of brazen crime, are understandably furious at LA County DA George Gascon. They may not be aware, however, that the City of Santa Monica, not Gascon, has authority over violent misdemeanor prosecutions in our city, while Gascon's permissiveness, which the Council has failed to condemn, applies solely to felonies committed here. The combined effect is that lawbreakers, many of them repeat offenders, prey on our population at will.

Across a nation that is already in the grips of a rise in violent crime, murders are going unsolved at a historic pace, a CBS News investigation has found. A review of FBI statistics shows that the murder clearance rate - the share of cases each year that are solved, meaning police make an arrest or close the case due to other reasons - has fallen to its lowest point in more than half a century. "It's a 50-50 coin flip," says Thomas Hargrove, who runs the Murder Accountability Project, which tracks unsolved murders nationwide.

California legislators will consider a new law within days to keep dangerous people from carrying concealed weapons in public, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his top law enforcement official said Thursday after a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidated the most populous state’s current law. The high court struck down a New York law requiring that people seeking a license to carry a gun in public demonstrate a particular need, such as a direct threat to their safety.

Progressive leaders pride themselves on their forward-thinking as they embrace woke ideologies for guidance in policy making. Now it seems the soft-on-crime reforms that have driven crime up in cities like New York have led at least one repeat offender to dub herself a “professional booster” who was released again after what may have been her 100th arrest. Saturday at a CVS in Lower Manhattan, 42-year-old Michelle McKelley was arrested for allegedly making off with $125 worth of merchandise.

The number of prosecutors fleeing the city’s district attorneys offices has spiraled in the wake of criminal justice reforms that have created what one ex-top prosecutor called “insanity.” Sixty five assistant district attorneys, or about 12 percent of the staff, have resigned so far this year from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office, up from about 44 through the end of March. During all of 2021, 97 ADAs quit. The situation is nearly the same in the office of Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, where 67 of some 500 prosecutors, or about 13 percent, have also called it quits as of June 17.

A jury on Monday found a Los Angeles real estate investor and developer guilty of bribing former LA City Council Member José Huizar in the first trial over the federal takedown of a widespread pay-to-play corruption scheme centered around Huizar and his cronies. The jury found Dae Yong Lee, aka David Lee, and his business, 940 Hill LLC, guilty of bribery, honest services fraud, and obstructing the government investigation. Lee, 57, faces up to 20 years in prison.

An Orange County probation officer was convicted Thursday in connection with stealing money while helping authorities carrying out search warrants. Juan Manuel Rodriguez was assigned to an Orange County Sheriff's Department tactical team when he was accused of the thefts in August of 2017. While serving a search warrant at 2935 W. Edinger Ave. on Aug. 8, 2017, a target of the warrant told investigators he was missing $150 to $200 from his wallet, prosecutors said in a trial brief.

A Los Angeles man on parole when he fired into a brawl at a crowded Torrance bowling alley in January 2019 was convicted on Friday, June 24, in the deaths of three men and for wounding four others. Torrance Superior Court jurors were handed the case Thursday afternoon and needed less than two hours Friday morning before returning guilty verdicts against Reginald Leander Wallace, 51, on three counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted murder and a count of a felon in possession of a firearm.

R. Kelly will go to prison for 30 years for sex trafficking, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping and other sex-related crimes. In September, a jury found Kelly guilty on all nine charges: one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act. The singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was first accused of having sex with underage girls in the '90s but escaped punishment for almost 30 years.

Two men sentenced out of Los Angeles County and incarcerated in Kern Valley State Prison are accused of killing another inmate in the prison earlier this week. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Esteban Ceja, 29, and Adrian Gurrola, 31, are believed to have attacked another inmate in a common room with an “inmate-manufactured” weapon. The inmate was seriously injured and taken to the prison’s triage center for treatment after he was attacked around 7:20 p.m. Friday.

A Hamilton teen who stole millions in a historic cryptocurrency theft says he's learned from his mistakes and wants to put his skills to good use working in cybersecurity. The 19-year-old, who was 17 at the time of the 2020 theft and cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, admitted in court to stealing $48-million worth of cryptocurrency from California-based entrepreneur and Bitcoin pioneer Josh Jones.

On the heels of ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes' high-profile trial and conviction, former Theranos executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani's criminal fraud trial has had its own memorable moments, from contentious exchanges between defense counsel and the judge to emotional witness testimony.

The Jan. 6 committee set high expectations when it announced on Monday that it would be holding an emergency hearing on Tuesday, citing “recently obtained evidence.” The hearing did not disappoint, with Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, over the course of just under two hours painting a damning, bombshell-filled account of former President Trump’s actions before, during, and after the Capitol attack.

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