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As my colleague Mike Miller reported, California is releasing up to 76,000 inmates from the State prisons, many of them violent criminals:
As reported by AP, more than 63,000 of the 76,000 inmates, who were convicted of violent crimes, will be eligible for “good behavior credits” that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017. That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.
Insane, or just me?
According to AP, the new rule took effect Saturday, but AP said “it will be months or years before any inmates go free earlier. Corrections officials say the goal is to reward inmates who better themselves while critics said the move will endanger the public.”
LAPD officers reportedly circulated a “Valentine” featuring a photo of George Floyd with the words “You take my breath away.” An investigation is now underway, though it has not been made public how many officers may have been involved in sharing the image or who was responsible for its creation.
On Monday, the Floyd family responded to reports of the offensive Valentine.
“This is beyond insult on top of injury it’s injury on top of death,” the family’s attorney, Ben Crump, said in a statement reported by the
Los Angeles Times. “The type of callousness and cruelty within a person’s soul needed to do something like this evades comprehension and is indicative of a much larger problem within the culture of the LAPD.”
Some prosectors concerned LA s new progressive prosecutor is progressing too far
Last month I noted in this post that L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón made a lot of bold policy changes in his first day in office. Now this new
Politico article, headlined California prosecutors revolt against Los Angeles DA’s social justice changes, highlights the push-back these policy changes are engendering. Here are excerpts:
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón ran on a vow to shake up America’s largest law enforcement jurisdiction. Sweeping progressive changes followed and so has the California backlash.
Within weeks of taking office, Gascón instructed prosecutors to stop seeking the death penalty and trying juveniles as adults. He ordered a halt to most cash bail requests and banned prosecutors from appearing at parole hearings. Most controversially, he barred prosecutors from seeking various sentencing enhancements.