Commentary: LA County District Attorney Axes Gang Unit, Move Sure To Make City More Dangerous

The district attorney of Los Angeles will reportedly downsize or potentially altogether eliminate his city’s gang unit, even as the city struggles with a deadly crime wave.

Los Angeles has for over a century been given nicknames by locals and tourists struck by its natural beauty, history and its influence on the culture. The “City of Angels,” “La-La Land” and “Tinseltown” for its Hollywood section all come to mind.

But, as the Los Angeles Police Department knows all too well, there is another moniker for California’s largest city: The gang capital of the U.S.

The LAPD estimates there are over 450 gangs active in the city and its surrounding county, and that those gangs have as many as 45,000 members in total. That essentially means there is the equivalent of an army living among Angelenos, pushing drugs, disrupting the peace and killing each other.

That doesn’t even mention the fact that innocent civilians, unaware of their surroundings, can find themselves in the wrong color or the wrong block at the wrong time — which can prove menacing and deadly. Some innocent people living in LA have gone out and never returned home in some pretty high-profile cases in recent years.

Examples of that are here, here and here.

Other instances abound and are equally tragic.

Los Angeles County D.A. George Gascón apparently isn’t fazed by any of that, nor is he apparentlyu bothered by a broader surge of deadly crimes in his city and county since last summer.

Fox News, citing sources close to the area’s top prosecutor, reported Wednesday that Gascón intends to decentralize his office’s Hardcore Gang Unit and send its prosecutors elsewhere, despite the fact that the unit is currently working 700 cases — with more to come, if history repeats itself.

In order to reimagine fighting the lowest of the low among Angelenos, the left-wing district attorney, elected in November, will split up what is arguably the country’s most active G-unit.

“Branch offices will get a ‘Special Trial Lawyer/Gang Coordinator’ to assist prosecutors in absorbing the cases. No new gang or gun allegations will be filed,” Fox reported, citing its sources. “Prosecutors working gang cases will be asked to set up community liaison relationships working with relevant police agencies to target specific gangs and gang members in an effort to reduce community violence.”

The DA has been attacked over the move by Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

“While gang members are busy driving up LA County’s homicide rate, DA Gascon is now dismantling the Hardcore Gang Unit that works with local 🚓Law Enforcement,” the sheriff told Fox News. “This is not reform, this is beginning to look more like a suicide pact.”

Gascón, a Democrat who was district attorney of San Francisco before winning the seat in Los Angeles, has only been in office since December, but there is already an effort underway to recall him, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. Voters could have a chance to send the leftist prosector packing in 2022 if they’re feeling remorseful.

The Daily News reported the county registrar-recorder’s office is now reviewing a recall petition submitted by a group that calls itself “Victims of Violent Crime for the Recall of District Attorney George Gascón.”

Gascón hasn’t explicitly stated why he wants to break up the Hardcore Gang Unit, at least not publicly.

But we learned from 2020 that leftist activists in public office are not above playing with human life in order to please the anti-cop crowd. This instance appears to be one of change simply for the sake of change.

That doesn’t make anyone safer, but it does advance the left’s agenda to destabilize communities, to cater to violent criminals and to challenge and upend the basic societal structure of law and order.

The radical left wants change, and it doesn’t matter who has to die for that change to be achieved.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.