(Headline USA) Following a wave of backlash, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors dropped a controversial “decarceration” proposal that would have emptied out the city’s jails.
The move came in spite of already rampant crime in the city, fueled by George-Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascón’s refusal to prosecute certain criminals for political reasons.
A countywide effort to recall Gascón failed last year after many of the collected signatures were ruled out arbitrarily by the county registrar.
The “decarceration” proposal, which was to be debated during Tuesday’s board meeting, would have declared “the state of mental health services and overcrowding in the Los Angeles County jails a humanitarian crisis, requiring the County to move with all deliberate speed on meaningful solutions; and prioritize[d] decreasing the number of individuals entering the Los Angeles County Jails” through a number of measures.
One such measure would have required law enforcement to “cite and release individuals with aggregate bail amounts set at $50,000 or below” and “adopt a zero bail schedule for individuals accused of low-level offenses, infractions, misdemeanors, and felony offenses.”
After heavy criticism, Supervisor Hilda Solis, who originally introduced the proposal, said she would withdraw it, citing “concerns from a variety of stakeholders.”
“I introduced the motion on ‘Los Angeles County to Take Actionable Next Steps to Depopulate and Decarcerate the Los Angeles County Jails’ as a way to strike a balance with both justice-involved advocates and public safety representatives,” she said in a statement.
“… The intention behind my motion was for the Board of Supervisors to use the limited authority it has to safely depopulate,” she added. “Nonetheless, since the motion was published, my office has received concerns from a variety of stakeholders—those who feel the motion is not doing enough and those who feel it is doing too much.”
One of the critics of the proposal was Eric Siddall, the vice president of the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys. Siddall argued that Solis’s radical “decarceration” proposal would make crime in the city even worse.
“The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ motion to gut parts of the criminal justice system without input from stakeholders is dangerous and recklessness,” he told Fox News.
“The authors sought no advice from those who know and understand public safety issues,” he continued. “They seek to lower the jail population without addressing the root causes of crime or protecting the public.”
