(Headline USA) Los Angeles’s radical leftist district attorney blamed railroad company Union Pacific for the increase in train robberies in the county this week, after the company blasted him for refusing to prosecute the burglars.
George Gascon claimed Union Pacific has filed fewer criminal cases to his office this past year than it did in 2020 or 2019 and denied that he is refusing to prosecute the thieves caught by the company’s security guards.
“In 2019, 78 cases were presented for filing. In 2020, 56 cases were presented for filing,” Gascon said in a letter to Union Pacific.
“And in a sharp decline, in 2021, 47 such cases were presented for filing consideration, and over 55% were filed by my office,” he said. “The charges filed included both felony and misdemeanor offenses alleging burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.”
Out of the 20 cases that Gascon’s office declined to prosecute, 10 “were not filed due to the insufficiency of the evidence presented to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, which is our ethical standard to file a criminal case,” and the other 10 were not filed because they “involved offenses such as allegations of unhoused individuals within 20 feet of the railroad tracks and simple possession of drugs for personal use — not allegations of burglary, theft or tampering,” Gascon said.
The train robberies in LA’s Lincoln Park neighborhood became national news after pictures of the area showed thousands upon thousands of looted packages torn open and littered near the railroad tracks. Union Pacific said the robberies have increased by more than 350% in the past year, and blamed Gascon’s loose-on-crime policies for making the situation worse.
“Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine,” Union Pacific official Adrian Guerrero said in a letter to Gascon.
“These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than twenty-four hours,” he continued. “Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to UP by these same criminals.”
