May 9, 2024 • 41 mins
In this very special season two premiere of Strangest Fruit Podcast, Didontae Farmer sits down with Los Angeles County District Attorney, George Gascón. We get straight to the truth. This is the real story of his decorated career as a police officer, public safety veteran and District Attorney. George Gascón's life story is truly remarkable, illustrating a powerful journey from an immigrant child with humble beginnings to a key figure in American law enforcement and criminal justice reform. His experiences reflect significant achievements and contributions to public service, highlighting his roles as a change agent in various high-level law enforcement positions, and later, as a leader in criminal justice reform. His story underscores the themes of resilience, dedication, and progressive leadership in facing systemic challenges, particularly in the context of law enforcement and judicial reforms. The intention behind Strangest Fruit Podcast is to have real conversations that can be uncomfortable but crucial for us to fix the times we are living in. Legacy media wants to keep us divided and arguing, blind to what is really going on. We're trying to find the truth and build bridges to make it better for the next generation. The Strangest Fruit Podcast embraces a critical and impactful mission to foster authentic discussions that might be uncomfortable but are essential for societal improvement. By aiming to uncover truths obscured by mainstream narratives and striving to bridge divides, the podcast sets itself apart as a vital platform for dialogue and understanding. This approach not only challenges prevailing media tendencies that often polarize but also seeks to create a more informed and unified future. Through these real conversations, Strangest Fruit aspires to lay groundwork for better understanding and cooperation, thereby shaping a more just and inclusive society for future generations.
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Produced by Heard Studio - https://linktr.ee/heardstudio
Shot by: @streetartistpictures Vincent Martinez
Sound - Griff Snyder AD - Yung Spiel Theme Song - @werdperfect
Listen to an in-depth discussion with an esteemed city official who shares his personal journey, from his beginnings as an immigrant in Los Angeles to his time in the Army, his career as an LAPD officer, and finally his rise to city official joy. Through this journey, our guest offers a critical analysis of the traditional model of public safety in the US, advocating for a more community-focused approach.
Our guest dives into complex topics with eloquence, explaining how the police need to adapt their methods of interaction to meet the unique needs and sensibilities of individual communities. His perspective uncovers often misunderstood views from marginalized communities toward the police, offering a platform for broad discussions about the future of law enforcement in America.
The conversation explores the intricacies of incarceration, the potential of individuals to change given the right opportunities, and the urgent need for a justice system that prioritizes rehabilitation over punishment. Additionally, the episode addresses the topic of wrongful conviction, highlighting the need for systemic changes to prevent such errors caused by failures in police work and prosecutorial processes.
This enlightening episode is a definitive guide for anyone interested in systemic change, social justice, or those seeking inspiration to prevail against all odds. Listen and be inspired not only to b
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:29):
You ready, Chief? I'm ready as to where we're being. Let's dance. I feel like Maverick.
All right. How's everybody doing on this wonderful, wonderful day in sunny Southern California?
Let's not take note to the guy who said he didn't like L.A. earlier. So now we have a note.
And this is probably one of the most biggest interviews of my career.
(00:54):
This is, well, probably for the whole city of Los Angeles County,
especially for the people in certain areas, Watts, Compton, Los Angeles County,
South Central, wherever places they may be at.
Because this is the first time that I'll say from my area of being formerly incarcerated,
tried as an adult, as well as the first podcast of this kind to actually sit
(01:15):
down with a major city official who came into L.A.
Like I came for the change. You know, and as the youngsters say now,
you came to stand on business and you said, you know, I want all the smoke.
And that's highly, highly appreciative because without you, a lot of stuff,
a lot of laws, a lot of rules, a lot of manipulation of the law.
(01:37):
From my perspective and from a lot of people nationwide, it would not be where it is now.
So first off, I would like to thank you.
For sure. Thank you. A lot of men and women sitting in prison right now,
if they had the chance, if they could, they'd be doing the same thing and saying,
thank you for what you're doing for our city.
I appreciate that. Thank you for doing this work. Yeah.
(01:59):
So tell us about Gascon in a sense of outside of all the crazy chaos that everybody
wants you to be responsible of.
Who are you as a person? Yeah, I mean, look, I grew up in a very poor immigrant
household, southeast LA, a place named Cattahay. Very few people know that place.
(02:23):
A very little city, southeast part of the county.
I was a monolingual Spanish speaker. I was doing very poor in school.
I was often hanging around with the wrong crowd. out, I dropped out of school,
dropped out of high school.
I joined the army and that was my salvation, if you will.
And that's where I finished my high school education.
(02:45):
Then I came out of the army, went to college, and then I became an LAPD officer.
And I was a police officer for, you know, almost a little over 30 years between
LAPD and then I was chief of police in Mesa, Arizona, and in San Francisco.
And I used to joke around that when I was a young kid before I went in the army,
(03:06):
we'd run away from the sheriff.
And then later on, I was the one that was chasing some kids around the neighborhood, right?
But I have my own personal evolution as I grew through the ranks.
I went to law school, I became an attorney.
The more that I mature professionally and the more work that I did,
(03:27):
not only locally, but I started doing national work and international work,
I recognized increasingly the model of public safety that we use in this country
was not necessarily achieving public safety.
Right. And, you know, there were several moments in my own evolution that kind
of created a sort of wake up calls, if you will.
(03:50):
One of them was the incident involving the beating of Rodney King.
And then the civil unrest that followed.
And I often tell people when I was a police officer at the time,
I was a surgeon, I used to call it a riot.
And today I call it a civil unrest.
And the reason for that is because today, when I say today,
(04:14):
I mean in the last two decades, is I recognize that so much of what went on
there was the anger and the impact that a very oppressive system,
both in policing, education,
and public health, and housing was having in communities of color,
(04:34):
in this case around the Watts area, which is where I work.
And while it is true that there were some people that were rioting and burning
buildings and all that stuff, there were a lot of people that were just simply
fed up with the conditions that they were living in and how much the system kept them down.
And the police play a role in that. Not the only role, but they play an important role.
And I started to think differently about my work and what would the work look like.
(05:02):
And, you know, a lot of people don't understand. Like, I'm not an abolitionist.
I believe that we have to have good policing. You know, I personally spend most
of my adult life in public safety.
But to me, you know, good policing is a very broad term, right?
It's a term that includes bringing community together.
It includes actually working with the community, getting community permission
(05:25):
to police in a way that it fits that community at the same time that you're protecting it.
That is a very, very interesting statement and belief system right there.
I believe it was about three weeks ago we were at a city council meeting in
Compton with the Game Changer event. And we were looking at the footage that
they had to where there was an officer speaking, a CHP, LAPD,
(05:47):
different people of the community.
And one of the things that the officer said was, no matter what I tell you to
do, you do what I tell you to do.
And it was such an uproar within the place that it was like,
did he really just say that?
And how comfortable and how normalized is it for you to live this way or conduct
(06:07):
yourself this way to actually believe that?
When you say you have to go to the people and ask for permission?
There needs to be a communication, basically.
Look, I think that we often harm not only the relationship, but I think we often
harm young police officers in the way that we train them.
When I was trained, it was always the concept that you needed to have the upper
(06:31):
hand, that you always had to be sort of the baddest, if you will,
in the scenario. And there's no question sometimes you've got to take control of the situation.
So I don't want to minimize that.
And there are times when police is going to have to use force,
including deadly force, to protect themselves and to protect others. And that is okay.
(06:52):
But generally speaking, police makes thousands of contacts every single day in our community.
And most of those contacts are for very minor things, as either the person is
reporting a crime, they witness a crime, or maybe it was a traffic stop for
a minor traffic violation.
And I think in those interactions, which is really what generally defines the
(07:16):
interaction between police and the community, is where you have, I believe,
an obligation to ensure that there is almost a joint governance approach to it.
Meaning the community and the police are meeting regularly, not necessarily
during that incident, but in preparation for that traffic stop.
(07:37):
We're thinking how, you know, what are the rules of engagement? How are we going to.
How are we going to enforce this, you know, smaller, you know,
statutes that need to be enforced, but do it in a way that makes sense for the community?
Where are you going to let people go away with a warning as opposed to a citation
or go away with a warning as opposed to an arrest or a citation as opposed to an arrest?
(08:00):
And, you know, generally police does really well in affluent communities doing that, right? Right.
So the question for me is, it's almost an issue of equal protection under the law.
Right. You should treat people in poor communities the same way that you would
treat people in more affluent communities and be culturally sensitive to the work that you're doing.
(08:24):
And I think when you do that, not only is a community going to be safer for
it's going to be safer for the officers.
And I think that then you gain the willing compliance of people that then they
accept the intrusions, if you will, of the law because they understand it's
for the greater good, right?
Because not only are the cops here, they are part of us.
(08:46):
I'm supposed to be in an occupational.
And that's interesting.
It's not even interesting. It's just cold fact. because me being a person who
was incarcerated and having seven sisters and there's nobody there to protect
them while I'm in prison.
If a situation occurs and they come to me and they ask, well, who do I go to?
(09:10):
And I tell them, you have to call the police. I can't do anything for you.
There are certain things that as a man or as a role model in the figure of the family that you do.
And there's certain things that you have to have a higher power and be involved
with. And that's where that's at.
Somebody gets their story robbed. You can't call me. I can't help you.
You have to call the police. Things happen at a schoolhouse.
(09:32):
You have to call the police. And.
I have to ask myself when it comes to policing, would I, and I had to learn
this from being incarcerated, I had to sit down and take accountability for
what I did, but also say, hey, do I have the ability to put myself in someone else's shoes?
And those shoes being the shoes of an officer, I make a moral inventory of that.
(09:54):
And I asked myself and I came to the conclusion, and it's a fact,
and I will openly admit it, I cannot be a cop.
And people are like, well, that's right. I know a lot of people,
yeah, you can't be a cop. No, I can't be a cop because I don't have the willpower
to say, hey, or have the quick thinking to say, I don't know if this guy has a gun or not.
I don't know whether he's going to do this. I don't know whether he's going to harm me or anything.
(10:18):
And for those reasons, I know to eliminate myself from that because there's
you're held to a higher caliber.
You were held to it. Now you're at the highest of it. So what you're telling me makes perfect sense.
But to the masses, when you have so many fingers pointed at you,
what is your angle of communication with those groups who just say,
(10:40):
hey, no, no, no, no, no, what you're doing is wrong, wrong, wrong?
How do you combat that?
Yeah, I mean, look, interestingly enough, the way that you express your feelings
actually are very common in the black and the brown community.
You know, people in the community want to have the police there. They need the police.
(11:01):
They know that when, you know, there is someone that wants to harm them,
the people they want to go to is the police.
They just want a police that is respectful, that is thoughtful.
So I think often people think that, for instance, people in the black community don't like the police.
And I found that to be actually the contrary. And I work in Watts for many years.
(11:21):
So I'm not speaking through a theoretical lens.
I was there. I was a sergeant. I was a lieutenant. I was a captain.
So I know what people are expecting.
And I think that people, you know, will support the police when they feel that
the police is there to protect them in a respectful manner.
You know, I used to tell cops all the time, you know, usually the way you fund
(11:44):
police stations is you have what is called a bond fund.
You know, you try, you go to the voters, you ask for money through a bond,
which is basically a loan that the government takes in order to do a government project.
And for police stations, generally, that's the way that it works.
And invariably, in my experience, when you have this election city-wide,
in any city, by the way, the black community will overwhelmingly support a bond
(12:09):
fund to build a new police station or to build a better police facility.
Unlike sometimes, quite frankly, more conservative communities that have a different
experience with the police, but they actually don't want to spend the money. Right? Right.
So the concept that somehow the African-American community, the brown community
are anti-police is a myth.
(12:30):
People want to be respected. People want to have a say in how their government works.
So to your point, I think that this is where, you know, good,
thoughtful, mature police officers can go in in the community.
They can be respectful. And that guy with a gun, they do what they have to do. Correct.
(12:50):
And when they have to take action, the majority of the community understands
it and they're going to support them, especially if he or she is someone that
has been working in that community and people have a history and that history
is one of mutual respect.
You know, I was a young officer. Actually, take it back. I was not a young officer.
I was a young sergeant working in the division.
(13:11):
And, you know, LAPD sergeants work by themselves. I have been an officer for many years.
Where you have a partner, I'm also going to work him by myself.
So, I'm not used to working by myself. Can you describe, place us,
what year and what's going on in Watson-Compton, California in that year and time?
It's a drastic change of what it is now.
(13:35):
Compton was considered then Chopper City, had the largest amount of AK-47s,
murders going on in that city.
How did you, first, how did you make it out of that?
As a high ranking officer and make your way up to be one of the most respected
and trusted? How did you do that as well as with the community?
Yeah. So look, I mean, I'm talking now, this incident that I'm going to describe
(13:55):
to you, I'm talking is about 1988.
I work in Newton Division, about a 10 square mile area, just in Newton Division,
around had about 80 homicides a year. That was the peak of the blood and crip wars.
We had a thousand homicides a year in the city in those areas. Right.
Nothing compared to today. day. And I remember, you know, one day there was
(14:16):
a gentleman that was at a corner in Central Avenue.
I think it was about 35th Street, 36, I can't remember where.
And he's acting up and he's swinging a stick and he's threatening people.
And I'm coming by myself, you know, I'm in the police cart and I stop.
I call for help, but, you know, help takes a while to get there.
And I I go out to try to intervene, right?
(14:39):
And pretty soon, things got pretty ugly, right?
Where it was, you know, I was really very close to having to shoot this individual, right?
And we didn't have a taser at that moment. You know, I didn't have any of those
tools with me at that moment.
And, you know, there were people in the community that recognized me because
I've been already working there for a while.
And it was some of those people that actually came in and helped me talk this person down.
(15:03):
And then he was taken into custody. He was going through a mental health episode, but very easily.
And by the way, it would have been lawful because it came closely dangerous
to me. I could have shot him.
And if it weren't for the assistance of the members of the community that were
there at the time, I probably would have had to in order to protect myself and protect others.
So my point is, you know, and this was like, you know, the high flow of the tension, right?
(15:28):
Where people were upset at the police and all that stuff. So even during those
years, people will make recognize when they're being treated with respect and,
you know, and act accordingly. Right.
So, I mean, my point to all this is that I think that policing is necessary
in every community, but it's certainly very necessary in communities that are very vulnerable.
(15:51):
Right. They go through a lot of other challenges. challenges and the
question is not to police or not to police the question is how do
you police how much policing you have and then what other resources
you bring into it right that gentleman that was having a
mental episode that would have been nicer instead of being with a gun would
have been you know somebody that has a public health training now clearly they're
(16:11):
not going to be out there patrolling so i understand all that but the point
is there are other ways to to do the work and then you know frankly that leads
to the next part of my question in my own personal evolution professionally.
I came to the conclusion that we incarcerate way too many people and that that
doesn't necessarily, again, that doesn't equate to more safety in our community.
Yes, some people are dangerous. Yes, some people need to be incarcerated and
(16:35):
held accountable because they're harmful at the time. But the question is.
When do you incarcerate people? How long do you incarcerate people for?
And what is behind that process to make sure that when people come out,
they're going to come out a better person than the one money?
A big, big question I've wanted to ask for years is what made you say just because
(16:58):
it had to be something that clicked to say, all right, enough is enough with
the juvenile over sentencing.
What made you say just it just the kids?
Because I survived CYA. I survived juvenile hall.
And went to prison straight at the age of eight. For my 18th birthday,
that was my gift, to be transferred to a maximum security prison.
What made you just say, you know what? I may be this one person against everybody
(17:20):
on this, along with Elizabeth Calvin, of course. Of course, yeah.
But I'm going to, this is what I'm going to be about.
And this is the first thing that I'm going to, what made, does that is a very, very big move.
Yeah. Look, I mean, there were multiple things. Number one, as I mentioned earlier,
I started doing work internationally. So I got to see other systems.
I got to see how European nations deal with juvenile offenders,
(17:44):
and it's very, very different to the way that we deal with them, right?
There is a presumption that, you know, the brain development science is going
to be the guiding force when you're dealing with juveniles.
Today, you know, we know also, and when I say today, I don't mean just today.
I mean, we've known for a couple of decades at least that the human brain doesn't
(18:05):
develop fully until we're somewhere in the mid-20s.
Jokingly, I said, actually, for the guys, it's like the mid-50s,
right? The women mature much, much earlier.
But joking aside, you know, so if you understand that we're all a product of
our environment, right?
And when your brain is not fully developed, you tend to be a risk taker, right?
(18:29):
So I tell people, look, if you were born in a family that has school divers,
you know, a 14, 15-year-old, not only do you want to be a school diver,
but you want to be a real badass school diver, right? You want to do what nobody
else is doing because you think you're invincible.
If you grew up in a community where there are gangs and there are shootings
and people are being killed and, you know, you might have even grown up in a
(18:49):
very violent home, right? Maybe your parents were fighting.
Your mother was the victim of domestic violence, right? You sort of have been
almost immunized from violence in some ways, right? Right.
So as a young person, just like this young kid in another setting may go out
school diving and do crazy stuff, school diving, you're going to do crazy stuff
(19:11):
in this other environment where there's a lot of a lot of violence.
So if you understand that, and you understand that if you actually try to provide
off-ramps for young people so they mature out of crime with the right level
of intervention and support and education,
that actually they can come out of that other end and be not only a more productive
(19:35):
human being for the entire community, but actually create more safety in the community.
Then you begin to question whether putting an 18-year-old or certainly putting
a 15, 16-year-old in an adult prison, which we did all the time, right?
So for me, it was, you know, sort of that my own personal growth intellectually and maturing.
(19:56):
I mean, listen, when I was a young cop, I used to say, you do adult crime,
you pay an adult price, right?
But I was ignorant. You know, I did not have the level of knowledge that we have today.
So I think it's, you know, how do we evolve, right, as a community?
How do we get to a place that actually creates more safety?
And when you look at the way that European countries like, you know,
(20:17):
the Scandinavian countries or Germany, how they deal with juvenile offenders,
they deal with them very differently.
And they don't have many of the problems that we have.
And I hear people, by the way, I used to hear people say, well,
you know, these are countries that are very homogenic.
Like, you know, the implication was, well, these are all white middle class places.
Well, no, they're not. Right. If you go to Berlin today, and by the way,
(20:39):
today, 10 years ago, Berlin is black.
Berlin is Muslim. Berlin is white. Berlin is gay, is Latino.
I mean, you walk in Berlin, you walk any street in Berlin, you could be walking
in New York City or L.A. being the more densely part of our city,
other than if you look at the street signs and the language.
So my point is this has nothing to do with the demographic makeup of a community.
(21:03):
It has to do with the way the system works.
That's correct. I was at a shop and I walked in and the owner,
he was like, I said, hey, have you have you heard about the theme?
What is your perception of Compton? What is your perception of L.A.?
What is your perception of these different places outside of where you're at?
And the first thing that came out of this guy's mouth was, well,
(21:27):
if Gascon would do this and do that. And I laughed.
He said, well, if you lock them all up. And I said and I grabbed my money and
I slid it back across the table and I looked at him. And I said,
you know, Gascon is one of the reasons why I'm here and the reason why my brother
is here and the reason why so many people are out.
Gascon is a reason why there's a juvenile going to college right now for his master's.
(21:48):
And he's a dog trainer because certain things were implemented and we're able to do this.
I said, but at the end of it, did you go and vote? He said, yes.
Did you read exactly what you voted for?
You can't be upset over something that you voted for if these were things that
were already implemented by the state and the city of Los Angeles County.
But what you can do is look more insightful and not be just one-sided and be
(22:12):
open-minded to learning different things.
If you want to judge a person off the crimes that they did at the age of 14,
it was one of our team members were talking.
They said if Malcolm X would have died at 21, he would have died as a drug addict,
a a pimp and some type of gambling.
Then they said if another person would have died, it says she would have died
(22:33):
as a prostitute and as a woman with multiple kids out of wedlock.
But being that these people live and they were given a chance at life.
You get to see these beautiful flowers blossom out of the concrete.
So if we're not going to give people the chances, then who are we? Are we cavemen?
Are we medieval? Are we moving backward and not moving forward?
(22:55):
And this is where there's two components to this, right? Just because you're
giving people chances doesn't mean you don't hold them accountable.
You hold them accountable.
But, you know, people, they should be, you know, I heard this and this is not
my words And I don't know who to attribute it to them, but I want to make sure
that I don't take credit for them.
But, you know, our system works on the presumption of innocence,
(23:18):
right, which is important.
But I heard someone say, you know, wouldn't we be a better place if we work
also under the presumption of redemption, the presumption of forgiveness?
I think we would be a much better world, right? Certainly we would be a much
better community. And again, you know, people that want to politicize this will
(23:39):
often say, well, it's often crime or you want to, you're going to,
no, we're not going to let them go, right? They're going to be held accountable.
The question is, what does accountability looks like for how long and what do
you want as an end product of that, right?
If your penal system is about punishment, you're going to have less success
than if your penal system is about rehabilitation.
(24:01):
You know, bringing people back, bringing people whole, right?
You know, that gentleman that you were buying a product, you know,
I would have told him also, you know, by the way,
The reason why I'm able to buy something and patronize your business is because
I was given a second chance. Right. Right?
Okay. That's, that's, that's how you get to patronize your business.
(24:22):
Making you a taxpayer. Right. Instead of somebody that's taking money from the
government, you're now a taxpayer.
Right. So this is, this is, I need to ask your honest opinion.
And for the people who are watching this, get an understanding of what he just did.
He just gave you, here goes a problem, here goes a resolution.
What we tend to live in is these are the problems.
These are the problems. We don't know any resolution and we don't want to deal with the resolution.
(24:45):
We don't even want to come and involve it. It basically becomes,
I'll say it, I no longer accept pity when I know there's a way to change something.
In because that just, my profession that I learned in prison is a dog trainer.
So I learned the perception of make it real simple. Dogs live in the moment.
(25:06):
You leave out of here and you come back, the dog will be like,
oh my God, I don't realize anything that happened with that.
I'm just happy to see you. Let me lick all over you. Oh, you got a treat.
Oh, that moment's going now. Now I'm happy about the treat.
And with certain dogs, it takes a different intensity level to correct them.
Me, myself, it took me 18 years of correction.
Did I commit the crime? I committed every single crime that I did.
(25:28):
I did it. I accepted, I went and did the whole process.
It's my turn to rehabilitate and learn.
So I learned the proper ways inside. I got that down. No matter whatever the
circumstance or whatever prison I was in, I put myself there.
I take accountability for that. That one of the biggest things and the hardest
(25:49):
things for a person to do is to accept or conform to being wrongfully convicted.
And we have a big problem with that in this nation.
What is your aspect on that? How do we move forward with correcting these issues?
Yeah, look, I mean, that's one of the, you know, one of the areas that we put
(26:10):
a lot of attention in this office.
You know, we have now exonerated 14 individuals.
And when you look at each of those, and by the way, we're working on about 100 cases.
And if you listen to the Innocence Project in L.A. County alone,
there may be as many as, well, I'm sorry, in the state of California,
there may be as many as 5,000 men and women in prison that are factually innocent.
(26:32):
But, you know, let's take our example. You know, every one of the cases that
we have exonerated, when you start looking sort of deeply into the case,
and by the way, we don't just do this.
I mean, we reinvestigate the case. We go through a great deal of work to make
sure that the person that we're seeking to exonerate, in fact,
(26:52):
is factually innocent. This is not, you know, a given.
But we find that there were major system failures. There was evidence that was ignored.
There was shoddy police work, shoddy prosecution work, bad direction from a judge.
I mean, generally, one or many of those are all coming together,
(27:13):
and you end up with a wrongful conviction.
But what I notice in most of these cases so far that we've seen is there is
sort of the overlay of racism, which impacts the system.
It's a bias, whether it's implicit or explicit, you see it over and over again.
(27:36):
Right. Black kid did something.
You have somebody that probably didn't see who that person was,
even cross-racially connected witness. that we know that generally we have a
hard time recognizing people of another race.
And we take the word for it, even though that if you took a little bit of time
and say, is it possible that you saw what you saw from where you were?
Could you have seen what you say you saw? Right. You know, what else is on board?
(28:00):
But we go with it because we have this presumption that if it's a black kid
or a brown kid, they must have done what they were accused of.
You know, maybe they had some bad history.
Maybe they didn't. We find, you know, some people actually had no bad history,
others did, but they were not
necessarily, they didn't commit the crime that they went to prison for.
(28:22):
So, you know, for me, this is an area that cries for attention of the state
at the national level. It should not be up to a local prosecutor.
I mean, we do it and we're doing it case by case. But I think there ought to be, quite frankly,
more of a, certainly in our state, statewide recognition that if in fact,
(28:43):
look, even if the Innocence Project is only 20% right, let's say that it's not 5,000, there's 1,000.
That's a lot of people that are in prison that are innocent, number one.
Number two, it also tells you that it's a system that breaks down often enough
to put other innocent people in prison, right?
So I think that, you know, we have an obligation both legislatively and collectively
(29:06):
to come up with solutions.
Number one, to make sure that if there are people that are in prison innocent, that they get released.
And it should not be up to the local prosecutor, you know, because let's say
that I'm out of office tomorrow. or some other guy could come in and say,
you know what, I'm going to do what the other people did before him,
which is ignore it, right?
It should be more a systemic approach to exonerations retroactively and a systemic
(29:29):
approach to avoiding future wrongful convictions.
With such cases like, example, Frankie Carrillo. Everybody knows who Frankie is.
Just extreme miscarriage of justice. I mean, all the way to the,
if you've seen the document, I'm pretty sure you did, is to have an officer
(29:50):
get on the stand and openly admit that, hey, I'm a Linwood Viking and this is what we do.
And this was messed up. And like, how how do how do you explain to a person
who's wrongfully convicted from your perspective to have them get an understanding
of saying, I know this is what you're up against.
Don't stop fighting when they've been sitting in prison for 15 years and it's
(30:13):
been a five year wait to at least get it back. And from a person sitting in
prison, it only takes five seconds for you to lose your life.
Look, first of all, I want to be humble enough to say that I don't know what
it's like being in prison.
Right. Right. I can only, you know, sort of think about it through discussions
(30:35):
that I've had with others.
So I don't want anybody to assume that here is this guy in a suit and tie telling,
you know, how to survive in prison.
Because that would be extremely irresponsible and, quite frankly,
just not the right thing.
Right. But here's what I think.
Okay, now this is I'm talking as a human being, not as a DA.
(30:57):
I think, you know, historically, when we stand strong in our convictions and
we fight and we don't give up, there is a greater likelihood that eventually you will succeed. see.
So my advice as a human being would be, look, I understand that you feel that
(31:18):
the system ruined you, and it did if you were innocent.
And I understand that the system continues to harm you by not acknowledging what occurred.
But there's also light at the tunnel, and that light at the tunnel only comes
for the one that did not give up, right?
You got to keep fighting. I'm going to give you an example, because I think
that will speak to many men and women that may be situated in this way.
(31:41):
And by the way, Frankie and I are personal friends, so I'm going to jump to
somebody that I have no relationship with other than we exonerated.
There's a gentleman by the name of Maurice Hastings. Maurice Hastings is an
African-American man that did approximately 37 years in prison. I know Mr. Hastings. Mr.
Hastings was accused and convicted of murder and rape.
(32:03):
This office, L.A. County VA, actually tried to get Mr.
Hastings to be executed. They fought the death penalty twice.
Fortunately, and by the way, when they did, that was a time when people could have been executed.
Fortunately, the jury agreed to the conviction, but not to the penalty phase.
So he wound up going to prison. He was gonna be in prison for the rest of his life.
(32:26):
Mr. Hastings always maintained his innocence from the beginning all the way through his release.
In fact, he was not paroled because when he was going from the parole board,
he refused to admit responsibility because I didn't do it. Right.
Therefore, I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't.
And Mr. Hastings was sort of a model prisoner. So he could have been released
(32:47):
by then, but he needed to admit to something.
And he said, I didn't do it. So I'm not going to do it. I'll stay in prison.
But here's where it really gets ugly, and this is why I like to give people hope, right?
Mr. Hastings actually started to educate himself in the last 20 years of his 37 years in prison.
He started to educate himself about, you know, how to seek behaviors,
(33:08):
how to try to get his case heard.
And he finally found people that wanted to represent him. And he asked this
office, two prior administrations back to back, he said, I said,
please test the DNA kit from the rape kit in this case,
because if you do, you're going to find out that I was not the person that committed the rape.
(33:29):
And by this time, DNA was advanced enough that we could have done it, you know, 20 years ago.
And this office twice under two administrations told them that rape kit was
not available. In fact, they told him it was destroyed.
And then when I came into office, what he did, Mr.
Hastings, talking about persistence,
he did it with one DA. That DA went away, he did it with the next.
(33:49):
That DA went away, then I come in, he did it with the next, right? He did not give up.
Had Mr. Hastings given up, he would still be in prison today.
But he sent it, and interestingly enough, members of my staff at the time,
and they're no longer my staff, they said, you know, your job,
our job is to protect the integrity of the conviction.
(34:10):
And I said, well, bingo, you know, so we're all for the facts.
No, no, no. Protect the conviction.
And I said, but wait a minute. It's in our job to seek the truth.
Right? Semantics. Seek the truth. So make a long story short,
and I don't want to get all the details.
Because it takes a while, but we went out, you know, I give direction,
(34:33):
let's try to see if the DNA kit's available, I mean the rape kit,
and we found it, the England Police Department had it in their evidence.
Refrigerator, and that kit was tested,
and lo and behold, it came back to another man who went out to rape another
woman after because that's the problem, with a wrongful conviction,
(34:56):
not only are you causing harm to one person, but you cause harm to the entire
community because the person that did the harm continues to be out there with
the capacity to harm others.
In this case, another woman unnecessarily was raped because this guy was allowed
to continue to go around freely.
He eventually died in prison out of, you know, some medical conditions.
(35:18):
But my point is, Mr. Hastings is not a free man, and he would not be a free
man, but for his faith and his persistence in keep pushing and pushing and pushing until he got out.
Now, arguably many would say, well, he should have been out 20 years ago.
Well, he should have been out 37 years ago, right? He should have never gone into prison.
(35:40):
But to those that are out there and are thinking about giving up,
just think about Mr. Hastings. Don't give up.
That's one of the things I talked to the two men about. But all this,
all this, this isn't my thing, Mr. Gasol.
I just, I'm a simple man who wants to train dogs, and I love my city of Compton.
(36:00):
I take pride in my citizens and everybody that's there. Sure.
And two names came across, and it was our producer, Ray. He was like, hey, it's these guys.
Not the college you're educated on law, but if I can read cases and within those
cases to the plain eye, it doesn't make sense and nothing adds up.
I'm like, man, it's something that it irks at you. It reaches out.
(36:23):
It's like, you need to do something. There's something here.
So I take it and I give it to a person that has nothing. I go way to,
what is it? Wilming Whittier somewhere.
Hey, to a school teacher, read this. Do these cases make sense?
Take your time. I don't care if it takes you a year.
They say, yeah, this, this is something about this. It's, it's just plain right
here in my face. And I was like, well, all right, let's, let's start the fight for Gascon. Yeah.
(36:47):
Like I said, we're looking at over a hundred cases right now and they,
you know, they keep coming and, you know, we,
unfortunately, and this is the reason why I said earlier, it should not be up
to a local prosecutor because they're really, the state needs to put the resources
available to make sure that these cases are investigated and that we move through them expeditiously.
And it should not be up to the local resources or certainly should not be up
(37:09):
to just the prosecutor, right?
Because as I said, you know, Mr. Hastings again, and I go back to him,
but there are 14 others now.
These are people that were sitting there in prior administrations were refusing to look at it.
And I'm sure there are many other county district attorneys that would do the
same thing that was being done here before.
Well, this was very impactful, very educational.
(37:30):
I learned a lot. I mean, a lot of stuff I wouldn't get homework before I Like
the world needs to catch up on Mr. Gascon. I've been studying.
But what does the community need to do in order to get certain laws or whatever
rules, whatever it is, implemented?
Because a lot of us don't know. Like I didn't even know about voting things
until I got out because it's not seen.
(37:50):
I mean, look, first of all, let me begin by saying that I understand it's not easy, right?
You know, getting involved, being informed, participating in the political process,
you know, For people that are working every day just trying to pay the rent
and put food on the table, it's not an easy thing to do.
But here's the thing that I'd like people to think about.
(38:11):
When you do not engage the process, when you are not informed,
when you vote or even don't vote, what you're doing is you're giving your voice to someone else.
And that other someone else may not necessarily have your best interest at heart.
(38:32):
So it is important that people understand that they must get involved.
Right. To me, it's not an option. Right.
If you are unhappy with what's going on, then you have to get involved.
And that means, you know, getting to know your elected officials,
reading, you know, informing yourself when you're going to vote.
(38:53):
And then obviously the more time that you have, if you can work on helping,
you know, legislation pass, then you do that.
But at the very least, you know, just sort of the floor, the bottom line,
make sure that you understand who is representing you, what they stand for. Or how do they vote?
And when you do go out to vote, make sure that you're voting for people that
(39:16):
hopefully represent your needs and your desires.
You know, I tell people, and this sounds a little crass, but I'll say it here.
And, you know, again, not my saying. I heard that from someone else.
But if you're not at the table, you are on the table.
Meaning if you're not sitting and playing a role in how things are decided,
(39:41):
then somebody else has you on a dish and they're dealing with you however they want to.
That makes sense to me. I know it. It couldn't get any plainer than that.
Right. One last little snippet. When can we get you back down there in a hub and a dub?
When can we get you back down there confident wise? You know what?
Talk to Tiffany and we'll figure it out. Calendar is tough, but we'll try to make it time.
(40:02):
I really, really appreciate this. I know that you're busy. We got to get busy back to work. Yep.
And send something to the kids out there.
Look, I know that sometimes it's very, very hard.
And I thought, I know that sometimes you may think nobody cares for you.
And look, this is where I do have an experience. Okay.
You're looking at a former high school dropout.
(40:24):
Okay. I grew up in conditions, probably very similar to the conditions that many of you grew up.
Most of the kids that I grew up with wound up in other places that thankfully
I'm not. Don't give up on yourself.
The neighborhood is not the place that is doing it for you. Look for a way out.
Believe in yourself and fight for what you believe.
(40:47):
That's it right there. That's a wrap. Right. It's a real pleasure.
I appreciate it. We will be seeing each other again.
Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Good deal. You got it. Indeed. All right. Thank you, everybody.
Good deal. I wanted a... I wanted an autograph. Okay. A podcast called Strangest Fruit.
Music.
Music.
(00:29):
You ready, Chief? I'm ready as to where we're being. Let's dance. I feel like Maverick.
All right. How's everybody doing on this wonderful, wonderful day in sunny Southern California?
Let's not take note to the guy who said he didn't like L.A. earlier. So now we have a note.
And this is probably one of the most biggest interviews of my career.
(00:54):
This is, well, probably for the whole city of Los Angeles County,
especially for the people in certain areas, Watts, Compton, Los Angeles County,
South Central, wherever places they may be at.
Because this is the first time that I'll say from my area of being formerly incarcerated,
tried as an adult, as well as the first podcast of this kind to actually sit
(01:15):
down with a major city official who came into L.A.
Like I came for the change. You know, and as the youngsters say now,
you came to stand on business and you said, you know, I want all the smoke.
And that's highly, highly appreciative because without you, a lot of stuff,
a lot of laws, a lot of rules, a lot of manipulation of the law.
(01:37):
From my perspective and from a lot of people nationwide, it would not be where it is now.
So first off, I would like to thank you.
For sure. Thank you. A lot of men and women sitting in prison right now,
if they had the chance, if they could, they'd be doing the same thing and saying,
thank you for what you're doing for our city.
I appreciate that. Thank you for doing this work. Yeah.
(01:59):
So tell us about Gascon in a sense of outside of all the crazy chaos that everybody
wants you to be responsible of.
Who are you as a person? Yeah, I mean, look, I grew up in a very poor immigrant
household, southeast LA, a place named Cattahay. Very few people know that place.
(02:23):
A very little city, southeast part of the county.
I was a monolingual Spanish speaker. I was doing very poor in school.
I was often hanging around with the wrong crowd. out, I dropped out of school,
dropped out of high school.
I joined the army and that was my salvation, if you will.
And that's where I finished my high school education.
(02:45):
Then I came out of the army, went to college, and then I became an LAPD officer.
And I was a police officer for, you know, almost a little over 30 years between
LAPD and then I was chief of police in Mesa, Arizona, and in San Francisco.
And I used to joke around that when I was a young kid before I went in the army,
(03:06):
we'd run away from the sheriff.
And then later on, I was the one that was chasing some kids around the neighborhood, right?
But I have my own personal evolution as I grew through the ranks.
I went to law school, I became an attorney.
The more that I mature professionally and the more work that I did,
(03:27):
not only locally, but I started doing national work and international work,
I recognized increasingly the model of public safety that we use in this country
was not necessarily achieving public safety.
Right. And, you know, there were several moments in my own evolution that kind
of created a sort of wake up calls, if you will.
(03:50):
One of them was the incident involving the beating of Rodney King.
And then the civil unrest that followed.
And I often tell people when I was a police officer at the time,
I was a surgeon, I used to call it a riot.
And today I call it a civil unrest.
And the reason for that is because today, when I say today,
(04:14):
I mean in the last two decades, is I recognize that so much of what went on
there was the anger and the impact that a very oppressive system,
both in policing, education,
and public health, and housing was having in communities of color,
(04:34):
in this case around the Watts area, which is where I work.
And while it is true that there were some people that were rioting and burning
buildings and all that stuff, there were a lot of people that were just simply
fed up with the conditions that they were living in and how much the system kept them down.
And the police play a role in that. Not the only role, but they play an important role.
And I started to think differently about my work and what would the work look like.
(05:02):
And, you know, a lot of people don't understand. Like, I'm not an abolitionist.
I believe that we have to have good policing. You know, I personally spend most
of my adult life in public safety.
But to me, you know, good policing is a very broad term, right?
It's a term that includes bringing community together.
It includes actually working with the community, getting community permission
(05:25):
to police in a way that it fits that community at the same time that you're protecting it.
That is a very, very interesting statement and belief system right there.
I believe it was about three weeks ago we were at a city council meeting in
Compton with the Game Changer event. And we were looking at the footage that
they had to where there was an officer speaking, a CHP, LAPD,
(05:47):
different people of the community.
And one of the things that the officer said was, no matter what I tell you to
do, you do what I tell you to do.
And it was such an uproar within the place that it was like,
did he really just say that?
And how comfortable and how normalized is it for you to live this way or conduct
(06:07):
yourself this way to actually believe that?
When you say you have to go to the people and ask for permission?
There needs to be a communication, basically.
Look, I think that we often harm not only the relationship, but I think we often
harm young police officers in the way that we train them.
When I was trained, it was always the concept that you needed to have the upper
(06:31):
hand, that you always had to be sort of the baddest, if you will,
in the scenario. And there's no question sometimes you've got to take control of the situation.
So I don't want to minimize that.
And there are times when police is going to have to use force,
including deadly force, to protect themselves and to protect others. And that is okay.
(06:52):
But generally speaking, police makes thousands of contacts every single day in our community.
And most of those contacts are for very minor things, as either the person is
reporting a crime, they witness a crime, or maybe it was a traffic stop for
a minor traffic violation.
And I think in those interactions, which is really what generally defines the
(07:16):
interaction between police and the community, is where you have, I believe,
an obligation to ensure that there is almost a joint governance approach to it.
Meaning the community and the police are meeting regularly, not necessarily
during that incident, but in preparation for that traffic stop.
(07:37):
We're thinking how, you know, what are the rules of engagement? How are we going to.
How are we going to enforce this, you know, smaller, you know,
statutes that need to be enforced, but do it in a way that makes sense for the community?
Where are you going to let people go away with a warning as opposed to a citation
or go away with a warning as opposed to an arrest or a citation as opposed to an arrest?
(08:00):
And, you know, generally police does really well in affluent communities doing that, right? Right.
So the question for me is, it's almost an issue of equal protection under the law.
Right. You should treat people in poor communities the same way that you would
treat people in more affluent communities and be culturally sensitive to the work that you're doing.
(08:24):
And I think when you do that, not only is a community going to be safer for
it's going to be safer for the officers.
And I think that then you gain the willing compliance of people that then they
accept the intrusions, if you will, of the law because they understand it's
for the greater good, right?
Because not only are the cops here, they are part of us.
(08:46):
I'm supposed to be in an occupational.
And that's interesting.
It's not even interesting. It's just cold fact. because me being a person who
was incarcerated and having seven sisters and there's nobody there to protect
them while I'm in prison.
If a situation occurs and they come to me and they ask, well, who do I go to?
(09:10):
And I tell them, you have to call the police. I can't do anything for you.
There are certain things that as a man or as a role model in the figure of the family that you do.
And there's certain things that you have to have a higher power and be involved
with. And that's where that's at.
Somebody gets their story robbed. You can't call me. I can't help you.
You have to call the police. Things happen at a schoolhouse.
(09:32):
You have to call the police. And.
I have to ask myself when it comes to policing, would I, and I had to learn
this from being incarcerated, I had to sit down and take accountability for
what I did, but also say, hey, do I have the ability to put myself in someone else's shoes?
And those shoes being the shoes of an officer, I make a moral inventory of that.
(09:54):
And I asked myself and I came to the conclusion, and it's a fact,
and I will openly admit it, I cannot be a cop.
And people are like, well, that's right. I know a lot of people,
yeah, you can't be a cop. No, I can't be a cop because I don't have the willpower
to say, hey, or have the quick thinking to say, I don't know if this guy has a gun or not.
I don't know whether he's going to do this. I don't know whether he's going to harm me or anything.
(10:18):
And for those reasons, I know to eliminate myself from that because there's
you're held to a higher caliber.
You were held to it. Now you're at the highest of it. So what you're telling me makes perfect sense.
But to the masses, when you have so many fingers pointed at you,
what is your angle of communication with those groups who just say,
(10:40):
hey, no, no, no, no, no, what you're doing is wrong, wrong, wrong?
How do you combat that?
Yeah, I mean, look, interestingly enough, the way that you express your feelings
actually are very common in the black and the brown community.
You know, people in the community want to have the police there. They need the police.
(11:01):
They know that when, you know, there is someone that wants to harm them,
the people they want to go to is the police.
They just want a police that is respectful, that is thoughtful.
So I think often people think that, for instance, people in the black community don't like the police.
And I found that to be actually the contrary. And I work in Watts for many years.
(11:21):
So I'm not speaking through a theoretical lens.
I was there. I was a sergeant. I was a lieutenant. I was a captain.
So I know what people are expecting.
And I think that people, you know, will support the police when they feel that
the police is there to protect them in a respectful manner.
You know, I used to tell cops all the time, you know, usually the way you fund
(11:44):
police stations is you have what is called a bond fund.
You know, you try, you go to the voters, you ask for money through a bond,
which is basically a loan that the government takes in order to do a government project.
And for police stations, generally, that's the way that it works.
And invariably, in my experience, when you have this election city-wide,
in any city, by the way, the black community will overwhelmingly support a bond
(12:09):
fund to build a new police station or to build a better police facility.
Unlike sometimes, quite frankly, more conservative communities that have a different
experience with the police, but they actually don't want to spend the money. Right? Right.
So the concept that somehow the African-American community, the brown community
are anti-police is a myth.
(12:30):
People want to be respected. People want to have a say in how their government works.
So to your point, I think that this is where, you know, good,
thoughtful, mature police officers can go in in the community.
They can be respectful. And that guy with a gun, they do what they have to do. Correct.
(12:50):
And when they have to take action, the majority of the community understands
it and they're going to support them, especially if he or she is someone that
has been working in that community and people have a history and that history
is one of mutual respect.
You know, I was a young officer. Actually, take it back. I was not a young officer.
I was a young sergeant working in the division.
(13:11):
And, you know, LAPD sergeants work by themselves. I have been an officer for many years.
Where you have a partner, I'm also going to work him by myself.
So, I'm not used to working by myself. Can you describe, place us,
what year and what's going on in Watson-Compton, California in that year and time?
It's a drastic change of what it is now.
(13:35):
Compton was considered then Chopper City, had the largest amount of AK-47s,
murders going on in that city.
How did you, first, how did you make it out of that?
As a high ranking officer and make your way up to be one of the most respected
and trusted? How did you do that as well as with the community?
Yeah. So look, I mean, I'm talking now, this incident that I'm going to describe
(13:55):
to you, I'm talking is about 1988.
I work in Newton Division, about a 10 square mile area, just in Newton Division,
around had about 80 homicides a year. That was the peak of the blood and crip wars.
We had a thousand homicides a year in the city in those areas. Right.
Nothing compared to today. day. And I remember, you know, one day there was
(14:16):
a gentleman that was at a corner in Central Avenue.
I think it was about 35th Street, 36, I can't remember where.
And he's acting up and he's swinging a stick and he's threatening people.
And I'm coming by myself, you know, I'm in the police cart and I stop.
I call for help, but, you know, help takes a while to get there.
And I I go out to try to intervene, right?
(14:39):
And pretty soon, things got pretty ugly, right?
Where it was, you know, I was really very close to having to shoot this individual, right?
And we didn't have a taser at that moment. You know, I didn't have any of those
tools with me at that moment.
And, you know, there were people in the community that recognized me because
I've been already working there for a while.
And it was some of those people that actually came in and helped me talk this person down.
(15:03):
And then he was taken into custody. He was going through a mental health episode, but very easily.
And by the way, it would have been lawful because it came closely dangerous
to me. I could have shot him.
And if it weren't for the assistance of the members of the community that were
there at the time, I probably would have had to in order to protect myself and protect others.
So my point is, you know, and this was like, you know, the high flow of the tension, right?
(15:28):
Where people were upset at the police and all that stuff. So even during those
years, people will make recognize when they're being treated with respect and,
you know, and act accordingly. Right.
So, I mean, my point to all this is that I think that policing is necessary
in every community, but it's certainly very necessary in communities that are very vulnerable.
(15:51):
Right. They go through a lot of other challenges. challenges and the
question is not to police or not to police the question is how do
you police how much policing you have and then what other resources
you bring into it right that gentleman that was having a
mental episode that would have been nicer instead of being with a gun would
have been you know somebody that has a public health training now clearly they're
(16:11):
not going to be out there patrolling so i understand all that but the point
is there are other ways to to do the work and then you know frankly that leads
to the next part of my question in my own personal evolution professionally.
I came to the conclusion that we incarcerate way too many people and that that
doesn't necessarily, again, that doesn't equate to more safety in our community.
Yes, some people are dangerous. Yes, some people need to be incarcerated and
(16:35):
held accountable because they're harmful at the time. But the question is.
When do you incarcerate people? How long do you incarcerate people for?
And what is behind that process to make sure that when people come out,
they're going to come out a better person than the one money?
A big, big question I've wanted to ask for years is what made you say just because
(16:58):
it had to be something that clicked to say, all right, enough is enough with
the juvenile over sentencing.
What made you say just it just the kids?
Because I survived CYA. I survived juvenile hall.
And went to prison straight at the age of eight. For my 18th birthday,
that was my gift, to be transferred to a maximum security prison.
What made you just say, you know what? I may be this one person against everybody
(17:20):
on this, along with Elizabeth Calvin, of course. Of course, yeah.
But I'm going to, this is what I'm going to be about.
And this is the first thing that I'm going to, what made, does that is a very, very big move.
Yeah. Look, I mean, there were multiple things. Number one, as I mentioned earlier,
I started doing work internationally. So I got to see other systems.
I got to see how European nations deal with juvenile offenders,
(17:44):
and it's very, very different to the way that we deal with them, right?
There is a presumption that, you know, the brain development science is going
to be the guiding force when you're dealing with juveniles.
Today, you know, we know also, and when I say today, I don't mean just today.
I mean, we've known for a couple of decades at least that the human brain doesn't
(18:05):
develop fully until we're somewhere in the mid-20s.
Jokingly, I said, actually, for the guys, it's like the mid-50s,
right? The women mature much, much earlier.
But joking aside, you know, so if you understand that we're all a product of
our environment, right?
And when your brain is not fully developed, you tend to be a risk taker, right?
(18:29):
So I tell people, look, if you were born in a family that has school divers,
you know, a 14, 15-year-old, not only do you want to be a school diver,
but you want to be a real badass school diver, right? You want to do what nobody
else is doing because you think you're invincible.
If you grew up in a community where there are gangs and there are shootings
and people are being killed and, you know, you might have even grown up in a
(18:49):
very violent home, right? Maybe your parents were fighting.
Your mother was the victim of domestic violence, right? You sort of have been
almost immunized from violence in some ways, right? Right.
So as a young person, just like this young kid in another setting may go out
school diving and do crazy stuff, school diving, you're going to do crazy stuff
(19:11):
in this other environment where there's a lot of a lot of violence.
So if you understand that, and you understand that if you actually try to provide
off-ramps for young people so they mature out of crime with the right level
of intervention and support and education,
that actually they can come out of that other end and be not only a more productive
(19:35):
human being for the entire community, but actually create more safety in the community.
Then you begin to question whether putting an 18-year-old or certainly putting
a 15, 16-year-old in an adult prison, which we did all the time, right?
So for me, it was, you know, sort of that my own personal growth intellectually and maturing.
(19:56):
I mean, listen, when I was a young cop, I used to say, you do adult crime,
you pay an adult price, right?
But I was ignorant. You know, I did not have the level of knowledge that we have today.
So I think it's, you know, how do we evolve, right, as a community?
How do we get to a place that actually creates more safety?
And when you look at the way that European countries like, you know,
(20:17):
the Scandinavian countries or Germany, how they deal with juvenile offenders,
they deal with them very differently.
And they don't have many of the problems that we have.
And I hear people, by the way, I used to hear people say, well,
you know, these are countries that are very homogenic.
Like, you know, the implication was, well, these are all white middle class places.
Well, no, they're not. Right. If you go to Berlin today, and by the way,
(20:39):
today, 10 years ago, Berlin is black.
Berlin is Muslim. Berlin is white. Berlin is gay, is Latino.
I mean, you walk in Berlin, you walk any street in Berlin, you could be walking
in New York City or L.A. being the more densely part of our city,
other than if you look at the street signs and the language.
So my point is this has nothing to do with the demographic makeup of a community.
(21:03):
It has to do with the way the system works.
That's correct. I was at a shop and I walked in and the owner,
he was like, I said, hey, have you have you heard about the theme?
What is your perception of Compton? What is your perception of L.A.?
What is your perception of these different places outside of where you're at?
And the first thing that came out of this guy's mouth was, well,
(21:27):
if Gascon would do this and do that. And I laughed.
He said, well, if you lock them all up. And I said and I grabbed my money and
I slid it back across the table and I looked at him. And I said,
you know, Gascon is one of the reasons why I'm here and the reason why my brother
is here and the reason why so many people are out.
Gascon is a reason why there's a juvenile going to college right now for his master's.
(21:48):
And he's a dog trainer because certain things were implemented and we're able to do this.
I said, but at the end of it, did you go and vote? He said, yes.
Did you read exactly what you voted for?
You can't be upset over something that you voted for if these were things that
were already implemented by the state and the city of Los Angeles County.
But what you can do is look more insightful and not be just one-sided and be
(22:12):
open-minded to learning different things.
If you want to judge a person off the crimes that they did at the age of 14,
it was one of our team members were talking.
They said if Malcolm X would have died at 21, he would have died as a drug addict,
a a pimp and some type of gambling.
Then they said if another person would have died, it says she would have died
(22:33):
as a prostitute and as a woman with multiple kids out of wedlock.
But being that these people live and they were given a chance at life.
You get to see these beautiful flowers blossom out of the concrete.
So if we're not going to give people the chances, then who are we? Are we cavemen?
Are we medieval? Are we moving backward and not moving forward?
(22:55):
And this is where there's two components to this, right? Just because you're
giving people chances doesn't mean you don't hold them accountable.
You hold them accountable.
But, you know, people, they should be, you know, I heard this and this is not
my words And I don't know who to attribute it to them, but I want to make sure
that I don't take credit for them.
But, you know, our system works on the presumption of innocence,
(23:18):
right, which is important.
But I heard someone say, you know, wouldn't we be a better place if we work
also under the presumption of redemption, the presumption of forgiveness?
I think we would be a much better world, right? Certainly we would be a much
better community. And again, you know, people that want to politicize this will
(23:39):
often say, well, it's often crime or you want to, you're going to,
no, we're not going to let them go, right? They're going to be held accountable.
The question is, what does accountability looks like for how long and what do
you want as an end product of that, right?
If your penal system is about punishment, you're going to have less success
than if your penal system is about rehabilitation.
(24:01):
You know, bringing people back, bringing people whole, right?
You know, that gentleman that you were buying a product, you know,
I would have told him also, you know, by the way,
The reason why I'm able to buy something and patronize your business is because
I was given a second chance. Right. Right?
Okay. That's, that's, that's how you get to patronize your business.
(24:22):
Making you a taxpayer. Right. Instead of somebody that's taking money from the
government, you're now a taxpayer.
Right. So this is, this is, I need to ask your honest opinion.
And for the people who are watching this, get an understanding of what he just did.
He just gave you, here goes a problem, here goes a resolution.
What we tend to live in is these are the problems.
These are the problems. We don't know any resolution and we don't want to deal with the resolution.
(24:45):
We don't even want to come and involve it. It basically becomes,
I'll say it, I no longer accept pity when I know there's a way to change something.
In because that just, my profession that I learned in prison is a dog trainer.
So I learned the perception of make it real simple. Dogs live in the moment.
(25:06):
You leave out of here and you come back, the dog will be like,
oh my God, I don't realize anything that happened with that.
I'm just happy to see you. Let me lick all over you. Oh, you got a treat.
Oh, that moment's going now. Now I'm happy about the treat.
And with certain dogs, it takes a different intensity level to correct them.
Me, myself, it took me 18 years of correction.
Did I commit the crime? I committed every single crime that I did.
(25:28):
I did it. I accepted, I went and did the whole process.
It's my turn to rehabilitate and learn.
So I learned the proper ways inside. I got that down. No matter whatever the
circumstance or whatever prison I was in, I put myself there.
I take accountability for that. That one of the biggest things and the hardest
(25:49):
things for a person to do is to accept or conform to being wrongfully convicted.
And we have a big problem with that in this nation.
What is your aspect on that? How do we move forward with correcting these issues?
Yeah, look, I mean, that's one of the, you know, one of the areas that we put
(26:10):
a lot of attention in this office.
You know, we have now exonerated 14 individuals.
And when you look at each of those, and by the way, we're working on about 100 cases.
And if you listen to the Innocence Project in L.A. County alone,
there may be as many as, well, I'm sorry, in the state of California,
there may be as many as 5,000 men and women in prison that are factually innocent.
(26:32):
But, you know, let's take our example. You know, every one of the cases that
we have exonerated, when you start looking sort of deeply into the case,
and by the way, we don't just do this.
I mean, we reinvestigate the case. We go through a great deal of work to make
sure that the person that we're seeking to exonerate, in fact,
(26:52):
is factually innocent. This is not, you know, a given.
But we find that there were major system failures. There was evidence that was ignored.
There was shoddy police work, shoddy prosecution work, bad direction from a judge.
I mean, generally, one or many of those are all coming together,
(27:13):
and you end up with a wrongful conviction.
But what I notice in most of these cases so far that we've seen is there is
sort of the overlay of racism, which impacts the system.
It's a bias, whether it's implicit or explicit, you see it over and over again.
(27:36):
Right. Black kid did something.
You have somebody that probably didn't see who that person was,
even cross-racially connected witness. that we know that generally we have a
hard time recognizing people of another race.
And we take the word for it, even though that if you took a little bit of time
and say, is it possible that you saw what you saw from where you were?
Could you have seen what you say you saw? Right. You know, what else is on board?
(28:00):
But we go with it because we have this presumption that if it's a black kid
or a brown kid, they must have done what they were accused of.
You know, maybe they had some bad history.
Maybe they didn't. We find, you know, some people actually had no bad history,
others did, but they were not
necessarily, they didn't commit the crime that they went to prison for.
(28:22):
So, you know, for me, this is an area that cries for attention of the state
at the national level. It should not be up to a local prosecutor.
I mean, we do it and we're doing it case by case. But I think there ought to be, quite frankly,
more of a, certainly in our state, statewide recognition that if in fact,
(28:43):
look, even if the Innocence Project is only 20% right, let's say that it's not 5,000, there's 1,000.
That's a lot of people that are in prison that are innocent, number one.
Number two, it also tells you that it's a system that breaks down often enough
to put other innocent people in prison, right?
So I think that, you know, we have an obligation both legislatively and collectively
(29:06):
to come up with solutions.
Number one, to make sure that if there are people that are in prison innocent, that they get released.
And it should not be up to the local prosecutor, you know, because let's say
that I'm out of office tomorrow. or some other guy could come in and say,
you know what, I'm going to do what the other people did before him,
which is ignore it, right?
It should be more a systemic approach to exonerations retroactively and a systemic
(29:29):
approach to avoiding future wrongful convictions.
With such cases like, example, Frankie Carrillo. Everybody knows who Frankie is.
Just extreme miscarriage of justice. I mean, all the way to the,
if you've seen the document, I'm pretty sure you did, is to have an officer
(29:50):
get on the stand and openly admit that, hey, I'm a Linwood Viking and this is what we do.
And this was messed up. And like, how how do how do you explain to a person
who's wrongfully convicted from your perspective to have them get an understanding
of saying, I know this is what you're up against.
Don't stop fighting when they've been sitting in prison for 15 years and it's
(30:13):
been a five year wait to at least get it back. And from a person sitting in
prison, it only takes five seconds for you to lose your life.
Look, first of all, I want to be humble enough to say that I don't know what
it's like being in prison.
Right. Right. I can only, you know, sort of think about it through discussions
(30:35):
that I've had with others.
So I don't want anybody to assume that here is this guy in a suit and tie telling,
you know, how to survive in prison.
Because that would be extremely irresponsible and, quite frankly,
just not the right thing.
Right. But here's what I think.
Okay, now this is I'm talking as a human being, not as a DA.
(30:57):
I think, you know, historically, when we stand strong in our convictions and
we fight and we don't give up, there is a greater likelihood that eventually you will succeed. see.
So my advice as a human being would be, look, I understand that you feel that
(31:18):
the system ruined you, and it did if you were innocent.
And I understand that the system continues to harm you by not acknowledging what occurred.
But there's also light at the tunnel, and that light at the tunnel only comes
for the one that did not give up, right?
You got to keep fighting. I'm going to give you an example, because I think
that will speak to many men and women that may be situated in this way.
(31:41):
And by the way, Frankie and I are personal friends, so I'm going to jump to
somebody that I have no relationship with other than we exonerated.
There's a gentleman by the name of Maurice Hastings. Maurice Hastings is an
African-American man that did approximately 37 years in prison. I know Mr. Hastings. Mr.
Hastings was accused and convicted of murder and rape.
(32:03):
This office, L.A. County VA, actually tried to get Mr.
Hastings to be executed. They fought the death penalty twice.
Fortunately, and by the way, when they did, that was a time when people could have been executed.
Fortunately, the jury agreed to the conviction, but not to the penalty phase.
So he wound up going to prison. He was gonna be in prison for the rest of his life.
(32:26):
Mr. Hastings always maintained his innocence from the beginning all the way through his release.
In fact, he was not paroled because when he was going from the parole board,
he refused to admit responsibility because I didn't do it. Right.
Therefore, I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't.
And Mr. Hastings was sort of a model prisoner. So he could have been released
(32:47):
by then, but he needed to admit to something.
And he said, I didn't do it. So I'm not going to do it. I'll stay in prison.
But here's where it really gets ugly, and this is why I like to give people hope, right?
Mr. Hastings actually started to educate himself in the last 20 years of his 37 years in prison.
He started to educate himself about, you know, how to seek behaviors,
(33:08):
how to try to get his case heard.
And he finally found people that wanted to represent him. And he asked this
office, two prior administrations back to back, he said, I said,
please test the DNA kit from the rape kit in this case,
because if you do, you're going to find out that I was not the person that committed the rape.
(33:29):
And by this time, DNA was advanced enough that we could have done it, you know, 20 years ago.
And this office twice under two administrations told them that rape kit was
not available. In fact, they told him it was destroyed.
And then when I came into office, what he did, Mr.
Hastings, talking about persistence,
he did it with one DA. That DA went away, he did it with the next.
(33:49):
That DA went away, then I come in, he did it with the next, right? He did not give up.
Had Mr. Hastings given up, he would still be in prison today.
But he sent it, and interestingly enough, members of my staff at the time,
and they're no longer my staff, they said, you know, your job,
our job is to protect the integrity of the conviction.
(34:10):
And I said, well, bingo, you know, so we're all for the facts.
No, no, no. Protect the conviction.
And I said, but wait a minute. It's in our job to seek the truth.
Right? Semantics. Seek the truth. So make a long story short,
and I don't want to get all the details.
Because it takes a while, but we went out, you know, I give direction,
(34:33):
let's try to see if the DNA kit's available, I mean the rape kit,
and we found it, the England Police Department had it in their evidence.
Refrigerator, and that kit was tested,
and lo and behold, it came back to another man who went out to rape another
woman after because that's the problem, with a wrongful conviction,
(34:56):
not only are you causing harm to one person, but you cause harm to the entire
community because the person that did the harm continues to be out there with
the capacity to harm others.
In this case, another woman unnecessarily was raped because this guy was allowed
to continue to go around freely.
He eventually died in prison out of, you know, some medical conditions.
(35:18):
But my point is, Mr. Hastings is not a free man, and he would not be a free
man, but for his faith and his persistence in keep pushing and pushing and pushing until he got out.
Now, arguably many would say, well, he should have been out 20 years ago.
Well, he should have been out 37 years ago, right? He should have never gone into prison.
(35:40):
But to those that are out there and are thinking about giving up,
just think about Mr. Hastings. Don't give up.
That's one of the things I talked to the two men about. But all this,
all this, this isn't my thing, Mr. Gasol.
I just, I'm a simple man who wants to train dogs, and I love my city of Compton.
(36:00):
I take pride in my citizens and everybody that's there. Sure.
And two names came across, and it was our producer, Ray. He was like, hey, it's these guys.
Not the college you're educated on law, but if I can read cases and within those
cases to the plain eye, it doesn't make sense and nothing adds up.
I'm like, man, it's something that it irks at you. It reaches out.
(36:23):
It's like, you need to do something. There's something here.
So I take it and I give it to a person that has nothing. I go way to,
what is it? Wilming Whittier somewhere.
Hey, to a school teacher, read this. Do these cases make sense?
Take your time. I don't care if it takes you a year.
They say, yeah, this, this is something about this. It's, it's just plain right
here in my face. And I was like, well, all right, let's, let's start the fight for Gascon. Yeah.
(36:47):
Like I said, we're looking at over a hundred cases right now and they,
you know, they keep coming and, you know, we,
unfortunately, and this is the reason why I said earlier, it should not be up
to a local prosecutor because they're really, the state needs to put the resources
available to make sure that these cases are investigated and that we move through them expeditiously.
And it should not be up to the local resources or certainly should not be up
(37:09):
to just the prosecutor, right?
Because as I said, you know, Mr. Hastings again, and I go back to him,
but there are 14 others now.
These are people that were sitting there in prior administrations were refusing to look at it.
And I'm sure there are many other county district attorneys that would do the
same thing that was being done here before.
Well, this was very impactful, very educational.
(37:30):
I learned a lot. I mean, a lot of stuff I wouldn't get homework before I Like
the world needs to catch up on Mr. Gascon. I've been studying.
But what does the community need to do in order to get certain laws or whatever
rules, whatever it is, implemented?
Because a lot of us don't know. Like I didn't even know about voting things
until I got out because it's not seen.
(37:50):
I mean, look, first of all, let me begin by saying that I understand it's not easy, right?
You know, getting involved, being informed, participating in the political process,
you know, For people that are working every day just trying to pay the rent
and put food on the table, it's not an easy thing to do.
But here's the thing that I'd like people to think about.
(38:11):
When you do not engage the process, when you are not informed,
when you vote or even don't vote, what you're doing is you're giving your voice to someone else.
And that other someone else may not necessarily have your best interest at heart.
(38:32):
So it is important that people understand that they must get involved.
Right. To me, it's not an option. Right.
If you are unhappy with what's going on, then you have to get involved.
And that means, you know, getting to know your elected officials,
reading, you know, informing yourself when you're going to vote.
(38:53):
And then obviously the more time that you have, if you can work on helping,
you know, legislation pass, then you do that.
But at the very least, you know, just sort of the floor, the bottom line,
make sure that you understand who is representing you, what they stand for. Or how do they vote?
And when you do go out to vote, make sure that you're voting for people that
(39:16):
hopefully represent your needs and your desires.
You know, I tell people, and this sounds a little crass, but I'll say it here.
And, you know, again, not my saying. I heard that from someone else.
But if you're not at the table, you are on the table.
Meaning if you're not sitting and playing a role in how things are decided,
(39:41):
then somebody else has you on a dish and they're dealing with you however they want to.
That makes sense to me. I know it. It couldn't get any plainer than that.
Right. One last little snippet. When can we get you back down there in a hub and a dub?
When can we get you back down there confident wise? You know what?
Talk to Tiffany and we'll figure it out. Calendar is tough, but we'll try to make it time.
(40:02):
I really, really appreciate this. I know that you're busy. We got to get busy back to work. Yep.
And send something to the kids out there.
Look, I know that sometimes it's very, very hard.
And I thought, I know that sometimes you may think nobody cares for you.
And look, this is where I do have an experience. Okay.
You're looking at a former high school dropout.
(40:24):
Okay. I grew up in conditions, probably very similar to the conditions that many of you grew up.
Most of the kids that I grew up with wound up in other places that thankfully
I'm not. Don't give up on yourself.
The neighborhood is not the place that is doing it for you. Look for a way out.
Believe in yourself and fight for what you believe.
(40:47):
That's it right there. That's a wrap. Right. It's a real pleasure.
I appreciate it. We will be seeing each other again.
Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Good deal. You got it. Indeed. All right. Thank you, everybody.
Good deal. I wanted a... I wanted an autograph. Okay. A podcast called Strangest Fruit.
Music.
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