Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Paul Corbino, Division president of iHeartMedia in Los Angeles, California,
with our pre election segment called Meet the Candidates Today.
I'm here with Nathan Hackman, the independent candidate running for
District Attorney representing Los Angeles County. Welcome Nathan, great to
be here.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Before we get started, I like to do a little quick,
like rapid fire question answer that gets the brain working,
the mouth moving.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
You ready, I'm ready, all right, here we go. Beat
your ski vacation, Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Ski vacation. I'm going to have to go Utah Park City.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Okay, Michael Jordan or Tom Brady.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Ooh, I'm old school.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Gotta go Jordan, Beatles are Stones again.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm going old school, you know this time?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Going Stevens Star Wars or Godfather Star Wars, Sean Connery
or Daniel Craig. Definitely Sean Connery, celebrity that people say
you remind them of.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'll go. I'm going to go with the one I
hoped I remind him of, which was Tom Cruise. He's
one of my favorites, so I doubt I remind anybody
of him, but I'm still going to go.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I could see that was going to scale the outside
of the building here at this afterido.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You know what, that's part of the reasons I love
the guy.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, well, welcome again. Hey.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Today, what we want to do is I want to
just find out a little bit about your journey. What
drove you to the point where you're running for the
big important job of District Attorney in Los Angeles County.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So tell me how did it start? Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So life long Angelino born in Ucla Hospital, grew up
in La been there my whole life now, Mary thirty
one years in La raised my three kids now in
their twenties in Los Angeles, and you know it was
it was a great place to grow up. I mean,
this is one of the greatest I've had a chance
to travel over this world. I mean, I'm here to
(01:56):
tell you, and I probably don't have to convince you
that La County is one of the finest places to
live in the entire world. But it's gotten a lot
less fine over the last couple of years. You know,
we had a guy literally come in from San Francisco
who is the DA there and destroy the public safety.
He's come into La He's trying to destroy our public safety,
and I'm running for DA because I'm going to fight
(02:17):
for what I love. You know, I'm not going to leave.
He's not going to make me my family, my neighbors,
my friends, this community leave, and there are people who
have voted with their feet and left Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Tell us a little bit about where you were educated.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So I was educated in Brown University, then went to
Stanford Law School. I had a chance to go to
the University of Tokyo and the London School of Economics
as well. Came back to Los Angeles clerk for a
federal judge and went right into the US Attorney's office.
I was there for seven years as a federal prosecutor,
did the whole gamut of cases, everything for narcotics, trafficking
(02:52):
and gang cases to money laundering, environmental crimes, and public corruption.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
What do you think of that The most important issue
that you would have to address as the DA.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
On day one. You've got to address violent and property crime.
It's out of control. It's up double digits every single
year that George Gascon has been our district attorney. And
what it is, it's introduced fear into the calculation of
people's lives. By that, I mean that a lot of people.
When I was talking about people leaving, Yeah, they stayed
here for the high taxes, that the traffic, the smog,
(03:25):
and the earthquakes. But when people are afraid for themselves
and their family to go out it during the day
and the night, when you're afraid to maybe wear that
watch at an outside restaurant or when you go back
to your car, that you're part of the statistics that
now your car's been broken into, or you go home
your home's been broken into. That is creating a situation
that is unsustainable.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So what are the actual steps that you will have
to take to correct the problems that you just talked about?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So the steps actually start with who I get to
help correct them. George Gascon has lost the support of
all seven hundred and fifty deputy district attorneys. I've not
only got the endorsement of their union, I've met with
over three hundred and fifty of them personally in the
last several months to understand what's going right and I'll
keep it and more often what's going wrong, and their
(04:13):
suggestions on how to fix it. Part of their suggestions is, look,
we've got to get rid of these extreme decarceration policies
that he instituted on his first day, first hour, first
email in office. Those are the policies that say juveniles
concealed just under nine hundred and fifty dollars and not
be prosecuted at all, that gangs can go ahead and
(04:33):
operate as gangs and commit violent crimes as gangs, and
yet the gang enhancement will never be used. This is
situations where the gun enhancement if someone uses a gun
during a crime. Gascon's policies have often said, We're not
going to file the gun enhancement. So I will need
to reverse those extreme policies on day one. But what
I'm going to replace them with is net the other
(04:54):
end of the pendulum swing, not mass incarceration. What I
do is I'm going to replace them with what I
call the middle or the hard middle policies. And the
reason I call them hard is to actually require work.
You've got to look at each case individually, each individual
defendant and the defendant's background. You've got to look at
the crime committed, the impact on the victim to determine
(05:15):
who the true threats are to our public safety and
need to be behind bars, and quite honestly, the ones
that aren't your first time non violent offender, if they
violate society's laws, they have to be held accountable and
pay that debt back to society. But often the punishment
can be community service, pick up trash on the side
of the road, restitution pay the money back if you
(05:36):
stole it, or a diversion program that if you have
a serious drug addiction, you have a choice. You can
go to state prison or a jail, or you can
do an eighteen month rehab program that if you do
it one day at a time and successfully do it
is to complete it. You'll get a certificate and a
judge will wipe your record clay.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And in the end, how would you measure success?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
It's interesting I've been asked that question more than once.
How I would not measure it at the end of
four years. If all I've succeeded in doing is filling
the prisons to the breaking point, that's the failure of
the criminal justice system. The true measure of success is
have you deterred people from committing the crimes in the
first place, thus saving a whole lot of victims. And
(06:17):
if you ask me what era I'm shooting for It's
not the nineteen sixties or seventies. It's actually the year
of twenty fourteen, ten years ago, because that year was
considered our safest year in the last fifty years. So
what was going right? You had a DA doing her job,
it was Jackie Lacy.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
You had law.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Enforcement understand that the DA's office was a partner with
them to go after the criminals, and they were doing
their jobs. Victims understood that if you dial nine to
one one, not only would someone pick up the phone,
but you could get justice for the harm you suffered.
And as importantly, criminals understood where the lines were. The
lines were the laws they were being consistently, impartially and
(06:55):
fairly enforced, and there were real consequences on the other
side of the line. And in record number that year,
ten years ago, criminals were not committing the crimes. Deterrence
was working and we saved a lot of victims.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
One more question, what are the Dodgers' chances of going
all the way this year?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I've been a lifelong Dodger fan, I would say one
hundred percent. They are going to win.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Thank you so much, Nathan.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Again, once again we are here with Nathan Hockman, the
independent candidate running for District attorney in Los Angeles County.
This is Paul Corvino saying thank you for listening to
another episode of Meet the Candidates.