Three ultra-progressive district attorneys in major urban centers — Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Los Angeles County DA George Gascon, and Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner — arguably are the most prominent and powerful among the soft-on-crime crowd.
Leftists love them. Critics, however, repeatedly argue that their actions amount to pro-criminal sentimentality.
He 'doesn’t value my life or the life of my child, or any other victim out there and would rather reward the monsters.'
Bragg is well-known for his recent prosecution of former President Donald Trump, but he's also known for things like downgrading 52% of felony cases to misdemeanors. Several times he was forced to change course amid public anger, such as when he dropped what many saw as an unfair murder charge against 61-year-old deli worker Jose Alba who fatally stabbed an attacker in 2022; and a year later when he dropped criminal charges against a parking garage attendant who allegedly shot a man in self-defense; and earlier this year when he indicted seven migrants accused of attacking NYPD officers — only after critics torched him for their no-bail release.
George Soros-backed Gascon has had his share of embarrassing moments, too — such as when he refused to file felony charges against an alleged sex offender, only to move forward with them following public outcry. In addition, a murderer in 2022 vowed to tattoo Gascon's name on his face in appreciation of the DA's policies that lightened his sentence. Gascon also allegedly used "mafia tactics" to intimidate a prosecutor who exposed his woke policies. Yet, the DA has managed to defeat two recall attempts against him.
Krasner — also Soros-backed — had some of his authority stripped late last year due to his failed "liberal, woke" policies. In 2022, Pennsylvania Republicans moved to impeach Krasner for being soft on crime and allowing "chaos" in streets.
Here's a look at a dozen infuriating decisions by the trio:
Stefen Sutherland allegedly slashed a construction worker's neck in November 2020 after a noise complaint and was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, law enforcement sources said. Instead of giving him prison time, which a probation official recommended, the office of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon gave Sutherland a mental health diversion, Fox News reported. Sutherland was then accused of gunning down Jennifer Gomez on May 23, 2023, over a noise complaint, sources with knowledge of the investigation said. The victim was shot 19 times in her home.
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Hannah Tubbs, a biological male, made national headlines in January 2022 after getting sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention facility for molesting a 10-year-old girl in 2014. Tubbs was two weeks shy of turning 18 at the time of the sexual assault, and since one of the policies of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon barred juvenile offenders from adult prosecution, Tubbs at 26 years of age was tried as a juvenile — and was caught laughing and bragging about his light sentence. Then in May 2022, Tubbs was charged with first-degree murder in connection with a separate 2019 case. Gascon's office said it didn't know about Tubbs' murder allegations when the juvenile-facility sentence was handed down earlier in the year. Gascon subsequently changed his controversial policy after outcries, noting that juvenile offenders now may be transferred to the adult court system "in the most egregious cases that warrant a state prison commitment." Amazingly, Gascon in early 2023 suspended a prosecutor for "deadnaming" and "misgendering" Tubbs, who later that year was sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Video captured the 2021 knife attack in an Inglewood, California, park. The mother of the victim said the attacker punctured her daughter's liver, kidneys, diaphragm, and pericardial sac, and the victim suffered internal bleeding and required an immediate operation to save her life. The attack was over a boy, and afterward the suspect reportedly posted a message on social media and tagged the boy in question, asking him, "Would you love me more, If I killed someone for you?" The office of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said the accused had no prior criminal record, and getting her treatment was the best option.
KABC-TV said the hit-and-run took place in 2021 in Venice, California. Fox News' Bill Melugin said that the suspect was on probation at the time of the horrific incident caught on video and had been convicted previously of spiking a girl's drink at a high school. The teen's light sentence — courtesy of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon — was reported in June 2022. The mother who was hit blasted the DA in an impact statement: "George Gascon doesn’t value my life or the life of my child, or any other victim out there and would rather reward the monsters like [the juvenile suspect] by demonstrating to them that their actions have no consequences." In January 2023, the teen was shot to death after flirting with a girl at a restaurant. The mother, who ripped Gascon for the light sentence against the teen who hit her and her baby, had this to say about the teen's murder: "The universe delivered the justice we weren’t given in court, but a much harsher punishment than he’d have been dealt in a court of law."
Then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in January 2021 that Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon's progressive reform policies resulted in a lighter sentence for a child porn suspect. The sheriff said his department's special victims bureau investigated a male for possession of child pornography with a previous sex crime conviction — after which he pleaded no contest. But Villanueva added that "pursuant to the DA's new directives, both of the defendant's previous strike convictions for sex crimes with a child were stricken," which resulted in a sentence of just two years in state prison. Finally, the sheriff said, "The defendant who has been in custody since his arrest in October 2020 has earned approximately 253 days credit toward his required half time to be served and will likely be released from custody in about 112 days."
Madeline Brame's son, Sgt. Hason Correa, was killed in a 2018 Harlem stabbing, Fox News said, and the grieving mother during an early April 2023 panel discussion mocked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's infamous "no one is above the law" declaration related to charges he had just brought against former President Donald Trump. "If no one is above the law, then I don't understand how Alvin Bragg could dismiss murder and gang assault indictments against two of the people involved in the murder of my son," she told the cable network. Brame added that New Yorkers are seeing rising crime "out of control every single day" and that Bragg is doing "absolutely zero" about it, the cable network said.
In the days following his Jan. 1, 2022, swearing-in, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg issued a so-called Day One memo to his staff in which he told prosecutors to seek pretrial detention only in "very serious cases" and added a list of low-level offenses his office would no longer prosecute — such as resisting arrest, skipping subway fare, prostitution, marijuana offenses, minor traffic infractions, and operating without a license, the New York Post reported. Later that month, NYPD Officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora were gunned down. That prompted Paul DiGiacomo — president of New York City's Detectives' Endowment Association — to tell Fox News that Bragg's "message was sent to the criminal element," and that's why the officers got killed. DiGiacomo added to the cable news network that Bragg sent "a message out there that there are no consequences for committing crimes, and there are no consequences for resisting arrest." Rivera's widow at his funeral service also blasted Bragg: "The system continues to fail us. We are not safe any more, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these new laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now."
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg knocked down felony robbery charges to misdemeanors for career criminal — 53-year-old Rodney Johnson — who has nearly 90 arrests on his rap sheet, law enforcement sources told the New York Post in 2023. Both alleged robberies took place March 24 at pharmacies in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, but the paper said prosecutors with Bragg's office reduced the charges to menacing and petit larceny — both misdemeanors.
The Washington Free Beacon, citing city financial records, reported in 2021 that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner made sweetheart plea deals with violent criminals who donors to his campaign legally represented. The paper said five months after Krasner took office, he reached a plea agreement with two career criminals who murdered a Philadelphia cop, which let them avoid the death penalty — and that defense attorneys Michael Coard and Daniel Stevenson oversaw the deal after donating a combined $2,700 to Krasner's 2017 campaign. Later, Krasner reached a plea deal with a career criminal who shot a Philadelphia deli owner with an AK-47 during an armed robbery, the Free Beacon said, adding that Krasner campaign donor Philip Steinberg represented the shooter — who received "as little as three-and-a-half years in prison for aggravated assault, a step below the attempted murder charge the DA's office initially pursued." The paper said Krasner's campaign did not return a request for comment.
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Blaze News senior editor Daniel Horowitz noted in March 2020 that William McSwain — U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania — accused George Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner of keeping a cop killer out of jail. When a Philadelphia SWAT team was trying to serve a warrant to Hassan Elliott, the suspect allegedly fired multiple rounds through his apartment door, which fatally wounded 23-year veteran Cpl. James O’Connor IV, Horowitz said. McSwain said in a press release that "Elliott was on the street for one reason: because of District Attorney Krasner’s pro-violent defendant policies. Those policies — which include permissive bail conditions for violent offenders, failing to pursue serious probation and parole violations by violent criminals, offering lenient plea deals for violent offenses, and outright withdrawing cases against violent felons — put dangerous criminals like Elliott on the street.”
The officer of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner's office withdrew a summer 2021 case against an accused carjacker because the victim failed to appear in court, KYW-TV reported. But just months later that same suspect was accused of killing Samuel Collington, a Temple University student who was fatally shot while unloading his vehicle after returning from Thanksgiving with his family. The suspect in Collington's killing — then-17-year-old Latif Williams, who turned himself in to police — also was believed to have been involved in other uncharged carjackings in the area where Collington was fatally shot, sources told the station.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said his office declined to file assault charges against four pro-Palestinian protesters whom Penn cops arrested in May 2024 as the protesters allegedly attempted to occupy a campus building, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Krasner said although his office approved misdemeanor charges against three protestors — for resisting arrest or defiant trespass — prosecutors declined to approve more serious charges that police recommended, the paper reported. Krasner added, according to the Inquirer, that law enforcement should “tread lightly and be careful before we act like every kind of protest is a crime. It is not."
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A top adviser for Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was slapped Wednesday with 11 felony charges over her alleged "repeated and unauthorized use of data from confidential, statutorily protected peace officer files."
Diana Teran, Gascón's assistant district attorney of ethics and integrity operations as well as his designee on immigration policy issues, has long been suspected of unlawfully downloading confidential L.A. County Sheriff's Department files in 2018 while still an LASD employee.
Teran allegedly yanked data on 11 sheriff's deputies in concert with L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman's office, the outfit tasked with oversight of the sheriff's department.
According to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Teran "impermissibly used that data" after joining Gascón's team in January 2021.
Former Undersheriff Tim Murakami told KABC-TV in 2019 that Teran, who previously served as a constitutional policing adviser for the LASD, downloaded the confidential records for Huntsman and the Office of the Inspector General just days before former LASD Sheriff Alex Villanueva was sworn into office.
The downloads reportedly first came to light in civil litigation between the county and the LASD over Villanueva's rehiring of Deputy Caren Carl Mandoyan, who had previously been canned for alleged domestic violence and stalking.
According to a declaration by an LASD detective filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, Teran accessed the records through what is known as the Personnel Review Management System on Nov. 28, 2018, downloading "78 documents from 22 unique LASD employee case files."
Among the documents Gascón's future ally allegedly absconded with were "14 documents, totaling approximately 2000 pages, from case files related to Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Additionally, Ms. Teran downloaded documents from the case files of at least eight current and former LASD executives."
Huntsman claimed that his office had the legal right to inspect the files, noting, "We're required to keep them confidential — so we don't put out confidential information — but we're allowed to see the whole picture, so we can get a good view of things, and that includes the sheriff department's personnel records."
Huntsman further suggested that the files mentioned in the detective's declaration were of interest because they had been designated as secret, reported the Los Angeles Times.
Murakami disagreed, stating, "That code doesn't give him [Huntsman] free rein to look at anything."
"The problem with him is that he's actually violating the law. He may think he's doing a good thing, but you can't violate a law in order to enforce a law," added the former undersheriff.
The LASD launched a criminal investigation into Huntsman and Teran, suggesting they were looking at possible "Conspiracy, Theft of Government Property, Unauthorized Computer Access, Theft of Confidential Files, Unlawful dissemination of Confidential Files, Potential Civil Rights Violations, and Burglary."
The AG's office evidently figured there was something to the allegations.
Each of the 11 felony counts Teran now faces is punishable by up to three years in jail and a maximum fine of $10,000.
"No one is above the law," said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. "Public officials are called to serve the people and the State of California with integrity and honesty."
Teran's attorney James Spertus echoed the OIG's years-old claims when asked about the charges, telling the Los Angeles Times, "They're charging her for doing something within the scope of her employment, that she has a duty to do."
Spertus suggested that the investigation into Teran was prompted by a complaint by Villanueva, who reportedly referred to Teran's downloads this week as as "massive data breach."
Gascón said in a statement obtained by the Times, "I remain committed to upholding transparency and ensuring police accountability within Los Angeles County."
Teran started off in Gascón's office as a special adviser. She went on to deal with prosecutions of police and attorney misconduct. Just recently, Gascón — whom hundreds of thousands of L.A. County residents have desperately attempted to remove from office in multiple recall efforts — promoted Teran to assistant district attorney.
Nathan Hochman, the candidate looking to beat Gascón on Nov. 5 in the L.A. County District Attorney race, wrote Wednesday night on X, "Did Gascon know about the AG Investigation BEFORE he promoted Diana Teran to Assistant DA in charge of ethics and integrity on Jan 4, 2024?? If so, he should resign immediately for such leadership malpractice. If not, he's so asleep and unaware of what's going on around him that he should resign or that reason as well."
Hochman highlighted Gascón's apparent reliance on Teran, suggesting this development "is yet another sign of Hasco's poor judgment and failed leadership.
As you can see, Diana Teran was one of Gascon\u2019s most trusted leaders. Now she\u2019s facing 11 criminal charges brought by the state AG. This is yet another sign of Gascon\u2019s poor judgment and failed leadership. #GasconMustGo— (@)
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Californians need to look at self-defense given authorities’ failures to address increasing crime in the state.
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