George Gascon must go.
This time he has retaliated against veteran prosecutor Jodi Link who was second-in-command in the DA's LA County Sex Crimes division.
Jodi Link is a prosecutor who puts really gross dirt-bags in jail and off our streets. Gascon didn't like getting bad media attention and blamed her for it.
Southern California News Group put out this story today:
Link, a former assistant head deputy, alleges Gascón demoted her not because she disobeyed him. Rather, she maintains, it was because she dutifully followed one of his controversial directives and he became embarrassed when the media seized upon the implications.
Until her transfer, Link supervised more than 20 prosecutors and 30 law clerks specializing in sex crimes. But now she handles garden variety cases such as robberies and gun possession offenses in Torrance.
“I still want to do the best that I can and be a voice for those that don’t have a voice,” Link said in an hourlong interview. “And I do that to the best of my ability, in the cases that I have now, but very far away from the most vulnerable, which are the children, the victims of sexual abuse.”
Link’s demotion is unfathomable, said Joshua Ritter, a former prosecutor now working as a Los Angeles defense attorney.
“Gascón ran on a platform of being a progressive prosecutor, but what he has implemented is like a radical social experiment using the Los Angeles population as guinea pigs,” he said. “I don’t understand why he would retaliate against a prosecutor like her, because she isn’t political.”
Joseph Markus, a former deputy district attorney for 33 years and Link’s attorney, is more blunt in describing the impact of Gascón’s actions.
“Jodi puts her personal feelings aside and she does her job,” he said. “There are other people (in the D.A.’s Office) who didn’t put their personal feelings aside. They have disagreed publicly. If anything, Jodi had been uber-cautious.”
Markus said Gascon’s treatment of the veteran prosecutor has “a chilling effect” on the office. “Don’t expose the absurdity in (Gascón’s) policies to the media … or this is what will happen,” he said.
Alex Bastian, a special adviser to Gascón, declined to comment on the allegations.