Rich Hutton introduced Jackie Lacey, the recently elected District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles.  Jackie is a graduate of UC Irvine and USC School of Law and has been a member of the District Attorney’s office for over 25 years.  She was elected District Attorney, succeeding former District Attorney, Steve Cooley in 2012.

In opening her remarks, Ms. Lacey commented that she too is a Rotarian and a member of the LA Downtown Rotary Club.  She is an enthusiastic supporter of Rotary.

The District Attorney is frequently asked what have you done since you were elected and took office.  What she has done and what the District Attorney’s office is doing is nothing short of amazing.

The Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office is the largest in the nation.  There are 2200 people currently employed in the District Attorney’s office.   Many are special prosecutors in the various units within the office.  The DA has its own police officers, who assist the deputy district attorneys and do follow up work on cases the office is currently handling.  An office this big requires a large budget,   The LA DA operates currently on a budget of $330 million dollars, in order to service areas encompassing Long Beach to the Antelope Valley, La Verne to the Ventura County Border.  Fortunately, the Board of Supervisors recognizes that the office is within budget and therefore will authorize more lawyer employment for the office.  This is in contrast to other large public law offices operating in Los Angeles, which have either downsized, or have a hiring freeze.

Her office has many specialties to prosecute crimes and prevent crimes.  She detailed the special units for us.

There is a Sex Crimes Unit, which is currently working heavily on the Los Angeles Diocese matters; the Family Violence Unit handling  domestic violence cases; the Hard Core Gang unit, which has many cases involving multi-state gangs operating in Los Angeles as well as other states and countries.  In many instances, deputies in this unit have been personally attacked.  The Narcotics Unit which is tasked with prosecuting drug cartels, which unfortunately are operating here in the County, but are controlled from other countries or states.  There is now a Crimes Against Peace Officers unit, which is comprised of a team of deputy DAs who are charged with immediately going to a crime scene when an officer is involved.

Other units are the Organized Crime Unit, and yes there is organized crime in LA County; a special unit to investigate officer misdeeds and prosecution; the Public Integrity Unity, which involve prosecuting elected officials misusing public office and public funds, cases of note lately are the City of Bell prosecution and the LA Assessor misfeasance; the Real Estate Fraud Unit; Cyber crimes unit; Consumer Protection Division; among others.  There is a growing number of case involving elder abuse and not necessarily physical, but financial, as well.  In this aspect, she reported there are cases of people calling senior citizens and telling them of some friend in need of help and asking them to go Western Union to send money to help. She emphasized seniors need to be warned of this scam.

The District Attorney has crime prevention programs, which seek to educate youth before they become criminals.  Unfortunately, many parents are lax when it comes to requiring children to stay in school, and this leads to truancy and this leads to crime.  She noted it is illegal to keeps kids home from school, so efforts are being made by the office to help kids understand the importance of staying in school.

She discussed the aftermath of the 2011 Realignment, that is the State sending criminals to County Jail, rather than their retention in State prison.  This is overloading the County Jail system and thus County Jail is busting at the seams.   Alternatives are being tried to lessen the impact, for instance with the mentally ill, being separately handled.  Unfortunately, not all of these programs work further impacting the county jail.  Other problems are the reduction in trial counts, therefore delaying trials and impacting the prosecution of cases.

Her goals for the office include providing accurate information to the public about crimes; alternative sentencing expansion; prosecuting credit card theft, crimes against seniors, environmental crimes, and retaining and training the best of the deputy district attorneys.