[guest post by JVW]

Note: Check out the above line. This post is being written by me, guest blogger JVW, not by the site’s host. I have not discussed this post at all with the boss, nor sought any comment or feedback from him. Thus, what follows is 100% my perspective, and my perspective alone.

Los Angeles Magazine reports that embattled Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón is yet again up to his usual tricks:

At a Tuesday meeting, a representative of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón told prosecutors that a long-held policy in which the office notifies victims of crime (or next of kin) that a parole hearing is scheduled for the inmate that harmed them or their loved ones, has been repealed.

This news was then dispersed through an email that was sent by a supervisor who’d attended the meeting of the Parole Division Bureau of Prosecution Support Operationsknown collegially as the “lifer” unit. According to the email, the DA feels it is “not appropriate” for prosecutors to notify victims of crime and next of kin of these upcoming hearings.

In that email, the supervisor added that Gascón also directed staff to “wind down the Lifer Unit” in the months to come.

The article goes on to note that this change in policy has yet to be officially announced. The DA’s office emailed Los Angeles Magazine an Alice-in-Wonderland statement suggesting that notifying victims and their families could end up being harmful:

“After consulting with victim experts, we do not believe this is a trauma-informed approach. Contacting victims and their next of kin can be very triggering, especially if they do not welcome the intrusion. We consulted with the CDCR and they have advised and confirmed that it is their responsibility to contact victims who have registered for notifications and provide information and support to those victims,” the statement reads.

Note the favored progressive buzzwords “experts” and “triggering,” just the sort of psychobabble we have come to expect from these fraudsters. The CDCR referenced in the statement is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation [note to the magazine’s editors: once upon a time you would have thought to have mentioned this], so in essence the Gascónistas are telling us that their office no longer has the responsibility to reach out to victims and their families — indeed to do so may be harmful — but for whatever reason it is incumbent upon the prison system to do so. Imagine trying to make that claim with a straight face: it’s “not appropriate” for the DA’s office to keep crime victims and their families informed about the potential parole of their assailant, but it’s hunky-dory for a huge state bureaucracy — widely criticized for being wasteful, corrupt, and unresponsive to reform — to be handed that task.

One might be able to make an argument that the CDCR is indeed the proper agency to contact victims, but given the fact that the DA’s office also participates in parole hearings and is thus made aware of them, and given the fact that the Gascón Regime has already been criticized for being grossly insensitive to crime victims, neither the DA nor his enablers deserve the benefit of the doubt here.

Interestingly enough, this story has been reported on Fox News, in the New York Post, and in all sorts of right-leaning blogs, but other than Los Angeles Magazine no local left-leaning media outlet — not the Dog Trainer, none of the local TV networks, not even the Los Angeles Daily News Group — has made mention of this change of policy. Make of that what you will. Here’s hoping we recall this clown first chance we get.

– JVW