Thread: L.A.'s top prosecutor -- D.A. Nathan Hochman -- just announced felony charges against eight defendants for assaults on police, burglary and vandalism. He expects to bring dozens of more cases.
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What about charges on police for assaulting regular people? Shooting them in the head with rubber bullets? Breaking arms? Waiting to hear about those charges.
Interestingly, as arguments about the need for federal intervention in L.A. have broken down along partisan lines, Hochman -- a political independent -- tried to dispel rhetoric that L.A. has become a "war zone."
Hochman is NOT an independent, don't kid yourself or insult your readers. He was a lifelong Republican who garnered 40.9% of the vote in the 2022 CA Attorney General election. He could have pushed back on 2020 stop the steal lies and rebuked Trump BEFORE the primary, but he only waited until after..
...as part of a ploy to veer towards the center and appear more moderate for the general election. And he only changed his registration to "no party affiliation" post-2022. Did he endorse Kamala last fall? Yes, but I'll believe he's independent when he publicly rebukes Geoff Palmer.
You're welcome to this opinion, and I wrote about his Republican endorsements, work with Trump fundraisers and rebirth as a centrist all throughout 2024. But, in this moment, there's a significance to the one elected without a (D) next to his name speaking up in this matter.
He criticized media coverage suggesting "every second of every day there’s another exploding firework ... that motorcycles are running into cops, that stores are being looted… let me put this in perspective: There are 11M people in this county. 4M people in this city.” (1/2)
“Thousands have engaged in legitimate protest. That means 99.9% of people who live in Los Angeles ... have not engaged in any protest at all ... not committed any illegal acts ... Let’s put this as a context when we look at these images over and over again.” (2/2)
I see all your replies about why no charges for questionable / troubling uses of force by LAPD. The simple truth is those cases almost always take months, sometimes years, of review if they were to ever get filed. LAPD's Force Investigation Division will do its thing before D.A. ever takes a look.
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The other widely publicized incident was the two motorcyclists who allegedly crashed into a skirmish line near MDC on Sunday
https://ballotpedia.org/Los_Angeles_County_District_Attorney_election,_2024