 and unfortunately and I always try to be very careful because I know that the majority of the men and women in uniform are good people but you want to paint it with a broad brush but the problem in policing in this country is you have a few people that are very racist and then you know the rest of us we all have our own implicit biases right it doesn't matter what race you are but then in policing you have sort of this this blue wall if you will that is almost heresy to report criminal behavior or bad behavior by a lot of cops so even cops know that this person here is going to be bad news and he or she is a racist and all that other stuff but no one reports it right and I think that what you saw in the George Floyd case was a the quicentennial problem with American police. This is Starter to Storefront. Today's guest is George Gascon a Democrat running for the office of Los Angeles District Attorney. To quote an editorial from the LA Times from October of last year there is a strong case to be made that aside from the presidential race the most important item before voters in 2020 will be the race for LA County DA. The reasoning behind such a bold prediction is centered on the relatively high incarceration rates in LA County. The two-term incumbent Jackie Lacey has made a name for herself as being tough on crime so when George Gascon entered the race running on a platform to end mass incarceration death penalty and to enact police reform people took notice. His platform has only increased in relevance since the death of George Floyd instigated America's racial reckoning. Gascon has since garnered the support of progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as well as musicians John Legend and Calvin. So listen in as we cover everything from how he's running his campaign during the age of social distancing the difficulties of changing structural problems within policing and how he plans to change them and we go into the specifics of his plan to completely reform LA's system of mass incarceration. Now back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast everyone on today's show a very important conversation with LA DA candidate George Gascon. George thanks for coming on the podcast. My pleasure David how are you? Good man crazy times I wanted to start this conversation with you know we're big on the entrepreneurship community to me things are always they're down to the human condition and so I just wanted to hear a little bit about your story we know you were you were born in Cuba you moved to Cudahay but would love to just get a sense of how you immigrated here and where you landed where you went to high school yeah yeah yeah of course so you know I grew up in a working-class family in Cuba and obviously here my father actually was a he was really a pro-democracy guy so he fought really hard against Batista in support of Fidel Castro then Fidel Castro in the revolution one and he he was you know he thought he had arrived and then pretty soon of course the whole concept of free elections of democracy went down one down the toilet so then he became anti-Castro and that led to you know our family going through a lot of problems that he we tried multiple times to leave on a vote that never worked and then eventually we left in 1967 the way I think all the freedom flights it was straight from Cuba to Miami but my family was already living in Cudahay so we literally were in Miami overnight and came straight to LA that's kind of where I grew up you know I started very humble one bedroom apartment I used to sleep on a couch in the living room initially went to Southgate Middle School but I was a non-English speaker so I got moved to Nimitz in Huntington Park they had a program for non-English speakers and then from middle school which went to Bell High School and I was still struggling with the language and eventually dropped out of school and you know just went on through a two or three years of kind of like a lot of young people do sort of aimlessly wandering around if you will and joined the army when I turned 18 and the army was kind of the place where I sort of started to have my life you know kind of come together in a better place so I got my high school diploma I started actually attending college while I was in the army and when I got out of the army I went to Cal State Long Beach with the intent to become a history teacher got my bachelor's in history but during that time I had a friend that had joined the LAPD and he came from the neighborhood that I grew up and you know one thing led to the other and I joined the LAPD and I you know did well but also struggled with the culture of the LAPD things like use of force and you know having you know an incident where I did not use force deadly force someone who's going for my partner's gun we got it under control and being reprimanded for now using force so it was kind of like a weird moment in my life where I thought I did something that was worthy of recognition not reprimanding but but you know I listen I grew up within the organization promoter all the way to number two and I had my own evolution in policing you know going from you know certainly being part of the system to increasingly becoming more uncomfortable with the system to to them becoming somewhat on the reform side and now you know going beyond that I think you know and I was the number two guy in the LAPD running operations I got recruited went to Mesa Arizona to be a chief of police very largest city in the state in the city extremely politically conservative within Maricopa County which is the county that you had the guy named Joe Arpaio was a sheriff at the time and he was a very anti-immigrant individual and we started really bumping heads not only in law enforcement circles but around the community it led to my joining two other individuals the former attorney general of the state and the former mayor of Phoenix to launch a formal complaint with the U.S. Justice Department about the abuses that were going on in Maricopa County against the Latino community and overall just the human rights violations that were going on the jail system and that led me to be an ask to provide testimony at the U.S. Congress about the abuses and by the time I got done with that I was asked to leave Mesa because the political heed that was coming up that's so much from our community but from other parts of the country sort of the xenophobic movement the anti-immigrant movement that was very very prevalent then in Arizona obviously not mentioned nationwide and so that led me to you know Newsom was then the mayor of San Francisco I was recruited I became a chief of police there and Kamal Harris was running for attorney general I helped out a little with her campaign and when she became the attorney general I was given the opportunity to be appointed with and then run twice and got elected but as I mentioned earlier my own evolution in the system I had come to the conclusion years prior to the criminal justice system over incarcerated people and it was not necessarily a return on the investment either socially or in terms of public safety or financially I think we're breaking the bank we're building more prisons that we're building schools so by the time I became a district attorney I was very focused on being able to show that you get both lower incarceration and have community safety and there were groups of people I had been working for years already and we saw that as the opportunity so that's why sometimes people refer to me as a godfather progressive prosecutors because in 2011 the term had not been coined and there was a lot of work that was going the other way it still was a time that you know district attorneys got elected on tough and crime platforms and I immediately started to work on lower incarceration campaigning against three strikes campaigning as a death penalty eventually other criminal justice reform and that sort of you know my trajectory you know bumping into some heavy racism in the san francisco police department that was manifested by a bunch of text messages that became public you know officers really using despicable language to refer to african-americans and lgbtq members of our community and the latino and coming to the smith salon cases starting an investigation on that you know really going to head with the police union and the police department and so that's kind of you know my my evolution and then when I finally decided not to run for a third term in san francisco and come back home my family's all here I immediately started getting calls from people so would you run against jackie lacy what month it's people start asking you yeah it was in late 2018 I announced that I was not going to run and don't don't hold me to the exact time but I announced that I was not going to run for a third time third term around october september of 2018 in fact you know a lot of my supporters said well why don't you wait a little longer I said look I want to give other people the capacity to run because it takes a while to build up a campaign and I you know frankly I helped chase a within who became a former public defender who became a friend and now the district attorney in san francisco and then after that I started getting some calls you know but both from people around the nation and around the state and some people in LA and I want to say by december of 2018 roughly were some conversations but you know those conversations continued through early part of 2019 and I still hadn't decided whether to do it or not and it was really finally by you know close to october of 2019 that my wife and I say okay we're we're gonna do this and you know chase us race was well in its way that wanted to make sure they had a good opportunity to get elected which he did and then we moved here late october and immediately mounted a campaign we're able to you know do extremely well for such a short period of time got a lot of endorsements from you know the county democratic party and many other organizations got environmentalists got you know democratic parties from around the county uh got quite a few elected officials including maxine waters camo harris tony cardinas gil sedillos mike bonding and you know we build up on that obviously we came in number two in the primary which is that was always a hope we knew that going up against an incumbent it would be what you wanted to do is push for a runoff and you know we've continued you know we now got bernie sanders we got Elizabeth Warren we got julian castro I wanted to ask you I see there's a tremendous amount of momentum you know occurring and there's so much happening in america from your standpoint running a campaign during covid 19 what what on earth is that like right you're using zoom i imagine i know you did the uh you did something with john legend yesterday yeah and so it's i gotta imagine i mean i just wanted to get a window into what on earth this has been like for you obviously you're you know being front and center being in the public is key but it's a massive risk also for you blasting you want or anyone on your team is to contract to get this virus and then you know there's only one of you right you can't clone yourself exactly exactly actually Diego you you actually raise the point that that we live with every day right people say hey I want to meet with you in person sure and we're saying hey look I mean you know we want to not put you at risk I mean I don't know how my career we don't you don't know if you're a carrier and but it's only one of me right and we have a campaign that also we try to be very judicious with our expenditures so we're running very thin we have a lot of volunteers but you know at the end of the day I'm the guy running so we do a lot of zoom you know and frankly there as you will know there hasn't we in our generation we certainly haven't experienced anything like this right political campaigns are always about shaking hands and going to events and meeting people face to face and now we're doing it the way that you and I are talking today right so the good thing was it I've always been an early adopter of technology and we have a very young team so we very quickly adapted to the digital world and started to do a lot of you know what we're doing right now in talking to community groups we've had town halls we had 300 people in zoom or more actually and we did the same thing with fundraisers right you know we started doing virtual fundraisers and we do now quite a few of those and interestingly enough at the beginning people are saying well you know people won't give you money if they don't get to meet you know but we're finding the contrary people are giving money and then you know frankly we're getting a lot of low-level donations online which is really indicative of this is really a movement so we got you know people that normally wouldn't would not give to a political candidate one two they may not be able to afford it and they're giving ten dollars twenty dollars fifty dollars five dollars which to me that's really uh it's a testament to the to it's important movement yeah I think this is probably going to be the one of the most watched campaigns and elections and in recent times I just want to jump into something that has top of mind for everybody so we we've all witnessed what has happened to george floyd and the concern I have with that case is there's a tremendous amount of people it's almost like religion where you have you know you have the god and you have the Judas the you know the person that everyone wants to just see hung right and there's a mob mentality around it and there's no doubt we saw massive injustice there's no question that that happened but the the thing that concerns me and and the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you have an emphasis on policy right and so when I watched the george floyd video was it policy that failed him the entire minneapolis police department or was it wrong doing by one individual right and so when you when you watch that what do you think about as it relates to police brutality and how this has just opened up everything yeah look I think it's a combination of things but I think you know it's hard to walk away from the underlying fact that racism has been so embedded in the criminal justice system and policing in this country right and you have to kind of walk back a little I know people get very uncomfortable when I say this but the reality is the origins of policing in this country in many parts of the country are really a product of slavery right and it was you know the early iterations of policing in many parts of the south especially were to work there to make sure a slave were runaway slaves were returned right and slaves were punished and then after the civil war then you know there were people that were unhappy with the outcome and they wanted to make sure that you kept the vestiges of slavery so then policing was more formalized around really maintaining a very oppressive process when it came to race and then really the evolution of that you know it has been one of policing always being not necessarily in the best light when it comes to the african-american community and other poor communities and I think you sort of then get into the last 30 40 years with a war on drugs which is really in many ways there was a war on poor people and a war on black and brown people because those were the ones that started being incarcerated over and over again for things that quite frankly will go on in other communities without any any consequences and policing then again you know became part of that war right and we militarized our policing you know it's funny that recently the the LA times of the peace and they said you know back in the 80s when the the the crack epidemic started to surface we were out of fork as a country and you know and the drug problems were building up in other parts of the world in some countries decided to go into the public health approach to drug use and mental health we actually took the other fork and we decided we're going to militarize our police we're going to hire more cops and we're so we went on the ramp you know of hiring more cops you know then you know the Clinton administration came in hire a hundred thousand cops more prosecutors more money into policing more militarization of policing you know more punitive more prisons and all that stuff and we I mean we went off the scale to the point that as a nation we incarcerate more people than any other nation in the world not only per capita but in raw numbers and we have become more punitive that probably most other parts of the world and we got very comfortable in that that endeavor and you know district attorneys and chief of police definitely became based on their tough and crime attitudes and I think a lot of that really was visited upon the African-American community and unfortunately and I always try to be very careful because I know that the majority of the men and women in uniform are good people but you want to paint it with a broad brush but the problem in policing in this country is you have a few people that are very racist and then you know the rest of us we all have our own implicit biases right it doesn't matter where race you are right but then in policing you have sort of this this blue wall if you will that is almost heresy to report criminal behavior bad behavior by another cop so even cops know that this person here may be bad news and he or she is a racist and all that other stuff but no one reports it right and I think that what you saw in the George Floyd case was the the quicentennial problem with American policing here's a man that is dying in front of you right I mean we can all see this happening you think that one officer is talking about oh geez I thought of you know this thing about positional aphyxia is he really breathing right and they stand by and they don't do anything at all right and this man dies and there is not only the men that actually dust this horrendous it's a murder there's no other way to put it but you got you got this other cops that are complicit by doing nothing about it and you know while this is some video and we all see it and we get horrified I can tell there are hundreds of other thousands of other cases that have happened in the last few years that do not capture attention and and we just came walk away from racism in the system yeah so so what is the best way to change that because a lot of the public has focused on either defund the police or training policy but the Washington Post just came out with an article about how tough just changing a training program actually is because two of the four officers in the George Floyd murder that just stood by were newly out of the academy I think they had only been on the streets for about three months so they had gone through this reformed and revamped training process which centered on de-escalation and nonviolent approaches but the post was interviewing former police chiefs and police officers who recalled that once you're out of the academy and maybe you can shed some light on this if this is true for everywhere or not but once you're out of the academy every rookie for the most part gets a talking to from their training officer where it's like this is what you learn in the academy and this is how it actually is on the streets and so you are more inclined as a rookie you are more inclined to go along with your training officer because if they've been on the force for 10 15 20 years odds are they've they've got experience and they've seen some things so you're likely to trust them so how how can we change our police departments to go against this this kind of power structure here where if if these rookies these three month rookies on the force can then speak out against Derek Chauvin who had been on the force for 19 years and was a training officer how do you fight against that kind of structural policy yeah you know you you're asking an interesting question and I think it's important to contextually put this up right so I was a police officer in the field I was a training officer I rolled through the ranks I actually run LAPD training and I did it during the time where LAPD was going through a consent decree then actually create training in response to the consent decree and I was a strong believer that training was going to alter the culture of the LAPD and I have moved away from that I don't think the issue with policing is about training anymore not to say that training is not important but you are not going to shift the training of policing in America through training and that's why I've become a very strong advocate that we have to reduce the size of police departments significantly we have to hold bad policing accountable and that sometimes is going to require prosecutions when there is criminal behavior we have to make sure that the laws are evolving to a place where there is a higher level of accountability for police criminal conduct and I think we have to start creating other verticals around to handle so much other work that doesn't require a batch on the gun so whether it's a call for mental health right 30% of the work of american policing in most communities involve mental health right most of that does not require a batch on the gun that requires actually a mental health expert and having those people not work for the police department not wear a police uniform but work for a county health department or a city health department start reducing the consequence you know creating more and more criminal consequences for crimes of poverty crimes of addiction crimes of mental health right and start coming with solutions that are not criminal justice oriented to what often are social ills that are driven by poor public health social economic issues no housing or you know very insufficient housing you know these are all the things that I think are going to take us in a different direction and that's why frankly if you recall I was talking to my own evolution going from being part of the system if you will becoming someone to talk about reform engaging very actively in reform to get into a place now that I think you know it's not about reform anymore it's about reimagining the criminal justice system it's about you know really understanding the limitations into the system right you know I tell people that if you you know if you look at if you were to walk into an operation room for surgical medical surgical procedure the people that are there today are going to be people that they basically build their profession on science and experimentation and research and before they cut cut into your brain to work in your brain they're not trying to learn as a go right criminal justice you know we actually we implement very punitive policies you know with district attorneys at the lead of the pack without any understanding or any science behind what we do you know we we you know we create new enhancements we send people to prison for longer periods of time and nobody stops and say well does that really work because actually it's evidence today that it doesn't work right or we prosecute juveniles as adults without stopping and thinking that actually sciences that you know our brains are not fully developed until we're about 25 and as we're growing and you're testing and you're you know your risk taker by nature at that age well risk is going to be contextually to your environment right if you're surfing and you live in a surfing community the the way you take risk as a 19 year old is very different that if you live in inner city where there are gangs and there are shootings and all that stuff and you have been traumatized as a young kid but the mechanism behind the brain doing all this stuff is the same and for us to treat that 18 or 19 or 60 or 17 year olds if you or she were an adult it's contrary to science well you never will see a doctor doing brain surgery trying to do what we did a hundred years ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago but but in the criminal justice system we do much the same thing right so it's not an issue of training it's not an issue of reform anymore and I again I want to rely training is necessary but to really make systemic changes we're going to have to reimagine the way the system works and we have to we absolutely have to come to grips with the role that race and racism plays into the system you touched on something that I want to jump into so when I look at this race from the outside it's it's refreshing in a few ways you have an African-American woman and we have a Latino male and I think all right we have some diversity as it relates to this election which is not you know usually the case across America at the same point you mentioned something that you mentioned the police and so defunding the police at present is a is a headline and so we see Garcetti moving forward with that at the same time it seems like the incumbent Jackie Lacey is getting funding from the police and so now as it relates to her campaign I think as humans right so humans from the outside the humans that are ingesting everything that the media is putting out we're going so hard into defunding the police I'm not convinced that's the answer I'm convinced some sort of reform surely needs to happen some sort of movement of the funds needs to happen as you think about this you mentioned some things around mental health you mentioned some things around how we as humans the brain isn't necessarily there until about the age of 25 the hippocampus has to develop what are some things that you think make the most sense so whether that's maybe getting more lenient with people under a certain age or whether that's creating more programs as it relates to mental health focus more on at the end of the day the people that go to jail coming back right they're coming back 94 families yeah so it's like what are we doing as human like why where have we gone wrong as a as a human race not as a race but as a human race where it's just we're just we're treating these people like they're they're never coming back to our society and that's just not the case and so how do you think about solving that issue how do we think about the rehab as opposed to the complete yeah just criminalization so I mean several things by the way this is an american problem this is not a worldwide problem right like the europeans have figured out a lot of this much better than we have right portugal decriminalized drug use 23 years ago and they've had much better resolved most of the european union has de facto decriminalized drug use of course they have also national health systems so it's very very as much easier for them to medicalize a problem than for us right we have so many people that do not have access to to medical or health services but I think that first of all I think defending the police is a term that means very different things to different people right there are some people that say 90 percent should be defunded other people are talking about reform I think that for me the issue is more reimagining the whole system understanding first of all I don't think you can reform a system that is inherently designed to do some things that are not necessarily good for us anymore there probably never were but we understand it so you know I don't think that you can take a horse boggy and make it into a race car right it's just not possible right and and I'm making that because I'm trying to make some comparisons I illustrate I just don't think you know you cannot put a jet engine on a horse boggy right you can put wings on a horse boggy but it's still going to fall apart when it tries to take off right so we have to start from scratch starting to having honest conversation would we today I mean if we were martians and we came down to earth would we design our criminal justice system the way that it is today and I and I believe the answer would be we soundly know right it's not a system that works it's a system that first of the failure rate is horrendous right I mean on a good day we have a 40% recidivism rate that means that everything that we touch about 40% goes wrong now would you be willing to walk into an airport and jump on an airline that the the person checking you and says by the way you have a 40% chance that this thing is going to fall off the sky I mean I know it's an absurd question but you know we wouldn't right but but we do that we spend billions and we spend trillions of dollars right and a criminal justice system that doesn't work you know in prisons you know we know the things that work we know that public health work we know that education works in fact you want to know what the biggest predictor or someone that committing a crime give him a high school diploma put him in college and give him housing but yeah we spend you know we send juveniles at a clip or in the state of california almost 300 thousand dollars a year to house a juvenile in a custody facility or or a single adult spending 80 to 100 thousand dollars a year and you shake your head you said you know where do we go wrong because that's not a national that's not an international problem it's an american problem right how do you start over do you fire everybody like how do you how do you do that yeah obviously I mean I I don't think you can do that right so it's gotta be it has to be a gradual thing but it has to be a gradual thing with a very clear understanding that the objective is not to continue to polish the the corners if you will is to really reimagine a system right so there are certain things that you can take out of the policing immediately okay that 30% or so of calls that are mental health related create take that money away from the police partner put that money into public health and create a network of first responders that do not look like a cop that are medically trained to respond to that now that might take you in some counties you may be able to do that in six months or a year so counties may take it two or three years but you start taking that money away you get district attorneys that start not incarcerating people for pretrial low-level offenses or non-serious non-biome offenses you know about 50% of people in any county jail are there for pretrial reasons they haven't been deemed to be guilty yet but they're there because they're poor they cannot afford to pay them right so get rid of money bail get rid of that 40 or 50% put them out on the street let them come to the day in court whatever the day in court looks like that will have a tremendous impact on our jail population that will also have a tremendous impact on whether we need to have more jails we can actually reduce that right we try and we prosecute a lot of cases that don't need prosecution yeah we should not be prosecuting people because they have a drug addiction and they have a mental health problem right so divert those people away from the system immediately so if you start very methodically but very clearly and very short-footed about where you're going you start the process of what I used to call actually it's funny because somebody called me there they said well you've been talking about reducing the footprint of the system for years it's not the funding and I said well yeah it's another way of calling about the funding right I've been talking about less reduce the footprint of the system there is a minimal number of things that require a batch in the gun and what we need to do is slowly get us out there but we got to do it we cannot keep talking about it and what I'm fearful is that we keep talking about we'll create more training more diversity no stuff is going to work and the perfect example you know you cited it very well Nick when you talk about you had three rookie officers just out of the academy with a senior guy they all clearly went through the most recent training arguably the escalation all this stuff they stood by and did nothing you know why because the culture and the structure of the system is what it is the one thing I wanted to ask you about too so in 2016 prop 62 was here in California for around the death penalty similar to your plane analogy I think 4% of the people that get the death penalty are found to be innocent years later as a human being I'm still like why are we talking about the death penalty to me it just seems so ludicrous honestly and so this is something that you and the incumbent differ on right right and so I just want people to hear your thoughts frankly on on the death penalty and and what is it like why why is this thing still around yeah so I mean let me begin by my full disclosure I am morally opposed to the death penalty so understand that you can put that bucket wherever you want to I but here are the things here the reasons why the death penalty doesn't work aside from morality we know that it doesn't deter crime right I mean there are many studies that have shown that the death penalty has zero deterrent and crime so when we are following the death penalty we at least have to be honest and say okay it's not because we're going to make a safer it won't right maybe it may feel good and I for an eye but but it's certainly not making it safer which is one of the reasons why the criminal justice system is there I mean criminal justice system should not be out there to seek retribution right so it doesn't make a safer we know that it's tremendously expensive I mean into the billions of dollars right if you were to amortize the cost of it execution if there were to happen in execution in California that would be about 300 million dollars one execution wow and we had the biggest we had the biggest death row in the country was 750 people in fact a third of those nearly enough come from LA county and the current district attorney has put 22 people there just in the last five or six years so we know that it's very expensive it really breaks the bank wow then we have the problem with wrongful convictions to the point that you made earlier Diego about four percent of the people that get convicted and in some places by the way is a higher number are wrongfully convicted right so you know that you could put somebody in death row that may not be the person that did it and then we know that it's irreversible right I mean we haven't figured out a way to bring you back alive once it once you die you're dead right so so you have to say okay the the failure rate is possible and is significant and the failure rate creates an irreversible harm right death of someone that was innocent it's very costly and it doesn't do anything just to switch gears from your perspective has AI been at all or technology as a whole I mean one of the things we've been covering on my side is is looking at AI and its inherent racism that we've seen as of late and so to the point where I think I think Google vision shut down their entire AI division and has stopped sending or selling stopped helping cities with crime data because inherently it's yeah how do you think about AI how do you think about you know is there any technology that can help in this effort well I mean are you talking specifically about the death penalty or are we talking about other crime in general yeah well look I mean we you know there there's certainly good applications to artificial intelligence I'll give you one in San Francisco we work with a sanford computational lab to actually take race and all the proxies of race away from police reports so that prosecutors in the general crime filing team wouldn't know what the race of the person was when they made the first decision so for instance let's say that a robbery occurred and I'm going to use a create obviously fisticious type of setting you have a green person that committed the robbery but the prosecutor doesn't know that it's a green person right prosecutors looking at the evidence and all they can see is that you know witnesses describe the assailant in this robbery as a person unknown race that was 200 pounds six feet tall wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans another person describes it as a person of a slightly different tonality of skin that weighs about 160 pounds and had long hair and it had black pants and a beige shirt or a beige t-shirt and the prosecutor looks at this and says I really can't make a decision here because I'm not going to be able to prove we are in a reasonable doubt that the person is in custody did this right so they mark in their system they say this case cannot be filed for insufficient evidence then they unmask the report and the report now shows clearly a photo of a green person and a video of a green person that is a well in custody committed in the robbery now the prosecutor said uh-huh I have enough evidence now to move forward when they move the case so now they they move forward with a case and that would be an appropriate way of altering your original decision but let's take the same set of circumstances and now the prosecutor unmasked and you have a really fast video that shows what it looks like a green person but no facial which are very common right especially a lot of those business cameras in some places are antiquated you know the shot may be bad the person was wearing a hat whatever but the prosecutor said wait a minute this is an area where green people commonly commit crimes and green people in his or her mind are more likely to commit crimes than that so he moves forward and they kind of you know obviously they don't say that on their rationale but they say well you know we have a video that looks very similar to the person's being described and this is an area where green people are regularly commit crimes so therefore we want to move forward with the case that case would be an inappropriate way of proceeding with the case that would require supervisory approval and that would be denied so we use artificial intelligence in that case to first of all do what humans would have a very hard time doing which is completely decoupling race and all the practices of race right so neighborhoods sometimes names I mean if one had done this we most of us would think of a Latinx right or Leroy we may think of a african-american right so all that gets taken out of the mix and that first decision cannot be removed it stays in the system and they actually my commitment was that we would make that technology available to other da's and that we would share the results of our process over years with researchers and policymakers to see how we can get rid of implicit bias so that's a good way of using artificial intelligence another thing that I did is when Prop 64 passed that was a legalization of marijuana the initiative also actually said that the person that had been convicted could go through the application process to have their record sponge or reduce depending on the conditions of their conviction but they had to do it on their own and we looked at it and we said you know we learned that about less than six seven percent of all the people that qualify for record sponge were actually applied for it because it's cumbersome it takes time it takes money right and poor people don't get to do that right but we also know that a criminal conviction is going to keep you from getting employment housing a whole bunch of things so in looking at the proposition very closely we say you know it says that the person has to do it himself but it doesn't prohibit the da from doing it right in mass so we decided we would do this in mass and we started it with very laborious right and we realized it's going to take a long time and I'm trying to push other da's to do it and they said hey look I would like to do it with but I can't because I don't have the resources so we went to go for America and we developed artificial intelligence to actually review criminal records determine the people that qualify and complete all the paperwork necessary to get the relief. You mentioned the legalization of marijuana and that brings up an interesting point that has been gaining a little bit traction lately I mean there have been other issues that have been taken the hot seat but one of them is now that marijuana is has been legalized in California you know we still have a number of people who are locked up for marijuana offenses and I think Elon Musk tweeted out not too long ago that it's it's telling when marijuana dispensaries are considered an essential business during the quarantine and the lockdown but we still have people in jail for marijuana offenses so I'm curious as a candidate for da how we can rectify that situation and and get these people out of jail and back into the society for something that society as a you know as a state and growing as a country we consistently see as more and more of a unacceptable and recreational drug. Yeah you need to have da's that are willing to go back and take those cases and recent in the case and get the people out of the problems you still have da's that are fighting the war on drugs I mean I can tell you look I worked on Prop 36 it was a reform of three strikes in 2012 which basically said the last strike had to be serious and violent because we have people in prison for 25 years to life for the last strike that may was maybe stealing a loaf of bread from a supermarket okay to this day eight years later LA County is still fighting some of those releases right so these are people that should have been released back in 2012 but the district attorney continues to find ways to to keep people in so the problem is you need to have like district attorneys have a wide level of discretion in some cases too broad and you can have a da that will immediately say like I did you know any prior marijuana convictions you know out the door any prior three strikes that qualify for Prop 36 out the door and you have a da like here that continues to fight all the things in other da's and arounds so you have to really mandate it so like we did with marijuana convictions actually is we got the state to actually mandate the spongebob and that became effective will become effective July 1 of this year but that was after we tried to get district attorneys to do this on their own and they would George do you think we will see I know you guys at the LA Times debate will there be a zoom debate what what are the talks and what this looks like to and influencing the public as we move forward you know I think that I'd like to believe that there will be debates in September October also don't believe that COVID is going to go away September October in fact we're seeing a new wave and I'm being told by by medical friends that our researchers are actually probably by September October will be even worse than it is now so the reality is that social distancing masking all the stuff is going to be real so we're not going to have a an alpha theater or a theater full of people like we did for the primary so I think that you know it's a possibility it will be digital or it could be in two different studios or a studio with some distance but you know just the cameras there but I'd like to think that there will be debates I think is healthy I think you know this is a race actually that really talks about two different people with very different approaches to the work it's not like we're splitting hairs here and people need to understand the differences and you know the New York Times call this race the second most important race in the country back in November last year obviously the first one being the one for the White House and the reason why they said that is because they said you know LA County being the largest county in the country is such an influencer and what goes around criminal justice in whether you're a hardcore lock them up district attorney like the one you currently have or whether you have a reformer will have a huge impact people in LA County should know that I agree and what are some of the key milestones as you get closer to November so as you plan out you know as you and your team plan out the next three months what are some key things you have to hit I know COVID throws a whole wrench into this but yeah is it moving everything to Instagram to Facebook to social media partnering with influencers just at a campaign level and the strategy what are some key dates for you yeah well I mean first of all you know there is no blueprint for this right no one has done it before so we're all so there is no question obviously social media is going to be a major player I mean we're at least fortunate to have the technology that you and I can do this with relatively inexpensive equipment you know so that obviously is playing a major role you know we're having zoom town halls where we have three four hundred people right you know obviously we cannot fill a theater today without many people so I think that you're going to see this continuing to evolve I mean our fundraising by and large is going to be also digitally and you know we're seeing a lot of people through social media just clicking in and contributing so I mean the the fight is going to continue to be obviously fundraising is going to be one is getting people engaged especially getting young people engaged this is a race that is a defining moment for our generation but the reality is that at the end of the day is the young people that are going to be the ones that are going to either have a different future or are going to continue to live in the society like the one that we live so so it's incumbent upon the 16 17 years old it may not be able to vote that at least get to know but certainly the eight things on above to engage in this in a way that normally people at that age wouldn't be so you know one of the things that I tell a lot of the community organizers and a lot of young people that I work with I said look I mean I it's great that you are demonstrating out there and I support that but you also have to remember to vote right and they're not mutually exclusive you need to do both if you want to demonstrate you do that but you also need to vote so to that end we're you know we're increasing our volunteer base continuously we're asking our volunteer base to share with the network so as I multiply and impact through social media on other influencing ways that we talk to the people that trust us individually and that's the challenge just continuing to keep that growing and growing especially because we have such a large county and we're gonna have so many limitations and just two questions for you as we wrap up I obviously Michelle Obama said you know when others go low we stay high you've run your campaign so far with nothing but class right as you think about the attack ads that are now being released you're a human at the end of the day what is that like you know what is your strategy will you stay focused on on the topics on the policy how do you view that yeah I mean first of all look I see it as a sign of desperation desperation right I mean typically that's the kind of stuff that a losing candidate will do at the end of the race you know hoping that it will damage the other person and sometimes it works but I I mean first of all I have tremendous respect for for our former first lady and I agree with her 100% when they go low you go high we're going to be very policy very driven on the principles of this campaign they want to get down on the gutter we're going to let them do that you know uninterestingly enough is then it is a campaign that's not like an independent expenditure is doing this right campaigns don't control independent expenditures they can do whatever they're going to do but the campaigns control what they do so the fact that this this attack ads are very much speaking for you know Ms. Lacey's character how she views this but I really view them as a sign of desperation more than anything else so I let them go low you know there's all saying and no pun intended you wrestle with a pig and you get modding the pig likes it I'm not gonna wrestle with a pig right George listen I love your story you know as an immigrant you came here you've done a lot you're an example to many people you've been able to ascend to San Francisco DA at a minimum you've impacted a tremendous amount as nothing more than an example when you think about this race good bad or indifferent how does George Gascon want to be remembered look I hope to be remembered first of all as a human being that makes mistakes and learns and girls right I think that I tell people that when I have somebody that comes to me and they appear to be a perfect person I always I'm a little apprehensive because I don't think there is perfection in humanity and I think actually opening up our own humanity owning up to our mistakes learning from them and moving on is important so I want people to understand that you know I am who I am and certainly human being that will continue to evolve I hope that if you and I have a conversation four years from now I would have evolved further hopefully in a good way but I'd like you know people to to think of me as someone that is very principle driven that that truly cares about what happens to other human beings I believe in the the job as being one that is victim center with capital letters right you know the criminal justice system doesn't take care of victims in fact the contrary you know an eye for an eye you know my poking you and taking your eye out because you took mine out doesn't bring my eye back but maybe getting you to an eye doctor and getting that fixed width so it's actually being really victim center in a way that we did in San Francisco we spent a lot of time to repair the harm we we focus on accountability and repair and the system generally translates accountability and punishment and I want us to move away from accountability and punish and move to accountability and repair and repairing sometimes means not only working with the victim and helping them you know restore or repair the harm but are also understanding the offender because the realities of most of the victims sometimes become offenders most of the offenders for sure were victims before so dealing with the impact of you know trauma especially in childhood and the the impact that it has in your brain development substance of use mental health social inequality right you know I mean I think sometimes people speak from a place of privilege that is almost intolerant that's how they look at others without ever thinking about what would you do if you were in the same set of circumstances what would you do if you had no money to eat what would you do if you were hungry what would you do if you're if you don't have any medical assistance I mean how do you deal with the pressures of that right because it's very easy to be extremely pious when you have never had to do that you know I had not long ago I was listening to a Ted talk and they had this woman that came up and said you know it was a group primarily of looked like you know fairly educated white people and said how many of you had to think about how to pay your phone bill next month and of course there were no hands raised and then you know she went through a set of circumstances it's only a few people at the end that kept their hand raised and there were you know there were poor people of color and I said okay think about all the privilege that you've had and where you are today and understand that you're not there because you're a lot smarter you're not there because you were somehow why are better you're there just because you know there was a a lot of the draw at birth right and you happen to be born white and then a you know fairly affluent setting or middle class somebody else happened to be born poor possibly black or brown in a very different setting that is the only difference and when you start thinking about the world where you start becoming more tolerant you start trying to look for solutions that are not based on it from a place of privilege but are based from a place of humanity and how do we all work together to get to a better place George I thank you for coming on the podcast I thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself and the campaign with our community just give everyone at the end you know a sense of where they can find you how they can support yeah please so again you can go to my website that's really simple is my name george gascom and george.org and you can go in there and you'll see opportunities first so you can see a lot of policy papers we have a great policy team that obviously they're reflecting my thoughts but they're very smart people with a very broad base of individuals not only attorneys but we have people from every community and you know we have just solid things that we discussed there that would be the the basis of my administration if I were to be elected there are opportunities to volunteer if you like the message if you have the capacity to donate by the way if you can donate the dollar you can donate $1500 if we like it all because it's all important you can click in you can donate online or certainly you can you know write a check tell others you know we have a lot of information there that is very digestible to basically cut and paste and you know put her in your social media tell others tell your friends you know I think as human beings we tend to value more a message that comes from somebody that we know on trust so I can talk here until you know until my ears you know go red or whatever but you know having a friend tell you hey I believe in some of the concepts that George is talking about it's going to have a very different impact that coming from me so if you believe in my message then become a someone that communicates that to others but you know strongly encourage go on our website look at what we're talking about and if all if this rings a bell with you please get active on it appreciate it George thank you so much thank you George my pleasure thank you both and you guys take care and be safe out there the start of the storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma Natalia Cappellini Megan Conrad Owen Cappellini Lexie Jameson and me Nick Conrad our music is composed by DoubleTouch and we've got more great episodes coming out every week so if you aren't already consider subscribing this is a very supportive and helpful community of entrepreneurs and we'd love for you to be a part of it you can find us on Instagram Facebook LinkedIn and YouTube at startup storefront because in case you didn't know we film all of our episodes and release them a day early on YouTube and you can always go back and listen to any of our other episodes available wherever you get your podcasts and on our website startupstorefront.com thank you for listening we'll see you next time