George Gascón, Moral Pygmy

It was a morally obtuse, colossally stupid thing to say. In other words, it was everything one has come to expect from Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.

Speaking at a Wednesday press conference to announce the charges against Cataneo Salazar, who is accused of killing L.A. County sheriff’s deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, Gascón stepped to the microphone with the slain deputy’s family at his shoulder, including the woman to whom Clinkunbroomer had recently become engaged. What followed was at once shocking and yet sadly predictable.

Gascón proceeded to borrow a page from President Biden’s “Make It About Me” playbook. “You know,” he began, “as someone who was a police officer for over thirty years, this hits home in many ways.” He then recited the charges against Salazar, which include murder, with the special circumstances of murder of a police officer, lying in wait, and firing from a vehicle.

Then, after Brittany Lindsey, Clinkunbroomer’s fiancée, spoke tearfully and movingly about the man she was to marry but must now bury, Gascón returned to the podium and stepped on the rake in an even more tone-deaf fashion. When a reporter asked about specifics of the charges against Salazar, Gascón once again turned the spotlight on himself. With the slain deputy’s parents and weeping fiancée still at his shoulder, Gascón had this to say:

My family and I have been around policing since I left the Army many years ago. I have been to way too many funerals. I have talked to way too many families, both as a police officer, assistant chief, and chief of police, and I can tell you there is nothing more difficult for me than what I’ve gone through in the last few days.

And it got even worse. Gascón was asked why his office declined to seek the death penalty against Salazar, despite the fact that California law prescribes it as an option under the special circumstances he had cited earlier. His response:

Look, if I thought that seeking the death penalty was going to bring Ryan back to us, I would seek it without any reservation. But it won’t. If I thought the death penalty was going to stop people from committing brutal murders, I would seek it. But we know that it won’t. The reality is that the death penalty doesn’t serve as a deterrent, and the death penalty does not bring people back. What I can assure you is that we’re going to do everything within our legal power to make sure that this defendant never gets out of prison.

Again, morally obtuse and colossally stupid. The argument that the death penalty won’t bring the victim back is the most fatuous and juvenile of them all, and to invoke it in this setting was an insult, not only to Clinkunbroomer’s loved ones standing nearby but to the sheriff’s deputies and police officers with whom Gascón professes such solidarity.

Second, though Gascón refuses to acknowledge it, there is debate among scholars about the deterrent value of the death penalty. A 2003 study by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul H. Rubin of Emory University and Joanna M. Shepherd of Clemson University concluded that the death penalty has a “strong deterrent effect,” with each execution resulting in an average of 18 fewer murders.

But even if we accept Gascón’s assertion that the death penalty has no deterrent effect, there is still an argument to be made that seeking and imposing it in cases as heinous as Deputy Clinkunbroomer’s murder conveys the message to the public in general and its criminal element in particular that such crimes cannot and will not be tolerated in an ordered society. It also conveys to the guardians of that ordered society, i.e., its police officers, that their lives are valued and will be protected by means of the most severe punishment available under the law.

Gascón’s expressed desire that Deputy Clinkunbroomer’s killer “never gets out of prison” rings especially hollow in light of the fact that since taking office he has busied himself reducing the punishment for people already convicted of murder and sentenced to long prison terms. His naïve, almost childlike belief in lenience in these cases has had predictable results.

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I would be less strident in my criticism of Gascón if he could point to any success in making Los Angeles safer since he took office. He cannot. He survived two recall attempts but stands for re-election next year. May the people of Los Angeles be clear-eyed when casting their votes.