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[Note: This is the second in my series of recommendations for the upcoming election, which will hopefully be finished before the election. Part 1, on judicial elections, is here.]
Republican Todd Spitzer and Democrat Duke Nguyen, pictured here after both spoke at Los Amigos on October 3, aren’t running as a slate — but for people starving for reform of OC’s justice system, they’re the team we need.
District Attorney: Todd Spitzer
Before you vote in the District Attorney’s race, listen to this October 5, 2018 episode from the NPR show/podcast “The Takeaway”, entitled “Can Our District Attorneys Reform American Criminal Justice?” (At 50 minutes, it’s too large for us to embed easily here, so you can scroll down that page to find and download it) It will help you understand how important this race is and how our county’s race is part of a much large struggle for reform. The blurb for the show says this:
Advocates for police reform have long looked to lawmakers in hopes of addressing the social inequities baked into the criminal justice system. And even though criminal justice reform receives bipartisan lip service, our polarized legislature has yet to make serious headway on issues like reducing sentences for low-level drug crimes. But there’s another layer of bureaucracy that may prove effective in transforming how the system doles out justice: our nation’s district attorneys. And in what many expect could be a wave election, candidates across the country are vying to transform this crucial yet often overlooked role. Guests: John Pfaff, Inimai M. Chettiar, Holly Harris, Satana Deberry. Shaun King. All music composed and produced by Jay Cowit. You can connect with The Takeaway on Twitter, Facebook, or on our show page at TheTakeaway.org.
Your vote in this race is the one of the most two important votes that you will cast this year — along with (for the 2/3 of the voters with competitive races) your U.S. Representative — because your District Attorney will have much more effect on your life and those of the other three million people in your county than even your U.S. Representative. That is especially true here and now, when cleaning up the corruption in our County’s criminal justice system — you know, the constitutional offenses that have people out gunning for Judge Goethals because he wouldn’t help the DA and Sheriff cover them up — is literally either going to happen either now or, for those of us with life expectancies of under 30 years — never. Corrupt incumbent District Attorney Tony Rackauckas will use this term to install his chosen successor — which now seems likely to be grandstanding Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates (one whose campaign website Rackauckas gives one of the top two blurbed endorsements)– to follow him, given his sway with the all of the Supes other than Spitzer and Shawn Nelson.
I know that some people are arguing that they don’t want to “reward” Spitzer by making him DA due to his stances on homelessness. I don’t think that he’s been as bad in substance (as opposed to style) as most people think — the Santa Ana Riverbed may have been a thriving community, but it was one flash flood from being a disaster that would have landed some leaders in jail and far more in the morgue — but I’m not going to defend his style. If you feel that way, consider this: he will likely be replaced either by Andy Thorburn or Kris Murray — a fight we’ll focus on greatly here — and both of them are more supportive of the homeless than either Spitzer OR Rackauckas. (The difference is that Thorburn is more credible.) So what you’re really doing with Spitzer here is (1) getting him off of the Board of Supervisors two years early, and (2) putting him in a position where he will be able to prevent many more lives from being ruined than ever lived on the riverbed.
And when I say “save people’s lives from being ruined,” I mean NOT PUTTING INNOCENT PEOPLE IN JAIL and NOT PUTTING GUILTY PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR LONGER THAN WARRANTED because you’ve done things like NOT HANDING OVER EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE TO THEIR ATTORNEYS, and EAVESDROPPING ON THEIR PHONE CONVERSATIONS WITH THEIR CLIENTS, and USING GOVERNMENT INFORMANTS INSIDE OF PRISONS WHO WILL TESTIFY THAT THEIR TARGETS CONFESSED TO CRIMES WHETHER THEY REALLY DID OR NOT.
I really do understand the need for our society to do a better job of caring for — and NOT CREATING IN THE FIRST PLACE — our homeless population. Like Spitzer, I’m wary of Orange County being asked to do MUCH MORE than our share — but (and I don’t know that he’d disagree) I’m happy with our being asked to do OUR FAIR SHARE towards solutions. (He and I would probably agree that the ideal solution would be politically sustainable — people would buy into it — so that our citizens don’t spent all of their ample leisure time and discretionary income trying to evade it.) But even if you find Spitzer wanting in this area, this … listen to me closely here:
THIS IS NOT AN ELECTION FOR WHO WILL BE ORANGE COUNTY’S HOMELESS CZAR! IT IS AN ELECTION FOR WHO WILL BE ORANGE COUNTY’S TOP PROSECUTOR!
WILL IT BE SOMEONE WHO HAS DEMONSTRATED NON-STOP ABUSE OF POWER AND RUINING COUNTLESS LIVES TO CREATE A “GOOD TRACK RECORD” TO IMPRESS VOTERS, OR SOMEONE WHO HAS LITERALLY RISKED HIS POLITICAL CAREER TO CLEAN UP THE CORRUPTION?
Here’s what’s going on right now — and I’ve been meaning to write about this but haven’t had time, so I’ll put it here and repeat it later. Rackauckas is attacking Spitzer for supposedly promising to “bring the ACLU to run the office.” He’s doing that because he’s hoping to leverage people’s opposition to the ACLU on First and Fourteenth Amendment issues — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, rights of minorities and women — where it takes absolutist positions that famously makes even its own members uncomfortable, even when they know that those positions are constitutionally correct.
What Spitzer wants to do is to agree to ACLU monitoring — which, incidentally, costs the ACLU money that could otherwise make by winning lawsuits against Rackauckas — of its actions related to criminal procedure issues — the ones found in the Fourth through Eighth amendments of the Bill of Rights. These rights are very important, and people generally appreciate what the ACLU does to make sure that criminals have rights to counsel, that juries can’t exclude minorities, that fines can’t be excessive, etc. But Rackauckas is trying to capitalize on people hating that the ACLU won’t let them erect crosses on government buildings. Different division of the ACLU, folks!
And why is Rackauckas doing this? Just to win an election? I don’t think so.
Rackauckas wants to prevent ACLU review of OCDA files that could end up getting Rackauckas in deep trouble.
Remember, we only know PART of the story of how Rackauckas has had his prosecutors cheat on behalf of him and his cronies. The ACLU — WHICH WOULD BE BARRED FROM LITIGATING ANY CASES WHERE IT IDENTIFIED PROBLEMS THROUGH INTERNAL MONITORING — is going to help identify many more — and provide advice about how to solve them before they lead to further litigation — and injustices.
Spitzer has identified the OCDA’s “win at all costs” mentality — rather than a “ACHIEVE JUSTICE in all cases” mentality that he wants to bring — as one of the main problems with the ACLU’s office. (And he should know it well, having been Rackauckas’s top lieutenant when he discovered oozing corruption in the Public Advocate/Guardian’s office that turned out to be centered around a woman named Peggy Buff who — unbeknownst to Spitzer — was Rackauckas’s mistress (and now his wife) and was therefore entitled to the largest possible serving of Rackauckas’s “benefit to cronies,” the appetizer for which was Spitzer being fired.
(That’s the county we’ve been living in! Can you understand why I’m begging people to vote this OC version of a corrupt Southern Sheriff out before he continues his dynasty?)
The prospect of real reform terrifies Rackauckas, whose main concern here is to keep his racket going. More than anything else that means having a successor who will not serve him with the justice he has earned. I don’t know what conversations Rackauckas may have had with Michael Gates in the pase about protecting him — but I sure look forward to being able to find out. Sadly, we’ll probably never find out if Rackauckas wins, his Assistant District Attorneys remain terrified of his retribution, and the stables aren’t cleaned out for decades.
Don’t worry about “rewarding Spitzer” for what he did in a very different office. Worry about whether you want to reward Rackauckas for the even more clearly evil things he has done in THIS office.
Sheriff: Duke Nguyen
Rackauckas could have pulled off a lot of the constitutional violations that he has without any help from outside of his own office. But for the crown jewel of them — the one that should finally be his undoing — he needed to have a partner: Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. She runs the jails; it was her office that set up snitches to, while working for the government, engage accused prisoners in conversations without their lawyers’ presence or permission. How much law do you have to not know to allow THAT to happen? (I presume, but do not know, that she also had a role in helping the DA’s agents eavesdrop on their conversations with their lawyers.)
Don Barnes was her top lieutenant. He was in a position to know what was going on — and to stop it, even if it meant blowing the whistle on it. Barnes and Hutchens share responsibility with Rackauckas for murderers being released onto Orange County’s streets for violations of their constitutional rights. Barnes is endorsed not only by the OCGOP, but by two of our worst and most craven Democratic officeholders, Rep. Lou Correa and Asmb. Tom Daly, whose seal of approval for a Republican (like Kris Murray and Lucille Kring) has generally meant that they’re corrupt, idiotic, or both.
Against Barnes, we have a straight arrow named Duke Nguyen, who started his career in Santa Ana and matured in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He is currently a detective for the — wait for it! — Los Angeles District Attorney’s Justice System Integrity Division. He has an impressively bipartisan list of endorsers, none of whom seems to be an embarrassment.
We desperately need a reformer like him in the Sheriff’s Department.
NOTE: Vern will (I’m betting) be able to post videos of the talks that Spitzer and Nguyen gave at Los Amigos on October 3. Those of you who have any doubts about either one, please watch or listen to those videos before you vote. If you’ve already sealed your vote-by-mail ballot without voting for either — unseal it and correct it, or get a new one! We need reform in these two offices that badly!
and Vern just saw the above Bat-Signal…
Todd’s opening statement, as introduced by Brett Murdock.
Questions and answers, pt 1
More questions and answers.
Duke Nguyen, Sheriff candidate. (I missed the first couple minutes)
*We like Duke…he is a nice guy. Barnes has two very important advantages: (1) His background and history as an efficient leader and supporter to the agency spans over 20 years. (2) Don seems to grasp that without general support from the BOS and the District Attorney….”Houston….we will have a problem!” We believe that the biggest issue should be about Response Times for Contract Cities. Many cities want the “Cheap Seats” when it comes to paying the Annual Contract Costs….but want instant response times when it comes to crime reporting. As Barnes mentioned at a recent event: Balancing the cost of Helicopters and SwAT Staff against Community Concerns needs to be addressed in a case by case situation. Duke seems to want to make things simple….”Be Efficient with being criminal… or Leave!” Sounds good, but Leadership requires the “Willing Cooperation” of his Deputies…..all of them. That requires a whole lot of respect for the Leader based upon time in grade. The latest TV Ad with Tony and Don appearing as a team lets us feel the warm fuzzies for Barnes. There is little doubt
that we will need to monitor his future decision making, but we believe Barnes will be a strong leader and a very suitable replacement for Hutchins!
So I take it that you don’t give a deflated football about the constitutional violations of the snitch scandal and the eavesdropping on conversations with defense lawyers? I think that you should care deeply about both.
Dr. D, Given the opposition and given the natural course of events when it comes to the penal system and the Deputy Sheriff’s that run the Institution…
the answer is: Whoever is running the crazy house will have the same problems.
You might want to contact Duke and ask for his opinion…of course!
Todd Spitzer has promised something to my face.
And then did the opposite.
I have seen it time and again.
A more lying scum there is not running for office in the state.
Of course Rohrabacher is a traitor to our great country – is that worse?
It’s amazing to me how people turn into quivering molds of jello when some lying sack ‘o crap politician deigns to return their text.
If Spitzer were the leading in the polls he wouldn’t touch anybody with a sniff of anti-cop or prosecutorial misconduct with a barge pole.
You lost your control of syntax after the first five words there.
It’s clear that one difference between the candidates is that while “Spitzer … wouldn’t touch anybody with a sniff (scent?) of prosecutorial misconduct with a barge pole” — hence his being endorsed by Karen Schatzle — Rackauckas will give them a full-body embrace.
Crown Prince Michael Gates of Surf City will likely both outlive Todd Spitzer and spend of your life as OCDA, if Rackauckas wins — but you’ll be protected by your special armor of ironic detachment.
Tony Racetrack for DA.
“He Can’t Live Forever!”
Every so often the Register is right. https://www.ocregister.com/2018/10/14/endorsement-spitzer-for-orange-county-district-attorney/
It’s time for change in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has held the office for 20 years, since January 1998. There has been no shortage of controversy in his tenure, but the last few years have been particularly difficult in the wake of the jailhouse snitch scandal, in which informants were illegally used to get confessions from inmates awaiting trial.
The fallout from the scandal prompted a Superior Court judge to remove the DA’s office from the penalty phase in the case of mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who confessed to killing eight at a Seal Beach salon in 2011. While prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Dekraai, he ultimately was sentenced to life without parole.
Rackauckas has acknowledged that mistakes were made in the way that snitches were handled, but he has downplayed the matter and in some cases sought to blame the Sheriff’s Department. Earlier this year, Rackauckas accused judges who had ruled against his office in the snitch scandal of bias, claiming the judge who had removed the DA’s office from the Dekraai case did so because Rackauckas didn’t hire the judge’s son and that appellate justices who later found that misconduct in the DA’s office was systemic did so because they were friends with the judge in the Dekraai case.
His office touted a grand jury investigation that found there was no systemic misuse of informants in county jails, despite the fact that the grand jury found that where wrongdoing had occurred, it was because of poor oversight and management. A panel of attorneys selected by Rackauckas to review the matter found “serious deficiencies” in supervision and training and called the office “a rudderless ship.”
“There does not appear to be any consistent or clear cultural message emanating from the top down to the bottom of the organization. In short, the office suffers from what is best described as a failure of leadership,” the report said.
Investigations by the state Attorney General’s Office and the U.S. Department of Justice remain open.
In the November election, just a few weeks away, voters will choose between Rackauckas and his longtime rival, Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who once worked in the District Attorney’s Office as Rackauckas’ protege.
Spitzer is not without controversy himself, most notably over a 2015 incident at a Wahoo’s Fish Taco in which Spitzer, who also once served as a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, brought a loaded handgun into the restaurant and made a citizen’s arrest on an unruly customer. Spitzer has also been criticized over a $150,000 settlement between the county and a former Spitzer employee who sued, claiming Spitzer had a terrible temper and wrongfully fired her.
The rivalry between Rackauckas and Spitzer runs deep and goes back a long way. When Spitzer was termed out of the state Assembly, Rackauckas hired him into the DA’s Office as a possible successor but then, in 2010, Rackauckas fired him. Spitzer claimed – and still claims – it was because of the way he handled an information request with the Public Administrator/Public Guardian Office. Rackauckas says it was because Spitzer routinely abused his authority and bullied other staffers. It’s kind of a he said-he said.
There is no easy choice here.
We’re recommending Todd Spitzer for District Attorney because he promises to bring transparency, accountability and reform to the District Attorney’s Office. Amid the fallout from the snitch scandal, those things are desperately needed, and they’re clearly not going to happen under Rackauckas, who still maintains there’s no real problem, despite court rulings, open investigations and unflinching criticisms of his leadership.
While we’re concerned about Spitzer’s temperament, we believe his promise to take reform seriously is an earnest one.
Todd Spitzer has our vote.
If Spitzer were not a trained police officer himself — and reserve officers do get properly trained — then the Wahoo’s thing would bother me much more. But to me, the most important aspect of that situation is the one that Spitzer’s critics seem to consider the most damning: that he went back to his car to get his gun and a pair of handcuffs before coming back and making the arrest.
Several implications of this — some evident from the facts, and some just reasonable inferences — seem to have eluded people:
(1) He was NOT the sort of vigilante who packs a concealed weapon hoping for the day that he could use it to prevent an attack in public. It was in his car.
(2) He clearly thought that the guy *needed* to be arrested. Otherwise, the story would easily go “he took his tacos, went back to his car, and drove away.”
(3) He thought the guy needed to be arrest for the benefit of the other people in the restaurant. Otherwise, again, he just drives away.
(4) He was certain enough that they guy needed to be arrested that he did so knowing that if the guy had a prayer of making a case against him for false arrest, someone in Rackauckas’s claque would have been able to get him money for a great attorney to sue Spitzer. In other words, HE WAS LITERALLY PUTTING HIS POLITICAL CAREER ON THE LINE to make this arrest. So far as I know, you’re not hearing him brag about it, just his opponents raising it.
(5) He brought the gun for one reason only: to make the guy put on the cuffs. This is what a well-trained officer would do.
(6) As I recall the story, he announced to the other patrons what he was doing, so that — among other things — none of them would think that he was a robber and pull out their own gun to stop him, possibly shooting him, the other guy, or a bystander. This again, is good training.
(7) Again, as I recall, the other patrons applauded him after the guy was cuffed. This doesn’t prove that he was right, but it’s pretty good evidence that what he did wasn’t considered out of line. (So is the absence of a lawsuit.)
(8) BUT WHY DIDN’T HE JUST CALL THE COPS? Good question — and one to which there are good answers.
(9) He knew that he was as well-trained to handle the situation as whatever officer was likely to be sent..
(10) Beyond general training, he knew that he was better SITUATED to handle THIS PARTICULAR situation than any other officer than was likely to be sent, because he had knowledge that an arriving officer would now: he had already identified the guy, he had assessed the guy and his traits, he knew what the guy had been doing, he knew the environment, he knew the other players, and he was already on the scene and could prevent further escalation that would come with delay.
(11) He also knew that by handling it himself, he could decide how much it would escalate and how. He could decide that, short of the guy posing a truly imminent threat to himself or others, he would not shoot him except as a last result. (And there is no indication that Spitzer would have shot him other than as a last resort.) He could decide, where an excited arriving copy might not, that he could profitably shoot to wound. He could decide that, if the guy remained belligerent, he could have allowed the guy to chase him out of the restaurant, securing the safety of the other patrons and the employees, and THEN escalated his brandishing of the weapon until the guy complied. (That may not be something a trained cop would ever do; I’m not one.)
(12) He could prevent a worst case scenario that would come from anyone calling a cop. The prototypical concern is that a cop, in the excitement and turmoil of the moment, a cop could misread which person was the intended subject of an arrest. (This would particularly put minority men, and to a lesser extent women, at risk.) If the guy had, say, had a knife — the turmoil of the cop arriving could have given him the chance to stab someone, whereas essentially ambushing him with his gun out and cuffing him made that impossible. As soon as the cop arrived, it may have been that people afraid for their lives, would try to stampede out of the restaurant — with undocumented people having the most reason to flee. Chaos was not our friend in this situation.
(13) By acting when he did, Spitzer ensured that someone else was not going to come up with a worse plan. (There could not be a better plan unless someone else was a trained officer as well.) Waiting had its dangers as well.
So, basically, Spitzer acted so as to lead to the lowest likelihood that the situation would end poorly. He knew that he had the training, the information, and the good will to want it to end well. I WOULD NOT HAVE DONE IT if it were me there instead, because while I would have had the good will, I’m not a trained officer. So Spitzer acted out of self-confidence — which, as it turned out, was well-placed. He may be hot-headed elsewhere and at other times. but there and then he was cool-headed and professional. I don’t think that it should count for him, any more than Rackauckas having been a paratrooper 50 years ago, but t simply should not count as a reason to oppose him.
And now the show has degenerated into spasmodic burlesque.
Yeah, I thought that you might find that reasoning and explanation too complicate for your taste.
How about a single short declarative sentence, the way you like it?
“Spitzer’s action may have saved lives.”
Maybe you’d have just hung out and seen called the cops to the restaurant with guns drawn. You should know better. He did.
Hi Mr. Diamond,
After reading your post and all the comments in their entirety I’m not sure I fully understand exactly why the Wahoo’s thing is considered a controversy. Was anyone hurt? Did he arrest the wrong person? Is it because the Orange County Tax payers were forced to pay $121,396 in legal fees after losing a Superior Court lawsuit related to the arrest?
The latter would certainly be a reason if it were true, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.
I doubt that this happened, as Spitzer would not have been acting as part of his job responsibilities (unless he’s a fish taco inspector in his spare time), so I don’t think that the county would be on the hook for them. What’s your source for this?
I was just researching who to vote for and came across it on Todds Wikipedia page, it’s under the section ‘political career’.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Spitzer
I don’t know if it was necessarily a direct result of Mr. Spitzers actions, I didn’t look into it much. I was just trying to understand why people use the Wahoo’s incident against him, since it seems like he was doing what any trained cop (off duty or not) would do – so I thought maybe I was missing something. I wasn’t trying to defame him with my previous comment or anything, I’m literally just a college kid with zero interest in politics trying to do my homework before voting, that’s all.
*Chairman Vern, your assessment is based upon years of dealing with details, not the realities of Public Life or Office. The system is based upon Compromise not Stigmatize.
There without sin, cast the first stone….they say. The truth of the matter is that Tony had to endure a variety of muntiny attacks over a variety of years. He had a minority report going from the beginning. The political payoffs to his various Prosecutors to undermine his leadership have been legion. They had the “Women Don’t Count” movement. They had the “It might be Corruption!” movement. They had the “Partisan Bock Choy” movement. All in all, Tony has done a great job, dealing with a variety of insolent BOS and Bureaucrats bellyaching about this or that and asking for an Independent Commission…..without any Consent Decrees. What about Kelly Thomas again? They could have fired the Chief of Police, called for a Consent Decree and done that for several other departments in The OC. Tony remained calm….. What do you think the Toddy Boy would have done? Anyway, Tony is our man and you are way off the mark on this issue Chairman Vern.
Oh. I just read your NOTE to me at the bottom. I did put those videos up, on my last Spitzer story. I’ll copy them over here when I get home.
T-Rack for DA.
“He Never Took A Loaded Gun Into A Restaurant to Arrest Bible Boy”
I knew that I’d read about this somewhere recently. I should have checked Voice of OC first. Here it is — and it’s part of a series.
https://voiceofoc.org/tag/oc-jail-recorded-telephone-calls/