In an AP interview, the next Los Angeles DA says he'll go after low-level nonviolent crimes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The incoming district attorney for Los Angeles County, Nathan Hochman, said in an interview with The Associated Press that his first task upon taking office is to eliminate the “pro-criminal blanket policies” of one of California’s most high-profile progressive prosecutors, George Gascón.

That means bringing back gang-related sentencing enhancements, allowing prosecutors to file juvenile charges more freely, and having prosecutors attend parole hearings with victims’ families again, where they can help argue against the release of convicts, Hochman said.

The former Republican-turned-independent also plans to return to prosecuting low-level nonviolent crimes that he said the current district attorney has not, such as criminal threats, trespassing, disturbing the peace and loitering, which often involve those experiencing homelessness.

Anyone who breaks the law will receive “proportional” consequences — no more “get out of jail free” cards, Hochman said in the interview Wednesday.

At the same time, he wants to look at solutions that don’t necessarily involve locking criminals up, such as court-mandated drug treatment, community service, and restitution.

“There’s a culture of lawlessness” that has been “perpetrated” by Gascón's office, Hochman said.

“We’re going to reverse that,” he said. “You basically say, ‘Here are the lines in our society, the lines are the laws, I’m going to consistently, fairly and impartially enforce them and here the real consequences on the other side. So if you want to, test me. If you think I’m bluffing, I’m not bluffing.’”

Hochman says he doesn't want to simply fill up prisons again.

“This is my message to people who believe in criminal justice reform: I believe in it as well,” Hochman said. “The difference between myself and my predecessor is it won’t be a bunch of talk.”

Hochman's victory Nov. 5 to become top prosecutor in the nation’s most populous county of 10 million people reflected growing discontent in California with progressive district attorneys who have pushed criminal justice reform.

Gascón, a former San Francisco police chief, was elected in 2020 during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota as part of a wave of progressive prosecutors elected nationwide.

He brought several controversial changes to the district attorney's office that were seen by critics as soft on crime, such as ending cash bail and not allowing prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults or ask for sentencing enhancements. He also recently addressed the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, saying he would seek resentencing for the brothers who received life sentences for the shotgun killings of their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

Gascón defended his work, saying in his concession statement: “I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished over the past four years and grateful to the communities who have been and will always be the heart of criminal justice reform.”

In 2014, Gascón, then district attorney in San Francisco, co-authored a ballot measure passed by California voters that reclassified certain low-level drug and property crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies. The measure was approved as California spent years struggling with a 2009 federal court order to reduce the population in the state’s overcrowded prisons.

But increased property crime in LA County, emphasized by viral videos of smash-and-grab retail theft, as well as a worsening drug epidemic and increasing homelessness have fed a feeling of lawlessness and frustration that voters brought to the polls last week.

Prosecutors across the state are now armed with the passage this month of Proposition 36, a ballot measure that gives them the ability to charge shoplifting and drug possession crimes as felonies after a third offense.

Hochman declined to say whether his office plans to review current misdemeanor cases to elevate them to felonies but said the ultimate goal is deterrence. His goal is to return to a year like 2014, which he said was considered the region’s safest year in the last 50 years.

“I don’t predict that you’re going to have thousands of people now going to prison,” he said. “The goal is ultimately to deter them from committing the crimes in the first place. That’s when I’ll know that I’m actually doing something that is effective in the criminal justice system, not by filling prisons to the breaking point. That’s a failure of the system.”

With a little over two weeks before being sworn into office and taking over a department of more than 700 prosecutors, Hochman spent a recent morning this week in Hermosa Beach, a city south of Los Angeles, observing “homeless court.”

The program, which began in the coastal city of Redondo Beach, gives people experiencing homelessness the opportunity to avoid prosecution for nonviolent misdemeanor charges or municipal code violations in exchange for accepting judge-mandated services that can eventually lead to placement in housing.

“I thought it was a really innovative way to try and deal with low-level homeless crime ... and get the homeless individuals the help that they need to ensure that they actually won’t ever have to be back in court,” Hochman said.

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, talks with Redondo Beach, Calif., city attorney Michael Webb, right, during a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, center, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, listens to Redondo Beach, Calif., city attorney Michael Webb during a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, talks to a reporter during an interview with The Associated Press in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, listens to Redondo Beach city attorney Michael Webb during a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, listens to a homeless outreach program coordinator during a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, sits for a photo before an interview with The Associated Press in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, attends a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Nathan Hochman, the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney, attends a Housing Initiative Court session in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike killed at least 12 Lebanese rescue workers on Thursday inside a civil defense center in the eastern city of Baalbek, according to health and rescue officials, hours after state media in Syria said Israeli strikes in and around the capital killed at least 15 people.

Lebanese emergency workers were digging through the rubble Thursday evening to search for more of their colleagues still trapped under the destroyed rescue center, the group said in a statement. At least three civil defense members were wounded.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Lebanon’s civil defense forces have no affiliation with the militant group Hezbollah, and they provide crucial rescue and medical services in one of the world’s most war-torn nations.

The Health Ministry condemned what it called a “barbaric attack on a Lebanese state-run health center,” adding that “it is the second Israeli attack on a health emergency facility in less than two hours.”

In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike on Arabsalim village targeted the Health Authority Association, a civil defense and rescue group linked to Hezbollah, killing six people, including four paramedics, the Health Ministry said.

Earlier, Israel carried out at least two airstrikes on the western Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus and one of the suburbs of Syria's capital, Qudsaya, killing at least 15 and wounding another 16, Syria's state news agency said. An Associated Press journalist at the scene in Mazzeh said that a five-story building was damaged by a missile that hit the basement.

The Israeli military said it hit infrastructure sites and command centers of the Islamic Jihad militant group.

In Syria, an official with Palestinian Islamic Jihad said the strike in Mazzeh targeted one of their offices, and several members were killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

The airstrikes came shortly before Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, was scheduled to meet in the Syrian capital with representatives of Palestinian factions at the Iranian Embassy in Mazzeh.

Israel's military says Islamic Jihad participated alongside the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks from Gaza into Israel that killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and saw 250 others abducted.

The ensuing Israel-Hamas war has spilled into the wider region, affecting Lebanon, Syria and leading to strikes between Israel and Iran. The war has left much of Gaza in ruins and has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israeli warplanes intensified airstrikes in Lebanon on Thursday, targeting various areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, including the outskirts of the southern port city of Tyre and the Nabatieh province, the National News Agency said.

Throughout the day, sporadic airstrikes targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs in a clear uptick in attacks on the district over the past two days, with the Israeli military issuing evacuation warnings for several locations and buildings in the suburbs.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in the Dahiyeh area, including weapons storage facilities and command centers. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that over the past week, Israel had “struck more than 300 targets from the air across Lebanon, including about 40 targets in the heart of the Dahiyeh in Beirut.”

Lebanon’s state media said an earlier Israeli airstrike hit a building in Baalbek, killing at least nine people and wounding five others. The strike came without warning. The Israeli military did not immediately comment and the target was unclear.

A report by the World Bank on Thursday estimated that Lebanon has suffered $8.5 billion in physical damages and economic losses from 13 months of war.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Since then, Israeli strikes and bombardment in Lebanon have killed at least 3,380 people while the number of wounded has surpassed 14,400, the Health Ministry said Thursday. Among the dead were 658 women and 220 children.

In Israel, 76 people have been killed, including 31 soldiers.

Before the war intensified on Sept. 23, Hezbollah said that it had lost nearly 500 members but the group has stopped releasing statements about their killed fighters since.

United Nations peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix, speaking during a visit to Lebanon, said the U.N. remains committed to keeping its peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, in place in all of its positions in southern Lebanon, despite intense ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants.

UNIFIL has continued to monitor the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah across the boundary known as the Blue Line despite Israeli calls for peacekeepers to pull back 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the border. UNIFIL has accused Israel of deliberately destroying observation equipment, and 13 peacekeepers have been injured in the fighting.

Separately, Israeli media reported Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, has been questioned by police over suspicion of altering official records connected to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks to benefit his boss.

Multiple reports said Braverman is suspected of changing the time stamp of a conversation Netanyahu held with his military secretary in the first minutes of the attack. The reports were confirmed by an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.

Netanyahu’s office had no immediate comment. It was not immediately clear why Braverman made the change.

Aji reported from Damascus, Syria. Abby Sewell in Beirut and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Mourners react during eulogies for Israeli soldier Capt. Itay Marcovich, who was killed in action in Lebanon, during his funeral in Kokhav Yair, Israel, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Residents check their destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire as smoke rises from a destroyed building that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Mourners gather around the grave of Israeli soldier Capt. Itay Marcovich, who was killed in action in Lebanon, during his funeral in Kokhav Yair, Israel, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Mourners react during eulogies for Israeli soldier Capt. Itay Marcovich, who was killed in action in Lebanon, during his funeral in Kokhav Yair, Israel, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Mourners react during eulogies for Israeli soldier Capt. Itay Marcovich, who was killed in action in Lebanon, during his funeral in Kokhav Yair, Israel, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A man checks his destroyed shop at a street that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Residents check their destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Smoke rises between buildings hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Smoke rises between buildings hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A firefighter hoses down a building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

Firefighters and security officers gather at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

Security officers and rescuers gather at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)