Letters to the Editor: Why did George Gascón lose? With cameras everywhere, voters saw the reality of crime

To the editor: Reflecting on Robin Abcarian’s column saying L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón failed to tell his story well, I have a different reason why he lost his bid for reelection.

In 2020, I voted for Gascón. I listened to his progressive proposals on criminal justice reform and thought they made sense.

Then, something changed. It wasn’t a sharp increase in crime or Gascón’s policies causing problems. No, what changed was the fact that smartphones, street cameras, door cameras and store cameras were ubiquitous enough for their footage to star night after night on local TV news broadcasts.

Before this phenomenon, we’d hear about robberies or carjackings in L.A. and think, “Just another crime in a big city.” But with cameras everywhere, viewers can now see the brutality of crime. They could easily see the 7-Eleven cashier being terrorized or the chaos of mass theft from stores; it was inevitable that voters would be horrified.

Violent crime may have gone down over the last four years, but voters now see in graphic detail what criminal acts actually look like. And they don’t like what they see.

Fred Gober, Playa Vista