Los Angeles Friday, August 08, 2008




A Tough-on-Gangs City Attorney Candidate—No, not Jack Weiss
GuestWords
By Ron Kaye (Posted first at RonKayeLA.com )

Meet Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich, a well-funded candidate for L.A. City Attorney, who wants to get tough on gangs and illegal immigrant criminals. Clearly, he's not City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and certainly not Councilman Jack Weiss, the man anointed by the mayor and L.A. corrupt insider political culture to perpetuate the soft on crime policies that are driving away the middle class, making it impossible for the working poor to get ahead and leaving vast neighborhoods terrorized by hoodlums.

"Nuch" is a different sort. He's raised half a million dollars which is half what Weiss has raised but more than enough to be competitive and he has a lot of support from law enforcement and the backing of Sheriff Lee Baca, District Attorney Steve Cooley and former Assembly Speaker and mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg.

When you look at where their bundled money is coming from, you find Weiss is on the take big time from developers with massive projects that the community has gotten little or no say about, Trutanich is on the take from cops and judges.

"No ifs ands or buts about it," Trutanich told me, "I'd have a zero tolerance policy. Commit a crime, you're gone."

Trutanich makes the point that the problem is that LAPD isn't even following its own rule, Special Order 40. Only the first paragraph making sure cops don't investigate people solely for immigration violations gets any attention.

The rest of it, he notes, requires cops to make arrest files with the notation "undocumented alien" and to notify immigration authorities if the suspect is arrested for multiple misdemeanors, a felony or has previous arrests.

"We just need to enforce all of Special Order 40 and we'll have taken a big step forward in dealing with gangs.

Trutanich's commitment to law and order goes beyond gangs to go after billboard companies that have littered the city with illegal signage, illegal conversions of single family homes into tenements and unlicensed and illegal businesses.

"i'll be honest and transparent. I guarantee that," he said. (Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Daily News and the activist behind the Saving LA Project. Read more Ron Kaye views at: www.RonKayeLA.com ) â—˜

http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/1497/75/