LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles County’s new district attorney took the oath of office recently, thanking her predecessor for his backing and citing her career as proof of what hard work can accomplish.
Voters have shown that it is possible for “a girl from a working class neighborhood like the Crenshaw District, who was educated in a public school like Dorsey High School, who worked her way up from the bottom, can become the district attorney of the largest prosecutorial office in the nation,” Jackie Lacey said at a public afternoon swearing-in ceremony at USC’s Galen Center. “How cool is that?”
Lacey said she always knew that being a lawyer was what she wanted to do: “I felt like I was born to be in court.” She noted that she comes from a family of women who, “notwithstanding the racism they encountered in the south, accomplished things.”
Lacey said her priorities include the challenge of public safety realignment, the result of a new law under which prisoners have been shifted from state to county incarceration, and on keeping crime rates low. In response to a question about jail overcrowding, she said that the best way to decrease the rate of incarceration was crime prevention and pointed to a program which involves district attorney personnel going into schools beginning at the fourth-grade level.
She also promised a focus on preventing high-tech crimes and financial scams against seniors.
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