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LAPD Chief Michel Moore, DA George Gascón Tout Joint Efforts To Reduce Violence

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore and L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón Wednesday said they hoped to see a decline in violent crimes in the coming months due to a new joint effort.

"Since the first quarter of 2020, violent crime has been going up nationwide," Gascón said. "We're increasingly seeing more and more cases of violence.

"We're seeing more mass shootings and, interestingly enough, it really doesn't matter what the political orientation of the jurisdiction is," he continued. "We're seeing it in red cities, blue cities, red counties, blue counties. Unquestionably, we have a problem with violence in our communities and our country and it's much deeper than anything that law enforcement or prosecutors can do."

Gascón said traditional public safety strategies have been "reactive and reactionary instead of proactive and preventive," which he said showed law enforcement could not address the violence alone.

"We cannot arrest our way out of this problem, just like we cannot prosecute our way out of his problem," he said.

Gascón said the new program will initially operate out of LAPD's Foothill, Newton, 77th and Mission stations with a goal of eventually being expanded throughout the county.

"We have embedded both prosecutors and D.A. investigators to work closely with police and community, and by doing so we hope to intervene earlier as we interact with our community," he said. "We're looking forward to those moments where we can identify a young person that maybe needs some help and maybe be able to provide that intervention so that we can alter the trajectory for that young person and others before they harm someone or someone harms them."

Moore said he believed that the approach would strengthen public safety and enable authorities to focus on identifying finite resources on "those individuals that are preying upon others in our community" coupled with effective intervention from "peacemakers" outside law enforcement.

Moore also said he was looking forward to "a summer that we begin to see a reduction in our violence through initiatives such as this."

(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)

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