Joe Ascolante live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank. We are across the street from a Wiener Snitzel that sells beer. And this is two hours of the business, end of show business. And my guest this hour is Maria Ramirez, who is the candidate for District Attorney in Los Angeles County. And the election day is coming up like March fifth, nine days, nine days a week from Tuesday. Yes, that's what it is. So
Maria, good evening, good evening, Thank you for having me. Joe, I'm happy to have you here because this is a show about Hollywood and
about show business. But you can't make movies or TV here if you have a rampant crime and you know, bizarre criminal reform justice reform theories that don't seem to work, and they and so we we we would get into that in this show by saying, if you can't, if you can't work here, like in San Francisco they are always talking about, like you park your car, and all these news crews and TV crews that have their their their cameras stolen and their equipment stolen. And we don't want to live in a
world like that. But it kind of seems like we do. So I'm interested in in who the district attorney is because the district attorney is going to decide who we prosecute. No, yes, exactly exactly that. And you're what give us your background as it because I think in this race you are seem to be the most experienced and that seems to be one of the one of your advantages in this field, which we have to say includes this gascone
guy who was named georgecon Con, the gas con man. Yeah, and so that guy is a villain to most people who actually think about it. And so you work for him, right, he's your boss. He's my boss, has been my boss for the last three years, and it has
been, as you can imagine, chaotic in our office. And you know, I think you're right when we I know this is a Hollywood show, but you know it's it's public safety really affects all aspects of us in La County, and the businesses, you know, are economics, and I think, you know, movie making and TV making is all part of that and really about keeping our employees safe, you know, to go to work and
wherever that may be. And so it really does intersect. But you know, just a little bit about me. I was born and raised in La County, grew up in Boyle Heights Heights. Yeah, drove, I just drove through there. The best Mexican food ever. I went to King Taco, but that's more. Yeah, there's one actually in Boyle Heights as well, but I went to the one that's like the big one right just about
five hours ago. Yeah, that's yummy, but the food is amazing, So the one of Boyle Heights. So Boyle Heights, you grew up in Boyle Heights. What high school do you go to when you grow up in Boyle Heights. Well, when you grew up in Boyle Heights, you go to Roosevelt. Except that my mother did not want me going to Roosevelt with some of the kids that I was in grammar school with that were bad influences, she thought, so she sent me to Sacred Heart of Mary High School
in Montabello, in Manabello. Yes, that was a wise choice, yea good for you come from a good family. I come from a great family. They immigrated here from Mexico and built a great life for us here.
And about thirty three years ago I decided to join the DA's office, mainly due to the fact that that Boyle Heights at that time was experiencing a lot of gang violence and I really wanted to give the victims of crime in our neighborhood a voice, and I felt that our office needed to be more representative
of our communities, and so I joined thirty three years ago. I spent the first half of my career prosecuting gang violent crimes and major narcotic dealers, and then the second half of my career I've spent in supervision roles and working
my way up through the management of our office. And so I became the first Latina to be appointed as head deputy District attorney, overseeing a division, and then eventually under Jackie Lacy, I became a bureau director, overseeing eight of our most complex and high profile divisions, including major crimes, which most of your viewers might know about because they handle the high profile cases now.
Then and Steve Cooley, what was your boss for a while? Yaes, Steve Cooley, He's the one that promoted me to head deputy district attorney. So I've served in management under three district attorneys, and in fact, I was in my director position when George Gascon was elected into office. Now, people, if they don't follow this, it would be surprised to know that this George Gascon is a He's not even from here, right, Where did he come from? Well, he is from here. Apparently he's from if
I understand, he's from Maywood or somewhere. So he is from here. Oh okay. So he was at ALIPD for a very long time, was very, from my understanding, tough on crime kind of guy. Eventually went to Arizona to be the chief of police there, and then between chief of police and governor knew some bringing him over to San Francisco to be the chief there. Somehow his priorities seem to have changed and he developed a very progressive
agenda. And we have seen and heard what has happened to San Francisco. Yes, and we start we are starting to see that happening as well here in Los Angeles. Yeah, talking to me that people can look at San Francisco and see what a message's become because and primarily because of their lack of
enforcement for crime. Yes, and they and if you ask them do you support that, they'll say no. But when they go in the ballot box, they'll vote for this Gascon guy because there's so much money behind him, exactly exactly, and that you know, we had an example of what his policies did to a city, and we turned a blind eye to it. You know, not me personally, but I think our voting public did. And I think they were sold a bill of goods that he has failed to
deliver on. Now it isn't he. They threw one out in San Francisco, right They had a prosecutor that followed him was just like him, and they and the and the people rose up and kicked him out office right right. They recalled him chesna budin. I can't recall how you pronounce that, but yes, they kicked him out because they were fed up with what was happening in San Francisco. And as you know, we've had to recall attempts
against George Gascon that have failed. They didn't work, were they just didn't bumbled bungled. I mean, I think the first one, the problem was that it was it started right after he took office, and I think people were not ready to go that route. So a lot of people don't don't pay attention. No, they don't pay attention, and I think, hey, he was elected. Many people said give him a chance, and so and then it wasn't really very well planned out or well funded. The second
attempt was well found funded, but I don't know. There were some shenanigans going on with register Recorder's office with pounding the signatures, and somehow somebody used some influence to get all the signatures thrown out many of them. Yes, they did, and it really although and then other people would say, you, no one cares who votes in a general election, or everybody's voice got to be heard in this, and you're hurting democracy if you're if you're not
counting someone. But when he when his recall came out, they didn't want to count any of those folks, right, and many of them have thrown out, were thrown out that should not have been. Uh So you know, he's he's like the teflon dawn and he just keeps surviving these things with you know, and we just I think, now this is really our chance. That's why it's such an important election to really get him out before Los Angeles turns into San Francisco. Yeah, I mean, if you if you
see in San Francisco. I mean, you can go to San Francisco and have a good time and not you know, and not I've noticed that you can go there and have a good time and not experience it. But but every it seems like every couple of months, it just like spreads to where there's fewer places you can go without experiencing crime or you know, needles on the ground or just you know, feces, human hobo diarrhea as my wife calls it. So it's you don't want that here, and that's what happened
there. Why bring it? And then the empty buildings, Yes, we already have this empty building thing with the graffiti downtown. Yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it. And they were they were there, these graffiti people. I don't know if you know there, Sam, those guys were there for like three days doing that. Yeah, and they were they were graffiti
all the way up or from the top down. Fact that nobody saw that or they saw they saw it, but nobody did anything about it because they knew they wouldn't be prosecuted, because they knew George Gascon wouldn't wouldn't support any kind of prosecution or jail time for these for these crimes, which do you might see that think that it's at didn't hurt anybody. These people don't have
anything else to do. You might think it's cool looking, man, you know what, and some certain angles it is kind of cool looking, but it's you're not the person who lives as the street and your condo just went down in value by sixty percent because you live across the street from that. And then you call the owner and you can't even get a hold of them in China, and the owner already was experience. The reason that it was
empty is because he was having some financial issues with continuing the project. And now you know they're going to have to clean this up, which is another cost, is it? That's that's what I mean. When you're not going to get it affects our economy. Yeah, you're not going to get that
building done. You're not going to get so many people there that they can support the grocery stores around, and pretty soon your whole foods is h is closed down and you deserve it because you voted for gascon right, Yes, all right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back. We're gonna talk more about your background and some of the major crimes that the sexy,
major crimes that Maria Mamirez has h worked on and other stuff. And then we might even get into some of my regular stories and see what you think about those. Sure. On Joe Ascalante Live from Hollywood, we're talking to Rio Ramirez, candidate for DA And just so in case someone's driving around going I'd like to give that lady some money. What do they do go to? Why my website Maria forda dot com and anything helps. Right now, it's nine days until the election, so I need to get my name
out there. Okay, great, we'll be back after this. Joe Ascolante Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burdbank. We are here. This is a Hollywood show. Of course, we're serving the Hollywood community. But we have an important District Attorney race in Los Angeles County where the home
of Hollywood, where there's a lot on the line. We've got a DA here named Gascon that has made us kind of the laughing stock of one of the laughing stocks of the whole country because he does not believe in prosecuting crime. I know this. My sister works in the DA's office. And she's a prosecutor, been a prosecutor for like thirty years, and then they he came in and just pretty soon like she can't do her job anymore. And it's the job seems to be. And Maria, you can correct me if
I'm wrong. His philosophy seems to be let as many people out of jail as possible and keep anybody from going to jail, regardless of whatever that would effect that would have on public safety. I agree, and people often ask me what is what motivates him in terms of what his policies are, But and I really think it's just the decarceration of as many people as he can so that he can say I've taken all of these individuals out of custody.
But he has no plan for what happens to these individuals. Are they giving jobs, are they given services? Do they have housing? And you know, we're we have the highest homelessness crisis in the nation, and this is part of the problem that he's just letting people out. His policies do not allow our prosecutors to file the appropriate charges, the appropriate enhancements. He ties our hands with that, and so it really is affecting our ability to keep
our community safe, like gun enhancements. I've heard a little bit about this, And on the one hand, they want if they're if you're like a progressive like he is, you want gun control, you want to keep guns
as few guns as possible. But it doesn't seem like he's interested at all in pointing out that a gun, a criminal using a gun should should get a higher sentence than a criminal not using a gun, and so that you're not allowed to do these gun enhancements anymore, right, right, Well, so there are several gun enhancements, and he allowed us the ability to use the gun enhancement that has the least amount of prison time attached to it,
and he did not allow us to use the more serious gun enhancements that go attached to the more serious violent crimes. And so that doesn't make any sense. Right, we want to discourage people from committing violent offenses with firearms, and so it's disingenuous of him to say that he's for gun control, then does not allow us to use all of the tools that the legislature has given us to be able to keep the public safe from gun violence. It doesn't
make sense. And so his agenda, I think is very politically motivated. It really does not take into consideration the real effects it has on our communities.
And so that is a failure of leadership, I think on his part, and we have to we have to get him out of office because now there are some gun enhancements that he has actually allowed prosecutors to use, but it's only on those cases where he's going to get media attention on, or where there's a police officer that is killed and he's going to get media attention
on that. So now all of a sudden, he becomes tough on crime when he's not allowing us to use those same enhancements for just the regular guy that gets killed on the street. So that sounds like a politician rather than like a public servant exactly. He is definitely a politician. Well, and where do you think he wants to go? Like? Where is he is? He? Does he want to be governor and move move on? Or is he? I don't know. I think his evil plan is to focus
on La County because he's seeking another term here. And if you talk before when I talked to him, he kind of was thinking I'm going to retire, but here he is running for another term, and I just think he wants to institute his agenda for as long as he can here in La County. But people vote for this like yes, like they voted for Prop. Forty seven, that was the one that reduced penalties also, but that was
that was before him, wasn't it. Yeah. So Prop forty seven I think came about because of the fact that there was the jails and prisons were crowded, and there was overcrowding, and we had to find a way to fix that problem. And so Prop forty seven came about to minimize some of the incarceration rates for certain offenses. But one of the biggest things I think that it hindered us with is our inability to charge felonies for repeat defenders.
And it's those repeat offenders that are currently committing those mash and grab robberies, those staff burglaries, all of that, and so that's really where the problem is with Prop forty seven. Okay, So the people that you have in the most trouble with are the repeat offenders, and if you could just lock them up for a little while, yes, they definitely wouldn't be they could they'd just be committing crimes in jail, and not to say that they don't,
but they'll be committing. They're locked up, so they're not smashing and grabbing, right, So you got to get those people and Prop forty seven doesn't allow that to happen. Now. I heard there's a movement to get rid of Top forty seven, But do you think that would work in La County? Is it necessary? Is there anything else you could do? Yeah? So I think there's two movements right now, one to completely get rid of Prop forty seven and then another one to amend certain parts of it that
are giving us the most problems. I don't think that we need to get rid of Prop forty seven completely. Also, we have to remember that La County is a heavily democratic county and lean's aggressive for the most part, and so I don't think that a complete withdrawal of Top forty seven is going to work in Allen County. So we have to be more thoughtful about what we need to be able to do our job to prosecute cases. And I think if we amend those parts of it that are hindering us right now with those
repeat offenders, I think that's going to go a long way. Now, it's good you brought that up. About the kind of county we have. It's a bunch of Democrats, a lot of Latinos and Democrats. Now you're a Democrat, you're a Latina. You could win. Like I consider myself pretty conservative, I'm registered as independent, but I support you as a Democrat because number one, you're a real prosecutor, and number two you are you can win. So you have another opponent in this race. It's something I
know a little bit. I'm not that sharp on this, but this is guy Hawkman, and he is basically a Republican until a few months ago, right, yes, and and God bless him. He looks at he's a public servant, and I'm sure he's a great guy. He's not gonna win. Nobody's gonna fall for that in this kind Nobody is falling for the Republican turned though, especially the white Republican turned independent to well, I'm pro crime and I'm gonna unseat Gascon. That is not going to work here. That's
our biggest fear within our District Attorney's office. Because even Nathan Hawkman is a very nice guy, and he really has had a great experience serving the public. But everyone will bring up his Republican past. You know, he ran against Bonta, who is our attorney general. He couldn't beat him, and he couldn't beat him with all the money that he and he has raised the most money of all of the candidates. And so we're afraid that it's going
to be Gascon and Nathan Hawkman standing at the end. And there is no way that Nathan Hawkman and Alick County is going to be George Gascon. So I think we need somebody that appeals to the mass, vast majority of LA County. I am a Democrat, but I am very prosecutor. I'm a prosecutor, have to it doesn't matter what you cry prosecut I care about public safety. I care about victims. You know, I'm very common kids, yes exactly, my family's here. You know, I want my child growing
up in a safe place. And so, uh, you know, we need somebody like that that really and and you know, Joe, traditionally the Ya's race has been nonpartisan, right, it never party politics never really comes into play. But because George, it was always it was always like prosecutors are favored. If you're talking on crime, you're going to win yes.
Now, it's not that the world is upside down exact Maria Maris is trying to turn it right side up. Yes again, and I can okay, and we're going to take another break, and then we're going to uh, I'm going to get to some more of your background. And but I want to tell everybody once again the website and where they can donate, because I know that that and in this point during a race, you every little bit
counts because you got to get on that on these on people's phones. You got to get your little message on people's phones, and you got to get the eyeballs. And you know, if it's five hundred here and five hundred there, it really makes a big difference, it really does. How do they do they do that? And so you go to Maria four da dot com and there's a donate button there, and I would really appreciate it to try to get my message out. The polls show that when I get my
message out, I am a top contender. So that's what I'm trying to do this last nine days. All Right, we'll talk a little bit about that how the race actually works too when we come back, because it's it's it's interesting. Joe Ascalante Live from Hollywood. Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood, every Sunday, five to seven eleven fifty on your AM out talking to Maria Ramirez. Maria, election day is when March fifth. Man, how old do you have to beat a boat? Eighteen? Okay? And registered?
And register? Yeah, okay, and then let's talk. She's We've been talking to her about why it's important. I mean, I believe to reduce crime in LA for the entertainment industry, for movies, for for anything from movie production to the restaurants that support you know, all the business that that relies on the Hollywood film industry and the and the music industry. People won't come here. There's a there's a studio, famous studio in Hollywood is about
to shut their doors because of homeless crime. And that place has been there forever, and now there's stuff's getting stolen broken into. I mean, who what kind of a rock star wants to come and step over hobo diarrhea to get to the studio every morning? Not that not that they go in the morning. Do you know what they do, Maria? They show up around noon. If one of them does, like maybe the bass player shows up at singer shows up at ten pm. But still there's hobo diarrhea there,
Yes, and it's there all day, so it's steaming. So yeah, I think it's important to have a good DA that is going to reduce crime. The one we have now, George Gascon is a guy that increases crime. And it's just I mean, it's not even a theory, it's just true. His policies make crime go up, make the crime less, make the streets less safe. So that's why I'm, you know, spending so much time on this. So Maria, how does this work? They vote,
and then how do you win? Is the top two go to the This is a primary election, right, yes, yes, so you know it is a crowded field. There's twelve candidates, including the incumbent, and twelve twelve times. Am I going to give all these people equal times? I know, Well, maybe they won't reach out, but if they want to, if they watch you, I'll put them on here. But I'm only going to tell them to vote for Maria America. Thank you. I
really appreciate the support. Yeah, so, the it is unlikely with such a crowded field and the unpopularity of the incumbent that anyone would get more than fifty percent of the vote to be able to win outright, So we think it's going to go to the general election in November, and the top two
vote getters will go to the November runoff. So you need to be the top in that top too, and we assume the incumbent will be one of them, and you just want to be the other one because then you can focus on, Hey, everybody, there's one guy here that's crime and there's one that's against crime. Yes, sad that we've got to a place where
we have to talk like that, but exactly that's where we're at. It's crazy, and from all indications so far, looks like it's a low voter turnout from the take home ballots, and so every vote is going to count. Now, is it low voter turnout? Because is the primary? Didn't The primary used to be in June. They moved it to coincide because of the presidential year, and now it is in March. Many It's funny because many people still think that the primary is in June, and I have to
remind them, people like me in tol this morning. Yeah, it's in March. Fifth a week from Tuesday. Holy cow. So yeah, so just get out there and vote. From Maria Ramirez, she is I mean, if you listen to the show and you live in La County, I think we're going to get these people. Now the other people, you know, people do they just do strange things because they're told to or there's a
bunch of money. Now, what about these conspiracy theories that say this guy, George Gascone is responsible, I mean, George Soros is responsible for the das like Gascon and him attacking judges and things like that. Is that true? That is that well? I think it is fact that George Soros funded George Gascon's campaign when he ran for DA in twenty twenty, So that's a
fact. I don't think that there's a conspiracy theory there. Okay. And if you compare the other individuals, the other prosecutors that he has supported with funds across the country, it is these really progressive process comcuters, just like George Gascon, just like the DA in San Francisco that was recalled. So it is those types of prosecutors that he's funding. Why he's doing that, I really don't understand. Well, I can say, because you can't say,
Yes, he hates America and he wants to see it changed. And so does any live here? I don't know. Isn't he Hungarian or something? Yeah, but I think he lives here. So it's weird. But I mean, I know a lot of people. I'm going to tell you, Maria. I have asked people point blank that I'm I'm like, spend a lot of time in the music business. And I talked to the you know, the progressive elites, and I asked them, I go, do you do you really look at the crime and all this stuff that's going Do
you really they're not prosecuting these rioters or stuff like that? Do you really think that's good for society? And I have people tell me with a straight face, I love it. I love it. I think it's good, you know, the idea being, hey, you know what, we need to turn this world upside down, because you know that's for too long the have been controlling things, and I really like to see the tables turn even and that means let these people out of jail and let them, let Antifa
run the streets all that kind. They really believe that, So I can't even argue with it because they're not. That's that's what they want, the chaos, they want the crime. Well that makes sense when you consider what George Gascon has done to our office internally. It really has been chaos and he really doesn't care about our office internally. You know, I don't know if you've heard, but we have been losing prosecutors. People are retiring,
they're leaving early, they're going to other departments. We have gone from eleven hundred attorneys we're under eight hundred now. And we can't hire fast enough because nobody wants to come and work for him. Just attrition, attrition and people, Yeah, people leaving, and we can't the military where they say, like people think the militaries, it's not the way, it's not their parents military. And then now we have problems. Yeah, and you know,
we used to hire. When we would put out a hiring notice, we was get thousands of applications. This last goal around, we received one hundred applications. Gosh, really just because they're like, why should I go to the prosecutor's office and have them tell me to use certain methods to let everybody out of jail? That doesn't sound like fun. And I think that people
are confused now with what our office stands for. You know, they're like, well, it was very clear before you came to the office you wanted to do good for the community, prosecute crimes and do the right thing, like that was our basic motto. And now it's all gotten very blurred. We don't know, you know, we have public defenders running our office. It's all very blurred, and it's a tragedy for our office. Now would they hire Sam over here? I mean, no, maybe Sam. I'm
good, he's good. And then what about an appeal with trust me? What about the public? I mean, I wanted to be a prosecutor. I went to law school thinking I was going to be a prosecutor, and then I you know, by the time I figured out what my student loans were, I realized I couldn't pay him off with the prosecutor's salary. It seemed like I couldn't. I wasn't a financial planner. I wasn't like but
I was looking at it going I don't think I can do it. So I got a job at CBS and I ended up there and I and I made some money, but I wanted to do it because it looked like fun, and it looked like you were one of the good guys and you were fighting crime. And now it's just some weird social experiment and with the ordinary citizens are the victims. So you know, it's it's it's it's got to be sad over there. The morale is bad, correct, the morale is
very He doesn't care about that. But he does not care about it. And you know, there's about there's about twenty lawsuits against him because he retaliates against people who don't believe what he believes and don't follow what he thinks is the right thing to do, which is not. So that doesn't sound like leadership. It is not leadership. He has a failed leader. And our
office needs strong leadership right now. And that's why I want to win this, because I wanted to turn our office around and make it the respected office that it once was. We used to I mean, I've been there more than thirty three years. I used to love coming to work every single day. Yeah, and now the last three years it's just been so sad.
I used to tell people and when they're saying, I'm thinking about going to law school, and I would say don't because the job of a lawyer is pretty painful, and you don't know what it is until you get there. Did you know what it was until you got there? Because I surely didn't.
Yeah, I mean I think I didn't. Because in law school we took trial advocacy classes, we clerked at the DA's office, and so we had an idea of you know, and it was always about wanting to do the right thing because most of the time, you either go to a big law firm or you go into public service. And so the people that go into public service really care about our communities. And most people don't go public service. They go to a big law firm and then they find out that
job sucks. The job will kill you. So I was just like, I tell people not to go. I go unless you want to be a DA. Because my sister is a prosecutor. She loves her job. I've never met anybody that loved her job so much. And so I recommend people, if you want to go to law school, do that. If not,
don't go, You're gonna hate You're gonna hate that job. So you don't think it's gonna be something, you know, magical, it's gonna you know, you could turn you into an alcoholic and then your your liver's gonna die and and then you die. And yeah, it's critical to turn things around so that we can get passionate people back to doing the job of keeping our community safe and that really have a drive for that, you know, and don't care about the money. Yeah, and that was the thing.
You didn't need a lot of money because it was a fun job and you left it like five or five thirty. My sister did Ria Romero is staying late. She's burned the midnight oil to fight for you guys. So we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and talk more about crime in Los Angeles. On Joe'sclante Live from Hollywood, Joe as Calornte, here's my lawyer. You don't want day. He does it all Floya and you don't. Joe Escalante Here why from Hollywood Every Sunday on k E I B eleven
fifty on your am Dow. We're talking to Maria Ramirez from Boyle Heights, will Heps. She's a small town girl who is about to be our next district attorney right here in Los Angeles. You just need your vote and some money probably too. You haven't Maria for DA dot com dot com. Okay, o case, I forget to say that at the end, because things get crazy at the end. I might start panicking about what we got to do in the last twenty seconds. So let's talk a little bit about We've
talked about your experience a little bit. You've been thirty three years in the Prosecutor's office, obviously you're qualified to be, and you're in a management managerial thing. You've run the you've basically run the DA's office. Yes, I have run. Is there anyone in this race that has as much experience with you as you know? Okay, now what about this? Okay? What
kind of crimes like? What are the like when you were when you were when you're thinking back and you're having your retirement party and they and they, what are the highlights of the crimes and if there's any that have to do with Hollywood, which is what this show is about, even if it's just a TV movie was made out of it? What what? What are what are the things that come to mind in the DA office in Los Angeles? Well, I personally don't think I have handled a case that involved anything Hollywood
related. I spent most of my career prosecuting gang violent crimes, like your sister. That's where I met her, in the hardware gang division. And really, you know, did you see the movie Colors? I did see the movie Colors? Okay, that cos I guess that counts. Yeah, But you know, now that you think about it, there hasn't really been a lot of movies made about the gang culture, and Colors is one. But you don't see that recently either. Well, because you guys wiped eradicated,
the gang, medicated the gang thing. Whatever happened to the crips and the bloods. That used to be the number one thing we would hear in the news every day. What are these people up to the Well, there's still there's still crips and bloods, but I think that a lot of the violence is between more of an ethnic conflict. But you know, I still I don't think that we hear it as much as we used to when we
were in the nineties. But definitely it's still a problem. If you were gonna say, uh, if you're gonna describe me, would you describe me as a crip or blood? Let me give you a little background Okay, my dad went to Compton College, but my mother and grandmother lived in Inglewood. So like, so, I think you're a crip. I'm a crip Inglewood crips. I thought those were the bloods in Inglewood. I don't know anything. You are wearing a blue tie. I'm just saying, oh,
there you go, wee. I'm a crip. Yeah now, and we know you are all about that thug life. I would come on true, you and Tupac. What about what about the Russian gangs? They scare me more than anything. Are they Are they a force? They're not a force on the local level. I wonder if they're a force at the federal level because we don't get a lot of Russian gang crime. What about Armenian gangs? We have some Armenian gang crimes. They're colorful? Are they? In
what way? My friend went to an Armenian wedding and they were just like throwing out hundred dollars bills anywhere. You know, we're not talking about the gangs now, we're talking about this Armenian culture is colorful. If you're throwing out one hundred dollars bills, learn in a gang. That's a rule.
Number one and my my gang profiling career that I so gangs now they're really getting more into the monetary business of selling drugs and guns, and it's more it's become more of a business and not a street and not so much right and not so much territory. It's more about your cutting into my drug business. Prostituting women. That was let's talk about prostitution. Is that something that is like a problem in Los Angeles or is that being prosecuted? It's not.
I think there's been a change in the way that we're looking at women and young women who are trafficked as victims. I noticed we call it trafficking now, yes, like you. I saw a lady to give a speech the other day. She got a whole long speech, and she was a former prostitute, but she didn't describe herself as a prostitute. It was a benefit thing, you know, when she had reformed, and she just said I was trafficked, and she didn't have to say she was a prostitute anymore.
She could just say I was trafficked, and everyone I could just was given her money. And I think that they're the problem is more with the pimps yeah, right, that take advantage in traffic. Unfortunately traffic minor women and girls and boys, and so I think that we're seeing now that many times they do this no choice of their own right, and so we're trying the criminal justice system is trying to get away from criminalizing their behavior and focus
on criminalizing the people who put them there. Yeah, that kind of highlights the difference between sex work and being sex trafficked. People conflated a lot, exactly. Good point. Well, I'm a prude, so we have to move on from this topic because it's too embarrassing. What do you know, it's almost the end of the show, So we're gonna, we're gonna, We're gonna take off. That's the end of the show. So much time. We did a whole hour with Room with Maria Romerez. Yes, that
was fun. Can I can I tell a quick story? Yeah? Please. One of my greatest memories is your sister and I were in the Hardcer gang division and I went with her to one of your Vandals shows in Hollywood. This was like looking to bust criminals. Yeah no, this was we just went to have fun. So this was like thirty years ago. And then after you guys, got done that. You said, come on, we're going on an after party. It ended up being Gwen Stefani's birthday party.
That's how I do it. That's how I do it. So Maria Rameres say the website again, Maria for DA dot com. All right, yes, you come to my Come you come to my show. I take it to Gwen Stefani's house. There you go, Thank you. Joe, you up