A former aide who served and defended two disastrous DAs now offers advice on urban governance.<\/p>\n
Alex Bastian\u00a0has lived and worked in California\u2019s two most important cities, and he has advice for Los Angeles: Be more like San Francisco.<\/p>\n
San Francisco \u201cis my hometown,\u201d he wrote recently in\u00a0The Hill<\/a>, while Los Angeles \u201chas been my home for many chapters of my life.\u201d However, he observed, \u201cthey seem to be moving in different directions.\u201d<\/p>\n Just a few years ago, \u201cSan Francisco had become the national symbol of urban decline.\u201d Today, its \u201ccleaner streets, new investment and improving economic indicators\u201d reflect a rejection of \u201cideological purity.\u201d Los Angeles, by contrast, \u201cis exactly where San Francisco found itself only a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSan Francisco\u2019s progress,\u201d he writes, \u201coffers a roadmap for Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not until the tagline that you discover Bastian is no neutral observer. He\u2019s president and CEO of the\u00a0Hotel Council of San Francisco<\/a>. But he is more than a paid cheerleader for Bay Area hotels \u2014 and far too modest when he says that he merely lived and worked in California\u2019s two greatest cities.<\/p>\n In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Bastian was a high-profile government official who promoted the disastrous public-safety policies that have driven the decline of both.<\/p>\n Born and raised in San Francisco, Bastian went south to UCLA, then north to the University of San Francisco for law school. He joined San Francisco DA Kamala Harris in 2010, rising under her successor, George Gasc\u00f3n, to communications director and deputy chief of staff. When Gasc\u00f3n left for Los Angeles in 2019, Bastian remained to serve San Francisco\u2019s new DA, Chesa Boudin \u2014 briefly. In 2021, with Boudin facing recall, Bastian followed Gasc\u00f3n to the Los Angeles DA\u2019s office. Then, as Gasc\u00f3n\u2019s tenure unraveled, Bastian returned north to run San Francisco\u2019s Hotel Council.<\/p>\n Through it all, Bastian defended Gasc\u00f3n and Boudin, leaders of the progressive-prosecutor movement who presided over rising crime and disorder \u2014 from organized retail theft and open-air drug markets to attacks on elderly Asian Americans.<\/p>\n Gasc\u00f3n took his philosophy statewide in 2014, coauthoring Proposition 47, which turned many felonies into misdemeanors. A year later, San Francisco thefts from cars were up 47 percent, auto thefts 17 percent, and robberies 23 percent. Bastian offered a masterpiece of legalistic hairsplitting: Prop 47 was \u201cnot decriminalizing. It\u2019s taking felonies and making them misdemeanors.\u201d Six years later, amid mounting concern over crime, he was still at it: \u201cBefore Prop 47 and after Prop 47, there isn\u2019t any difference.\u201d<\/p>\n San Franciscans, especially Asian Americans, were growing restive. In March 2020, after 68-year-old Ximing Zhou was attacked while bystanders cheered and recorded the violence, Boudin\u2019s office withdrew charges against one of the attackers. Bastian explained that, after conversations with officials, the victim had agreed that Boudin\u2019s department should pursue \u201ca restorative justice outcome in this case.\u201d According to\u00a0KQED\u2019s review<\/a>\u00a0of a dozen hate crime cases involving Asian-American San Franciscans, including the attack on Zhou, \u201cthe promises of that process were ultimately unfulfilled.\u201d<\/p>\n Just 18 months into his tenure, the city\u2019s\u00a0outraged Asian-American voters<\/a>\u00a0helped drive Boudin\u2019s recall. Bastian had already found new work in the Los Angeles County DA\u2019s office, serving Gasc\u00f3n again, this time under the title of\u00a0special adviser for strategic communications and external relations.<\/a>\u00a0Gasc\u00f3n immediately restricted cash bail, eliminated sentencing enhancements, sharply limited prosecution of juveniles as adults, and declined to prosecute numerous misdemeanors.<\/p>\n The consequences of such lazy and formulaic thinking produced grim case studies. From that vast catalog of human suffering consider\u00a0Justin Flores.<\/a>\u00a0A convicted felon arrested with a gun and methamphetamine, he accepted Gasc\u00f3n\u2019s offer of probation rather than prison \u2014 and then almost immediately kidnapped a former girlfriend, holed up in a motel with her, and shot to death the two El Monte police officers who responded, Michael Paredes and Joseph Santana. Flores took a gun from one of the fallen officers and fled into the motel parking lot, exchanging fire with police. After falling to the ground, he kept shooting; as officers closed in, he shot himself.<\/p>\n The families of Flores and the slain officers both blamed Gasc\u00f3n. Not Bastian: \u201cThe District Attorney is very focused on enhancing public safety, increasing equity, expanding victim services and strengthening police accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n When prosecutors elsewhere began pursuing murder charges against fentanyl dealers whose customers died,\u00a0Bastian objected<\/a>: \u201cWe have been down this road before. We know that increased penalties for drug offenses do not save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n