Full Transcript for John Kobylt's Interview w/John McKinney - Candidate for LA City Attorney

of George Gascon. Talk about that. What is Roy's relationship with Gascon over the years? 00:03:30 Speaker 2: Well, I call it a second coming of George Gascon. She was a very big supporter of George Gascon in the past when he was D.A., She endorsed him twice in his first run for DA, and then even after his failed four years as DA, when virtually everyone in the city and county realized he was a terrible manager and his policies were bad for the city and the county, she continued to endorse him. She shows that she is aligned with him, even in her run for city attorney, by some of the positions that she's taken in this race, like No interest in enforcing the anti-encampment ban that keeps dangerous encampments away from our schools, parks, and streets. She calls it cruel and unusual punishment and doesn't support the enforcement of it citywide. She also, in the past, supported a plan to place a moratorium on prosecuting even misdemeanors. which is about 30 to 40% of the job of the city attorney is to be the prosecutor of adult misdemeanor crimes in the city of Los Angeles. So in those ways and others, she is very much like the return of George Gascon. 00:04:44 Speaker 1: So this is going to lead to further deterioration of the city, further expansion of the homeless camps because she will not enforce the the ban on homeless camps in front of schools and parks and daycare centers, which most of the public wants. 00:05:03 Speaker 2: Right, and we've seen, John, that some city council members want strong enforcement of these encampments, especially around schools and parks. We've seen other council members, like the four DSA council members, not particularly interested in having these 4118 enforcements in their districts. Well, if Marissa Roy becomes the city attorney, there will be no enforcement of 4118 throughout the entire city, including in places like CD11, Tracy Park's district, where she's been very aggressive about getting people off the sidewalks and into the treatment that they need. 00:05:42 Speaker 1: Nithya Raman's district, and Marissa Roy is a fellow DSA sister of Nithya Raman, they're teammates here. Raman had. 00:05:54 Speaker 1: A large homeless encampment right in front of an elementary school in Los Feliz. And there were gang members selling drugs and guns to the homeless people right in front of the school. And little kids had to wend their way through and step over the tents and the needles and the feces. And guys selling guns and drugs and ramen wouldn't remove them. And if she's mayor and Marissa Roy was, is the city attorney, those homeless encampments will metastasize. 00:06:31 Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. I mean, forget about it. It's gonna be like going back to the days when we were steeped in COVID restrictions. We saw a lot more encampments during the 2021, 2022 years than we see even today. I will say Mayor Bass has had some success working with certain city council members like Monica Rodriguez and Tracy Park, who really want to get the encampments and the RVs out of their districts, there has been some improvement in pockets around the city. But I fear that we'll go back to those days if there's no enforcement of moving these dangerous encampments out of public spaces. 00:07:12 Speaker 1: And you're an important part, if you're city attorney, of following through with the enforcements. 00:07:17 Speaker 2: Crucial. The city attorney is a crucial part to the enforcement of all of our laws, whether they be infractions or misdemeanors. 00:07:27 Speaker 1: Another thing that disturbs me reading about Marissa Roy's belief system is that you want to offer the drug addicts and the people with their mental issues, you want to offer them treatment before you start getting into serious prosecution. And if they take the treatment, they'll get better. But we know that works. It does work. It works way better than what we're doing now. Marissa Roy seems to think that the drugs and the mental illness are not really a thing. And the problem is landlords. She's constantly preaching about, as city attorney, she's going to go after landlords who are forcing these people out into the street. because of the unfair treatment. Now, that is not the cause of the massive homelessness here. 00:08:20 Speaker 2: No, no. She's delusional if she thinks that we have 45,000 people living on our sidewalks because of evil landlords who are illegally evicting people. There are a number of reasons why people find themselves living on the sidewalk. The fact is there are 45,000 people who are there, and we have a responsibility to deal with that. And we're not going to deal with that by suing landlords. You have to first recognize what the problem is. It is a massive drug addiction problem and mental illness problem. That's what it is. You know, back in the early 80s, John, we had a drug problem and we noticed that it was an evolving problem. It was spreading across the country. And we started a war on drugs that was totally misguided because it was premised on the belief that drug use and drug addiction was dangerous. a matter of conduct and you could punish people enough, you could change their behavior. What we didn't realize in those early days is that it's really a health problem and a mental health problem, whether it's drug addiction or some other mental health problem. We lost a lot of time, but eventually we learned like, wait a minute, jail is not going to cure addiction. Treatment will cure addiction. We're in that same space today, right? Except the misdiagnosis is that the drug addiction problem is a housing problem. It is not a housing problem. And if I only make one point in the time that I've run for city attorney, I want to get across to people in this city that the people who are living on our streets are by and large drug addicted. and or mentally ill. And we have to stop pretending that they are on the street because of a lack of housing. That's nonsense. We need to drop this

housing first model and pivot to a stabilization first model. which combines massive treatment with a stabilized environment before we can then transition people into the housing that they need. And Marissa Roy doesn't get that. She's a true believer that there are evil people in the world who are evicting people into homelessness. And if you just give them an apartment, they'll be just fine. That is not the case. We can build all the housing. We could cover every inch of Los Angeles with housing. It is not going to cure drug addiction and serious mental illness. 00:10:48 Speaker 1: This is like one of the most strangest situations I've ever seen because you have, generally across the board, no matter where you are in the political spectrum, everybody sane agrees, yeah, it's drug addiction and mental illness. The mental illness can lead to drugs. The drugs can lead to mental illness. It's a terrible vicious cycle. Except for some of the people in power, DSA people, and others, like the most liberal people that you would think have the most compassion for the mental illness and most compassion for the drug addiction, they're the ones saying, no, no, it's not that at all. And it's some landlord boogeyman. And it's just crazy. 00:11:32 Speaker 2: Well, they're looking for an easy way out. 00:11:35 Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead. 00:11:37 Speaker 2: They're looking for an easy way out. There are people in society who don't want to accept that people are living on the street because of failure of government, a failure of law, a failure of policy, and an unwillingness to do the unglamorous work sometimes of helping people get off the street into the treatment that they need. There are a lot of people in society who are looking for, oh, if we just, there's a boogeyman somewhere in this that's causing this. And if we just attack that group or that person, we can solve this problem. But that's not what this is. It's far more complex than that. But one of the things it's going to require is an acknowledgement of what the people who are living on the sidewalks need in order to get well and hopefully independent again. 00:12:27 Speaker 1: If you're just joining us, we have John McKinney on. He's a deputy D.A. working under Nathan Hockman. Extremely successful and a lot of experience. And he's running for city attorney against Marissa Roy. who is a DSA acolyte. She's right there with Nithya Raman. And I can't put enough emphasis on how important it is for life in the city to have John McKinney as the city attorney and not Marissa Roy for all the reasons that we're discussing here. Let's tile everything we've been talking about together here. Since you were there during the Gascon years, you're part of the resistance. Yes. He seemed very reluctant to prosecute many misdemeanors. The misdemeanor file, from what I understand, was piled way high. He just wouldn't do it. And Marissa Roy has this same attitude. And at the same time, the quality of life in the streets of L.A. went in the toilet, literally. And I'm really afraid if the return of Gascon's philosophy through Marissa Roy is is going to lead to the same situation here because there just won't be enforcement anymore. 00:13:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're already not seeing the enforcement that we should have. If people look around at some of our surrounding cities, whether it be Glendale, Burbank, Beverly Hills, Torrance, they'll see cities that look a lot better and feel a lot more vibrant than Los Angeles. And part of the reason for that is because the DA can actually prosecute the misdemeanor crimes in those cities, but the DA can't prosecute those crimes in the city of Los Angeles. And the current city attorney is not consistently enforcing the law of misdemeanors across the city. The city attorney's office, I'm told, rejects about 55% of the cases that LAPD submits to them today. So imagine what things will look like with the Marissa Roy city attorney. That rejection rate will go far higher than 55%. And people are dissatisfied with the way the city feels today. Imagine what it will feel like if the rejection rate of those cases goes up to 75%. And that will happen because she's going to move resources. She's going to move attorneys out of criminal prosecutions to put them in a position to sue who? landlords, small businesses, corporations. These are the things that she focuses on doing with the city attorney's office. Those resources have to come from someplace. They're gonna come from criminal prosecutions. 00:15:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, she's fixated on going after businesses and landlords. She's worried about wage theft, all the left-wing DSA buzzwords that she uses in her campaign. And she's not focusing on what most people think want cleaned up because we have to walk through it every day. It's really frustrating. And I just want people to know that this is a huge difference between your philosophy, which is a normal philosophy, a philosophy that the city ran under forever and how radical the change has been. 00:15:42 Speaker 2: And these are the people's laws. You know, this is not like John McKinney coming in saying, I want to do things that the voters haven't voted for. These are basic laws that that govern the basic conduct in our city. No illegal weapons possession, no vandalism of other people's property, no stealing of items from CVS or any other store. Yeah, keep your hands to yourself. Don't take other people's property. Don't allow young girls to walk up and down Figueroa and other parts of the city selling their bodies. These are all misdemeanor crimes. Sexual battery, domestic violence are all misdemeanors that need to be enforced. And we need somebody who has almost 30 years of experience enforcing those kinds of laws in a fair, reasonable, and honest way. And that's what I'm offering to the city of Los Angeles. 00:16:42 Speaker 1: You know, what's interesting is recently four former city attorneys dating all the way back from

the 1970s to the 2010s, Burt Pines, Ira Reiner, Rocky Delgadillo, Carmen Trutanich, they all came out publicly to support you. They were all running the city attorney's office like you want to run it regarding all these policies. 00:17:06 Speaker 2: Remarkable, unprecedented to have all four of those city attorneys endorse one person. I'm very honored to have They're supporting for the reasons you said. They actually did the job. They know what it takes. They looked at me. They looked at Marissa and they all agreed individually, but collectively also that I am the right person for this job at this time. And I'm very, very honored. to have their support. And also, 60 retired city attorney leaders, these were people who were leaders in the office, now retired, also signed a letter of endorsement for me that people can read on my website. I'm also very honored to have their support also. 00:17:47 Speaker 1: And a lot of people want that time back so desperately. The period from the 70s to the 2010s, It was civilized and orderly and fun to be walking the streets of Los Angeles. And there were always pockets of trouble. There always will be. But now it is so widespread. And, you know, people don't pay attention to a lot. And I don't think they know just how bad this DSA onslaught is going to be if too many of them get in. 00:18:15 Speaker 2: Well, the DSA, you know, divides the city in many ways. And one way they divide the city is they talk about the people versus the powerful. That's Marissa's campaign slogan. I'm going to be a lawyer for the people, not the powerful. Well, a city attorney, you have to be the attorney for the city and all of its people. And you have to recognize that a lot of successful people in Los Angeles provide jobs. They provide goods and services. They provide housing. You can't make them the enemy of the people who rely on them for this city to work. And that's what the DSA specializes in. You're either with them or you're MAGA or you're some other kind of a villain. That is not going to work to improve this city going forward. We need more unity in this city. We don't all have to agree on everything, but we need to be unified as a city and believe that everybody in this city is doing their best to make the city better. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: That's one thing that they have been somewhat effective in doing in making people who just want normal life to be to sound like some kind of an extremist. Every time you say, hey, I just want to be able to walk, you know, half a mile to a restaurant or to a shop. without being chased by a guy with a machete. And it's like, oh, wow, it must be really conservative. It must be a MAGA guy. It's like, no, I want to walk to the restaurant without a guy chasing. And we've been chased. My wife and I have been chased down San Vicente Boulevard. by a guy waving a pipe, chasing us down in our car. We can't live like this. And a lot of us are living like this. Whether you're in a poor neighborhood or

a wealthier neighborhood, it is everywhere. 00:20:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've been across the city. I've been to the low-income neighborhoods. I personally grew up in a low-income neighborhood. I can tell you that people in those low-income neighborhoods want public safety as much as people in the highest-income neighborhoods, and they deserve it. They want it to be respectful. They want it to be professional, but they want it. They want more of it, and they are the ones who need it most because they are the most vulnerable. They are the most preyed upon. If you look at some of the neighborhoods, the lower income neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles, they become dumping grounds. There are construction companies and other bad actors who dump in those communities because they don't fear getting caught. Or if they get caught, they don't fear anything happening to them. So as city attorney, when I talk about being the attorney for everyone, I'm talking about the lowest income neighborhoods as well as the higher income neighborhoods. 00:20:59 Speaker 1: And as city attorney, you could do something about the dumping because the garbage in the city is crazy. Oh, yeah. The dumping on vacant lots in certain neighborhoods is just tragic what's going on. 00:21:13 Speaker 2: And that's where the street encampments become a problem because we see higher levels of illegal dumping in areas where we have more abandoned properties, in areas where we see more encampments. It's the broken windows theory. If there are certain areas around the city where small things are left to go, then they become bigger things because people in part recognize, oh, this is an area where this seems to be okay. Let's exploit it. That has to stop. And we need a city attorney who knows how to hold people accountable and will hold people accountable. 00:21:50 Speaker 1: It's a shame because in some of these poor neighborhoods, they're the ones who got DSA- city council people representing them. Because as you said, the DSA is good at dividing people and manipulating people into thinking that the problems are all because of landlords and businesses when the problems are because of government policies. You know, if you have every, if you have everybody with, with a sane policy in government, everybody on the city council and the mayor's office and your city attorney's office, You don't have that in the streets because everybody says we're not going to allow it. Just like you don't see it in Manhattan Beach or Glendale or Beverly Hills. And West Hollywood is much nicer because the officials just say, no, you're not going to do that here. And I've been to a lot of cities around the country because my boys are all living all over the place now. And I go to these towns in the south and the east coast. It's like nobody has this. 00:22:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. You can go to some of the most rural areas where people are very humble. They don't have a whole lot. You don't see people living on their streets. You know, I grew up in a very low income neighborhood and there were no people living on our streets. You know, it just wouldn't have been acceptable because if somebody was on the street, there would have been an immediate reaction to get them off the street and get them help to try to figure out how they ended up there. Somehow in Los Angeles, we have normalized this and now it's being protected. So when I stand up and say, I'm going to work to end homelessness, you know what I hear in response? Oh, he's going to criminalize homelessness. He's going to criminalize poverty. He's a prosecutor, so he just wants to put people in jail. I've never said anything about jail. I have used the word treatment, treatment, treatment. But because the homeless industry, and that's what it's become, puts a lot of people to work. There are a lot of nonprofits and other groups that are getting government contracts and private donations, and they're paying themselves a very generous salary, and they don't want to see that go away. But if we solve the problem, that goes away. So in order to solve this problem, you have to be willing to to accept the slings and arrows that are going to come your way because you're trying to end the problem. 00:24:18 Speaker 1: Well, they benefit from creating hysteria, from scaring people, from just making things up and lying, because you have been preaching very consistently about treatment for mental health and drug problems. And that will go a long way to making life better for everybody. And what is the resistance? on the part of so many people in government to funding and constructing and doing the hiring for these facilities to deal with the mental illness and the drug treatment. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: They found a lot of political currency in using homelessness as a political issue. You know, once anything gets politicized, it becomes very hard to deal with. And the establishment in Los Angeles, the status quo, is allowing homelessness to continue because it's bringing in a lot of money. It's getting a lot of political support for them. They are not particularly interested in solving the problem. I mean, that should be clear to everybody. The city is indifferent to the suffering that's going on on our streets. And five people are dying every day on the streets of Los Angeles. Disproportionately high number of them are black men and the city doesn't care. It doesn't care. We had a joint city federal raid on drug dealers on Skid Row. The drug dealers are enabling the drug use and keeping people in the throes of addiction. So law enforcement responds. And what do we hear from the local council woman? She complains that the law enforcement effort interrupted life on the streets. Like literally, she said, some people in my district couldn't get to their tents. Because there was a law enforcement action going on. They were literally extracting drug dealers who also set up tents, by the way, and appear to be

homeless, but really just using those as bases to distribute illegal weapons and to sell drugs and give drugs to the homeless. You have the city and the county using the guise of harm reduction, giving drug paraphernalia to people who are already addicted to drugs. Not only is that a dumb idea, I don't know how that hasn't led to a massive lawsuit by someone or someone's family suing the city and county for enabling a drug addict's drug use. These are the kind of crazy things that are happening. We need to elect serious-minded people. who wanna really solve these problems. And this election is gonna tell us a lot. It's gonna tell us a lot about what the people in the city really want. Do they wanna continue going in the wrong direction? Or do they finally wanna do what San Francisco started to do a couple of years ago? Elect smart people, people who are dedicated to change, change for the better and usher in a new era for the city of Los Angeles. 00:27:19 Speaker 1: How did the San Francisco voters wake up to this ahead of the LA voters? They hit rock bottom. Their politics was farther out. 00:27:27 Speaker 2: Right. They were. And they hit rock bottom. And San Francisco is smaller than L.A., so they got to the bottom quicker than we did. We are nearing the bottom. I hope people feel we are at the bottom now and will vote for change. And a vote for me is a vote for change because I'm not supported by the establishment politicians that are supporting my opponent, Marissa Royd. So we'll see. We'll see if people talk about wanting change all the time. If they really want it and they're serious about it, then they should seriously consider me as the next city attorney. 00:28:02 Speaker 1: We talk about a couple other things before we go. One is this makes me crazy all the time. There's a headline every week. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to settle these city lawsuits. All kinds of things from the police to people tripping over sidewalks to God knows what. And it drains a tremendous amount of money, which we don't have for the police and we don't have for the fire department, for example, or anything else that's important. I mean, something has gone wrong here because that's just way too much money going out the door every year. It never seems to end. What can you do to slow down? the flood of the lawsuits, right, to get it maybe at the source of the problem. I know you've talked about that, is trying to get the city departments to understand that they have to change the way they operate, and that'll reduce the number of lawsuits. Talk about that. 00:28:56 Speaker 2: Well, I bring nearly 30 years of experience as a litigator to this race. And you've already talked about the fact that I've been in the trenches. I've gone to trial over a hundred times and I've been extraordinarily successful. I've been successful 97% of the time I've taken a case before jury. I bring that experience, that talent, that skill to this race and offer it to the people of the city of Los Angeles in dealing with these exploding lawsuits that have really picked up pace over the last three or four years. Now, a couple of things people should understand that the media isn't talking about. The Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. These are the lawyers that you see on billboards, the so-called billboard lawyers. They sue the city very often. Most of the lawsuits against the city involve these lawyers from this trade association. People should know that that trade association is not supporting me. They have endorsed Marissa Roy. They have also contributed half a million dollars to an IE to support her. And they also held a huge fundraiser donating tens of thousands of dollars directly to her campaign. And they're doing that because they would rather have her as the city attorney than someone like me. 00:30:22 Speaker 1: Why? 00:30:22 Speaker 2: It should be obvious. She has never tried a case in her career. She has never stood before a jury at all. And she's running to take over a city with 1,000 employees, 550 lawyers, over 3,000 civil lawsuits are filed against the city as we speak. And the city also faces another 7,000 or so workers' comp claims. So those lawyers, given the choice between Marissa Roy and me, are choosing her. That should tell the voters of Los Angeles a lot about the difference in experience between the two of us. I'm going to be proactive in working with all the departments, including the Los Angeles Police Department, to get their houses in order. You know, to get up off the log, to modernize their policies, to get out in the street, to fix the sidewalks, to fill the potholes. to fix the dangerous conditions that are hurting people so we don't have to face those lawsuits. The best lawsuit is one you don't have to defend against. But for the ones that are already filed, I bring a wealth of experience and talent to the table, to the room, to make sure that we have a smart litigation strategy, we're evaluating cases properly, we're settling cases early when they should be settled, and we're fighting the ones that are frivolous, and or asking too much of taxpayers, and we'll be successful in doing that. 00:31:50 Speaker 1: Well, I think we'd be in a much better place if you're the LA City Attorney, and I urge everybody listening and watching, vote for John McKinney. If you live in the city of Los Angeles, vote for John McKinney. for LA City Attorney, not Marissa Roy, who's in the Gascon camp. You don't want that, believe me. John, I wish you all- We need turnout. 00:32:12 Speaker 2: John, we need turnout. Recent polls said 45% of voters are still undecided about city attorney. That's a lot of votes out there for us. We gotta get the word out. Share this video with your friends and encourage them to vote for change. Remember, I'm the candidate of change. She's the status quo. John McKinney, we'll talk again soon. All right. 00:32:38 Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on. All right. And that's special edition of the John Cobalt show. One of our live stream hours. And we've been doing more of them during the election season. And this will be available if you came in late. It's going to be on X and on YouTube. And we'll see you on the radio at three o'clock. And thank you for listening and watching. So long.