The grieving mother of a fallen Los Angeles police officer killed earlier this week criticized Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon’s woke policies, stating that her son would be alive today if the suspect had not been back on the streets.
Olga Garcia, the mother of slain El Monte Police Officer Joseph Anthony Santana, 31, and his colleague Cpl. Michael Domingo Paredes, 42, were killed in a motel gunfight in suburban Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon.
‘I blame the death of my son and his partner on Gascón,’ Garcia said through tears at a news conference Friday outside police headquarters, Spectrum1 News reported.
‘Gascón will never know how I feel. Gascón will never know how he destroyed our families. He won’t know how his { Santana’s]children feel,’ Garcia said, in part.’
On Tuesday afternoon, both officers were responding to a stabbing report at a motel in El Monte, California.
At the time of the incident, Justin William Flores, 35, a gang member, was on probation for a prior weapons charge.
Flores shot himself during the shootout.
Flores received the illegal weapon penalty in 2021 as part of a light plea deal made achievable by the local DA’s liberal prosecution laws.
During a FOX News interview, Garcia called out Gascon saying he has ‘insane ideas about giving criminals a slap (on) the hand.’
‘We need death row and three-strikes law to come back. We need to enforce our laws so more police officers don’t die,’ she said.
Garcia spoke of her frustration with the system and claimed that her son and his partner would still be alive and if the serial criminal killer wasn’t back out on the streets.
‘Gascon is just letting all these criminals out and they just keep doing one crime after the other,’ Garcia said, in part. ‘That guy should have been in jail.’
She added: ‘Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón gives criminals more rights than police officers.’
Gascon’s office told Fox News that Flores didn’t have a ‘documented history of violence’ when he was sentenced.
According to sources from the DA’s office, Flores would have likely been handed a sentence of up to three years in prison if he was prosecuted in February 2021, the news outlet reported.
‘The sentence he received in the firearm case was consistent with case resolutions and the nature of the offense,’ the statement said.
What happened next remains unclear, but a source familiar with the matter said the officers, El Monte Police Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana, came under fire after knocking on a door to one of the motel’s rooms.
El Monte Police Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana died in the shootout, which cops said occurred just after 4:30 pm local time.
It has since been revealed that Flores possessed a lengthy rap sheet for offenses stretching back more than a decade at the time of the shooting, and had been prohibited from carrying a gun since 2011.
The case has subsequently sparked outrage, with many criticizing Los Angeles‘ district attorney George Gascon for woke policies that saw Flores out of jail at the time of the shooting.
Last year, Flores – already on parole for pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, a felony charge that law enforcement sources said should have sent him back to prison for a minimum of three years.
However, because of Gascon – who was sworn into office in late 2020 as part of a wave of woke prosecutors who vowed to seek alternatives to incarceration – he received the bare minimum sentence of two years probation, and 20 days’ jail time.
The plea deal also saw prosecutors drop drug charges against Flores, who was accused of possessing methamphetamine, as well as ammunition for the illegal handgun.
Flores served the 20 days in early 2021, and was out on the street by February of that year, court records reveal.
What’s more, the day before the shooting, Flores was requested by his parole officer to appear in court due to a probation violation incurred after his girlfriend reported he had assaulted her last week,
Flores, however, was not taken into custody.
The hearing was set for June 27, court records show.
Asked why Flores wasn’t arrested on the violation Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Probation Department told DailyMail.com the agency was ‘currently investigating the matter further.’
The sentence is in accordance with the policies of Gascon, who has been vocal about his belief that the criminal justice system needs to focus more on intervention and rehabilitation than incarceration, blasting ‘tough on crime’ policies as racist and a failure.
He was was recently taken to task by a state appeals court over his refusal to prosecute three-strike cases, a law that seeks to impose harsher sentences on individuals who have been convicted of certain felonies three times.
The law allowed Flores – who was facing his third strike – to plead no contest and receive a light sentence despite having a previous gun strike on his criminal record.
Flores’ first strike stems from a conviction for burglarizing his grandparent’s home more than a decade ago.
Sources in the district attorney’s office told Fox News that if Flores had been prosecuted prior to Gascon’s implementation of the policy in February 2021, he would likely have been hit with the full three years for the gun charge.
When asked about the sentence Wednesday, Gascon’s office defended the decision not to hand Flores a harsher sentence.
‘The sentence he received in the firearm case was consistent with case resolutions for this type of offense given his criminal history and the nature of the offense,’ a spokesperson said in a statement.
‘At the time the court sentenced him, Mr. Flores did not have a documented history of violence.’
Flores previously served two prison stints for burglary and car theft, and had been barred from carrying a gun since 2011.
Meanwhile, law enforcement sources told NBC that the Flores was so notorious in the neighborhood, that at least one of the two slain officers would have likely recognized Flores on sight and by name.
Gascon has since been slammed as ‘radical’ and ‘soft on crime‘ by conservatives and fed-up liberals for the oversight.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz slammed Gascon, tweeting: ‘Officers Paredes and Santana gave their lives in the service of their fellow citizens. It is outrageous the murderer was not in jail due to the reckless actions of George Gascon, a radical, soft-on-crime, Soros-backed DA.’
Lawyer Kurt Schlichter tweeted: ‘Gascon flat out murdered those guys.’
In response to Gascon tweeting his ‘heartfelt condolences’ to the families of the murdered officers, a Twitter user wrote: ‘Your condolences won’t bring back the lives you’re responsible for losing, nor will your condolences cover the payout these families will surely get from LA County. We, the tax payers, will be paying for that.’
One user tweeted: ‘If I were you I would save this tweet as a template so you could just edit the police department name if you’re going to keep dumping into our society these dangerous criminals. Sending condolences is part of the failure of your administration.’
Another tweeted: ‘The killer was on probation after a plea deal with you for felon with a firearm. He went on to do this.’
It comes as Gascon faces a second recall effort in less than a year to remove him from office over his controversial policies.
Last May, Gascon’s opponents organized the first, ill-fated recall effort to oust him from office.
Despite garnering more than 200,000 signatures from LA citizens in a matter of months, the campaign fell short in October, failing to amass the needed 580,000 LA County voters needed to remove Gascon.
A rash of ‘flash mob’-style robberies, assaults and shootings since the have only made matters worse for Gascon, with a second recall effort launched against the DA on Monday.
The renewed recall attempt has been spurred by the string of smash-and-grab attacks and brazens shootouts, which have seen a variety of high-end retailers in the city relentlessly ransacked and hundreds dead this year.
People are being killed in the famously progressive county at a faster pace than 2021, when homicides hit a 15-year high.
So far this year, LA has seen 162 slayings – 9 more than the same time last year.
Assaults are also up nearly 5 percent from 2021, with police so far recording 8779 incidents.
Robberies, meanwhile, are up my a more marked 22 percent.
Flores’ wife said her husband had previously attacked her and she warned Paredes and Santana that he had a gun inside a motel when they responded to a report of a stabbing.
Diana Flores said he had attacked her two days ago and she had moved into the motel to escape him but he tracked her down.
‘I am so deeply sorry, my deepest condolences for saving me, I’m so, so, so sorry,’ Diana tearfully told KCBS-TV. ‘They didn’t deserve that, or their families. They really didn’t. They were trying to help me and I told them before they went in the room, ‘Don’t go in. He has a gun.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that flags at the state Capitol will be flown at half-staff in their honor.
Paredes and Santana – one on the force for more than two decades and the other for just months – were both were raised in and worked for the city of El Monte, a suburb of 107,000 people in the San Gabriel Valley.
They became only the third and fourth officers in the El Monte Police Department’s history to die in the line of duty. A vigil is scheduled for Saturday.
Mourners on Wednesday left bouquets, wreaths of flowers and candles outside the El Monte police station to honor the fallen officers.
The county’s probation department declined to comment and Flores’ attorney in the case did not return a request for comment on Wednesday. But the Los Angeles Times reported that Flores had violated his probation, triggering the return to court.
Few details have emerged about what occurred during Tuesday’s violence. The officers went to the Siesta Inn in El Monte, east of Los Angeles, around 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, for a welfare check where a woman had possibly been stabbed.
The officers ‘confronted the suspect,’ Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide Capt. Andrew Meyer said Tuesday.
Gunfire erupted inside a motel room and the gunman then fled into the parking lot, where more gunfire was exchanged, Meyer said.
Meyer said he didn’t know whether the officers were shot inside the motel or outside. They died at a hospital. A gun was found at the scene.
Meyer said investigators were interviewing a woman from the hotel who they believe was the suspect’s girlfriend. Diana Flores, who described herself as the suspect’s wife and had his first name tattooed on her chest, told KCBS that officers must have been reacting to a ‘false call’ because she hadn’t been stabbed on Tuesday.
‘I got stabbed the day before that,’ she told the TV station.
More criticism is likely to be directed towards Gascon, who is presently facing recall due to his policies. On Wednesday, the recall campaign announced that they had gathered the required number of signatures to continue with the recall vote.
According to a news release, Paredes began as a cadet in the department before becoming a full-time officer in 2000. His wife, daughter, and son survive him.
Santana had only been with the El Monte police force for about a year when he was slain. According to the news release, he formerly worked as a deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for three years.
This awful tragedy is very near to home for us,’ commented the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on Twitter. ‘He was a fantastic companion who was adored by everyone who knew him.’
Before joining the police department, Santana worked as a part-time public works employee for El Monte for six years. His wife, daughter, and twin sons survive him.
El Monte interim Police Chief Ben Lowry praised the police on Tuesday.
‘These two men were loved,’ Lowry said. ‘They were good men. They paid the ultimate sacrifice, serving their community trying to help somebody.’
‘They were murdered by a coward and we are grieving, and that hurts,’ he said.
El Monte Mayor Jessica Ancona said the officers died ‘while trying to keep a family safe.’
The killings occurred just one day after a California Highway Patrol officer was shot and badly injured during a traffic check in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City.
The officer, 27, is expected to recover, according to police. A bloodhound assisted police in locating the culprit, who turned himself in at a homeless encampment in the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday.