A 53-year-old Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sergeant who died in the line of duty earlier this month would be still be alive if it weren’t for Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial prison realignment program, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said Thursday. The shocking claim has opened up a war of words between the Southern California mayor and the governor’s office, which has denied any blame in the sergeant’s death.
The officer, Steve Owen, was shot and killed on Oct. 5 after responding to a burglary call. The suspect, Trenton Trevon Lovell, was on parole for an armed robbery conviction at the time. The shooting was a calculated execution, according to authorities.
Brown spokesman Evan Westrup has pointed out that Lovell’s armed robbery conviction occurred two years before the governor signed AB 109, so he was not released as a result of realignment. However, Lovell did violate the terms of his parole earlier this year by driving under the influence and could have been sent back to prison for that offense prior to the law.
Mayor Parris isn’t the only official to have questioned the justice system in the wake of Owen’s death. Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell also said its time to take a closer look at justice reform laws, albeit in far less provocative terms.
“We’ve been dealing with the impacts of AB109, the realignment and then followed up by Prop 47, which was designed to get people into treatment rather than incarceration, but funded nobody to go into treatment essentially and didn’t incarcerate them so they’re in the communities reoffending,” McDonnell said. Another measure dealing with parole on the November ballot, Proposition 57, has also drawn criticism from a number of local politicians and law enforcement officials.