Los Angeles Returns to COVID-Era ‘Zero Cash Bail’ After Court Ruling

A man is arrested by a Los Angeles Police Department officer in Venice Beach, Calif., on June 2, 2020. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Los Angeles was allowed to bring back a pandemic-era “zero bail” policy on May 24 following a judge’s decision to bar the city and county from demanding cash bail from arrestees who haven’t yet been arraigned.

The decision (pdf) by California Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff placed a preliminary injunction on resuming the county’s pre-COVID-19 bail policy on May 16. As a result, suspects arrested for nonviolent crimes will again be released without bail while they wait for a court date.

Riff wrote in his ruling that “enforcing the secured money bail schedules against poor people who are detained in jail solely for the reason of their poverty is a clear, pervasive and serious constitutional violation.”

The court’s injunction will remain in place for 60 days to allow Los Angeles city and county to create and submit by July 5 new plans for enforcement around the zero-bail system. A feasibility hearing is set for July 10.

Under the county’s bail system (pdf), a defendant must deposit with the court an amount of money, or bail, before they can be released while awaiting a court date. The bail amount is determined by the severity of the crime for which they’re charged. The defendant can pay in cash or a bond received from a bail bond company, which is returned when the court proceedings end.

A group of citizens and faith-based representatives filed a class action suit in 2022 against Los Angeles County, the city, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and the state’s attorney general, claiming that the “wealth-based detention system” used by local government and officials is unconstitutional under the due process and equal protection clauses in the U.S. and California constitutions.

Police officers search for a suspect in Los Angeles on May 7, 2018. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, who include six formally arrested citizens, a rabbi, two reverends, and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), a Los Angeles-based faith organization, applauded the decision.

“Our clients were arrested and kept in jail for five days because they simply couldn’t pay money to buy their release,” Brian Hardingham, senior attorney of Public Justice’s Debtors’ Prison Project, said in a statement. “Pre-trial detention destroys lives, and we hope this ruling will pave the way for lasting policy changes that will strengthen and protect communities of color and low-income people disproportionately harmed by the for-profit bail industry.”

According to its website, the project “combats the criminalization of poverty” through litigations.

They sought a court order to prohibit the sheriff’s and police departments from enforcing the money bail schedules to determine whether arrestees should be released before they were brought before a judge.

Defendants usually wait between one and five days before they appear in court, Riff said in his ruling.

“Pretrial detention of presumptively innocent people based upon their poverty is neither intended nor permitted to operate as a form of punishment, but that is, plaintiffs say, what is actually happening every day,” he wrote.

Riff, who was appointed by former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, in 2015, estimated that the parties in the lawsuit would be ready for a trial on the merits in about 12 months. Until then, tens of thousands of people would be arrested and jailed by the LASD and LAPD because they’re too poor to pay the bail, according to the judge.

The city, county, and law enforcement agencies reportedly didn’t defend the current cash bail system in court.

The reinstated no cash bail policy will cover misdemeanor and felony nonviolent offenses—with some exceptions, including battery of a police officer, human trafficking, rape, manslaughter, domestic violence, rioting, looting during an emergency, stalking, transmission of a communicable disease, child abuse, and driving under the influence.

Law Enforcement Impacted

The LAPD is reviewing the ruling, a spokesman told The Epoch Times.

“The Los Angeles Police Department remains committed to safeguarding the constitutional rights of all individuals while also working with our criminal justice partners in addressing the community safety concerns related to individuals accused of serious crimes,” LAPD officer Drake Madison said.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva—who lost his reelection bid in 2022 for another four-year term and spoke out against the zero-bail initiative while in office—told The Epoch Times that the effects of the ruling would have a “greater impact” on the 45 police departments in Los Angeles County that aren’t the LASD or LAPD because “the burden of holding [suspects] in city jails until arraignment will fall on them and not the sheriff.”

A man jogs past a row of telephone booths in front of the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail on May 11, 2020. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

“[It was] a bad decision where the DA, the sheriff, and [LAPD] Chief [Michel] Moore failed to go to court and outline the impact of zero bail schedule. It further emboldens those who are already committing crime,” Villanueva said.

Los Angeles has gone back and forth on zero-bail policy for a few years. It was first implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to alleviate inmate crowding and reduce the spread of COVID-19—before its expiration on July 1, 2022.

The LAPD tracked the effects of removing cash bail and reported that 649 people had been rearrested during the period that it was in place. Some examples include a person being rearrested for domestic battery; someone who was arrested twice for assault with a deadly weapon in one day; and a human trafficking suspect who had been arrested earlier that same day for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the department reported.

Two suspects were arrested five times during the tracked period—between March 28, 2021, and June 25, 2022—according to LAPD.

‘Zero Bail’ Championed by District Attorney

On his first day in office in December 2020, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón instituted a policy to end money bail in the county. He directed his deputy district attorneys to stop seeking money bail for misdemeanors and felony offenses that are classified as nonviolent.

The district attorney, whose campaign was funded heavily by mega-donor George Soros and his affiliated organization, has survived two recall efforts from groups saying his policies have created room for more criminal activity.

Gascón, who previously implemented similar policies when he served as district attorney in San Francisco, said he believes that cash bail undermines the judicial system’s “presumption of innocence.”

“Money bail is as unjust as it is unsafe,” Gascón said in a 2021 statement. “It allows wealthy people who are dangerous to purchase their freedom while those without means who pose no risk to public safety languish in jail awaiting trial.”

Some nonviolent crimes that will be covered by the zero cash bail policy include drug crimes, trespassing, disturbing the peace, driving without a license, making criminal threats, drinking in public, loitering to commit prostitution, and resisting arrest.