Editorial: Justice reforms are at risk at the ballot box. Protest now, vote in November

Some protesters who have taken to the streets to express their outrage at the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other killings and abuse of African Americans have argued that little has changed in the last 10 years for people caught up in the criminal justice system. Nightmarish and inhumane prison crowding has been reduced, once-unaccountable law enforcement agencies have been assigned civilian oversight and monitoring, new jail construction has been blocked and Los Angeles County officials have been ordered to spend more of the public safety budget on mental health care and other rehabilitative programs instead of arrests and incarceration, or at least to consider it. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.” Or, Obama might have added, when voters change the laws directly through initiatives like Measure R or the ones that modified the Three Strikes law and did away with excessive penalties for drug possession. In 2017, the Los Angeles Police Protective League and its allies on the City Council duped voters into scuttling crucial police discipline reforms that dated back to the brutal beating of Rodney King. Police unions, bail bondsmen and others who don’t like criminal justice reform know how to get their people to the polls.