Steve Cooley
On June 8th 2010, Los Angeles County’s three-term District Attorney Steve Cooley, won the Republican nomination for the office of California Attorney General. Cooley won with 47% of the vote and carried 47 out of California’s 58 counties.
In the midst of his historic third consecutive term as Los Angeles County District Attorney, Steve Cooley has achieved his goal of establishing the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office as the premier local prosecutorial agency in the nation. Mr. Cooley has hired bright, enthusiastic lawyers to join court-tested veterans. His staff includes recognized national experts in areas such as DNA evidence, public corruption, foreign extradition, animal cruelty, high tech crime, fraud and gang prosecution.
The son of an FBI agent, Mr. Cooley is a career prosecutor. He joined the office in 1973 as a law clerk and rose through the ranks. Nearly three decades later, he was elected District Attorney in 2000 by a landslide. He was overwhelmingly re-elected four years later. In 2008, he became the first Los Angeles County District Attorney in 70 years to be re-elected to a third consecutive term.
In his first term, Mr. Cooley led a massive reorganization of the office based on his experience there and his nearly six years as a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. The changes to the nation’s largest prosecutorial agency are providing unparalleled breadth and quality of prosecution efforts. He has developed a team equally capable of fighting crime in the streets and in the corridors of power.
The District Attorney has been relentless in his pursuit of public corruption and of lawbreakers within the justice system. He created the Public Integrity Division that has prosecuted politicians whose misconduct had gone unpunished for years. For his work in this area and others, Mr. Cooley and the District Attorney’s Office have received numerous awards and commendations. He also formed the Justice System Integrity Division, which holds judges, attorneys, police officers and others working in the justice system accountable if they break the law. Its motto is, “No one is above the law, especially those sworn to uphold it.”
Under Mr. Cooley’s leadership, the use of DNA and other new techniques in solving so-called cold cases has been given priority. He has been a statewide leader in fostering a host of successful initiatives, laws, policies and programs to maximize the use of DNA technology to solve crimes, take serial rapists and killers off the streets and exonerate the innocent. The office co-authored Proposition 69, which was passed by voters in 2004 and widely expanded the state’s criminal offender DNA database.
The District Attorney led the international effort to bring justice to the families of murder victims whose killers fled to Mexico. He and his staff launched a massive campaign to pressure Mexican authorities to change a 2001 Mexican Supreme Court decision that barred the extradition of killers facing life sentences in the United States. Key to his efforts was the creation of the website EscapingJustice.com that highlighted the issue by telling the stories of victims whose killers fled to Mexico. In 2005, the Mexican Supreme Court overturned the previous decision and allowed criminals facing life terms to be extradited. All fugitives that were featured on the original website are now behind bars. The website was relaunched and features fugitives from around the globe who are wanted in Los Angeles County.
To advance public safety, the Mr. Cooley created the Criminal Justice Institute to showcase LADA experts who provide high quality training programs to justice system professionals.
Mr. Cooley has made the investigation and prosecution of high technology crime a priority throughout his tenure. He built the nation’s largest local prosecutorial division devoted to computer-related crime. Prosecutors and investigators assigned to this division handle crimes such as identity theft, computer hacking, theft of intellectual property, cyberstalking, Internet fraud and child pornography.
He created the Animal Cruelty Prosecution Program, which ensures that cases of animal cruelty, including dogfighting, cockfighting and animal abuse and neglect, are prosecuted consistently and effectively throughout Los Angeles County.
Mr. Cooley directs roughly 1,000 attorneys, nearly 300 investigators and more than 800 clerical and support personnel. In 2011, more than 54,000 felony cases and 108,000 misdemeanor cases were filed. More than one-third of the prosecutors in the office were hired during Mr. Cooley’s tenure. They represent one of his most lasting contributions to the office. He oversees an annual operating budget of more than $330 million.
A native of Los Angeles, Mr. Cooley obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Southern California Law Center. He and his wife, Jana, have been married for more than 37 years. They have two grown children.
FEBRUARY 2012
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