Rapper 50 Cent Calls out LA’s Zero Bail Policy, Says the City is ‘Finished’
Famous rapper and actor 50 Cent is speaking out against the reinstatement of a zero bail policy in Los Angeles, stating that the city is “finished.” The rapper took to Instagram last week to share local news coverage of Los Angeles’ new bail policy.
“LA is finished. Watch how bad it gets out there. SMH,” the rapper wrote in his caption.
During the height of the pandemic, the city of Los Angeles instituted a zero bail policy that restricts the LA Police Department from requiring cash bail for individuals arrested for misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. After a judge granted a preliminary injunction in a class-action lawsuit against the city in May, the policy went back into effect.
The judge’s ruling echoed the arguments of civil rights activists in California who say that money bail discriminates against poor people who are detained in jail.
“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. 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.”
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff
Los Angeles’ zero bail policy does not apply to individuals arrested for sexual offenses, domestic violence, or weapon-related violence. However, critics of zero bail policies argue that the practice has a direct effect on the increasing crime rates occurring across the state of California.
“I mean, we have more people being shot at, stabbed, assaulted, robbed, beaten. These are real victims and the numbers are staggering under zero bail,” a California District Attorney from Sacramento told Fox News Digital.
The state of California has seen a substantial increase in crime over the last few years. Between 2020 and 2021, the state saw a 7.2 percent increase in homicides and a 3 percent increase in property crimes. In the same year, the city of Los Angeles cut over $150 million from its police department budget and there was a 7.3 percent decrease in the number of arrests across the state.
