Gil Garcetti

Gil Garcetti married Susan Roth on 25 September 1963. The couple has a son, Eric, who is presently Los Angeles’s mayor, and a daughter, Dana Garcetti-Boldt, an acupuncturist. Dana Garcetti once served in the LA County as a deputy district attorney.

Gil Garcetti was born on 5 August 1941, in Los Angeles, California to Juanita Iberri and Salvador Garcetti. Salvador Garcetti who is of Italian ancestry, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico but migrated to the US, following the hanging of Gil’s grandfather in the wake of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

Juanita Iberri, Gil’s mother, was born and brought up in Arizona. Juanita’s father was a Mexican while her mother was of Irish-Mexican descent.

Gil Garcetti, after earning his bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Southern California, attended the UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, receiving a ‘Jurisprudence Doctor’ degree after completing his law course. Following the successful completion of his internship program, he joined as a prosecuting officer in Los Angeles County’s district attorney office.

Beginning his professional career as a prosecuting attorney, Gil Garcetti soon rose through the ranks to be promoted to a managerial position, and in due course took charge as chief deputy district attorney in 1984. As the chief deputy district attorney, he was subordinate only to Ira Reiner, who served as district attorney from 1984-1992.

After serving as a public prosecutor for nearly 25 years, Gil contested the 1992 elections for the position of district attorney and was voted into office. He again ran for the office in 2000 and was elected for a 2nd term.

He served for a total of 32 years in LA County as a prosecutor, including 8 years as the district attorney. During his long tenure, he presided over more than a 1000 prosecutions, many of which were extraordinarily high-profile, attracting the attention of the entire nation and receiving widespread media coverage.

Garcetti, as the district attorney, supervised the trial proceedings of Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and the LAPD police officers implicated for thrashing Rodney King, a taxi driver. Gil, during his more than 30 years of service, directed 1100 subordinate prosecutors to focus on tackling serious crimes and domestic violence.

LA County district attorney office was still smarting from the repercussion of the ‘Rodney King’ incident in 1991 that had garnered unprecedented publicity when Gil entered the fray for the prime post.

Gil Garcetti’s 32-year stint as a public prosecutor in LA County culminated with his debacle in the 2000 elections.

He was appointed as an official of the Los Angeles City Council’s ‘Ethics Commission’ by Alex Padilla, the governing body’s president in 2002.

Towards the end of 2002, he was awarded a fellowship in politics by the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. As a fellow of the ‘Institute of Politics’, he instructed a colloquium on the subject, “The Interaction of the Criminal Justice System, Race, Politics, and the Media”.

He has also frequently addressed audiences, speaking about his numerous books and projects on photography, notable amongst these being his lectures on career change and digging wells for supplying potable water in West African nations.