CIVIC LEADERSHIP AWARD
Steve Cooley
Los Angeles County District Attorney
After seven years in office, Steve Cooley has realized his goal of establishing the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office as the premier local prosecution agency in the nation. Constrained by severe county budget limitations in his first term, Cooley accomplished a massive office reorganization based on his years of experience as a trial attorney and as a Reserve Police Officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. He has developed a team equally capable of fighting crime in the streets and in the corridors of justice, providing an unparalleled breadth and quality of prosecutorial efforts.
Cooley has been relentless in his pursuit of public corruption and of lawbreakers within the justice system. He has not only jailed swaggering politicians whose malfeasance had gone unpunished for years, but has also obtained prison sentences for crooked lawyers who were accustomed to a mere slap on the wrist or a referral to the State Bar. Cooley’s overall efforts and emphasis on forensic sciences have helped assure the optimum use of DNA in solving criminal cases and the prosecution of cold cases that have long gone unsolved.
From prosecuting gang members to going after high-tech criminals, exceptional prosecutors and investigative experts on Cooley’s staff are working with frontline law enforcement to take on all challenges.
Dogged in his efforts to convince Mexico to extradite violent criminals who seek asylum there, Cooley established www.EscapingJustice.com to inform the public about the extradition issue and to shed light on the killers who were hiding out across the border. In 2005, the Mexican Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling and allowed criminals facing life terms to be extradited. Since that time, Cooley’s office has been successful in returning several murderers from Mexico, including the killer of L.A. County Deputy Sheriff David March.
In 2001, District Attorney Steve Cooley convicted former Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) member Kathleen Soliah (aka Sara Jane Olson) for the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers in 1975. This ultimately led to the conviction of Soliah and other SLA members for the murder of Myrna Opsahl, which occurred during a Sacramento bank robbery that same year.
Cooley also created the website Protecting Our Kids (http://da.lacounty.gov/pok/) to educate parents on the dangers of children misusing the Internet and how to protect them from Internet predators.
Steve Cooley is a native of Los Angeles. His father was an FBI agent, and his mother was a homemaker. His star was on the rise early in his life as a two-term student body president and a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Academic Honor Society at California State University, Los Angeles. He graduated from the USC Law Center in 1973 and joined the District Attorney’s Office that same year. He and his wife, Jana, have lived in Toluca Lake for over 30 years. They have two grown children.
