But she also knew from a young age that it was a complicated relationship.
As a little girl, she said, she remembers watching the demonstrations led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on television. She said she can still see the image of police — acting as a shadow force of the Ku Klux Klan — using high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs on African Americans.
“Impossible to forget,” Lacey said, wincing. “It’s recent, so I understand why there would be distrust of the police. I totally understand it.”
Before dropping off her son at Howard University in 2000, Lacey said she sat him down for a talk. Living in Washington, D.C., would be different than the sleepy Southern California neighborhood where he’d grown up. Because he was a 6-foot-4 ½-inch black man, she reminded him that the police would always watch him extra close. No matter what, she told him, don’t challenge them.
“If anything ever happens,” she warned him, “just please do what they say. Don’t start saying, ‘My mother is a lawyer. My mother is a prosecutor.’”
She returned to Los Angeles and did her best not to worry. Then, one day, she got a call from her son. He sounded shaken and told her that he’d been out for a walk with friends — other black men — when police swarmed around them, forcing them to lay face down on the ground. They spread their arms, her son told her, and waited as the officers patted them down. The officers eventually told Lacey’s son and his friends that there had been a robbery nearby and that they had fit the description of the suspects.
“I was just kind of glad he got out of that without…” Lacey said, stopping short of mentioning a shooting. “When you think about it: They have guns and you don’t.”
Lacey said she also understands the public’s gut reactions to police killings, especially ones captured on camera, because she, too, often finds herself making quick judgments after watching the news.
Take the South Carolina case of a white officer who fatally shot Walter Scott, a black man, in the back, while he was running away, or the choking death, of Eric Garner in New York City. Lacey said both stories disturb her, but that those cases differ from the ones in her jurisdiction in an important way: She doesn’t have all the evidence.
“It’s one thing to judge as a human being — to look at something and have a judgment,” she said. “It’s another thing to be the top prosecutor.”
For L.A. County cases, Lacey said she feels an obligation to reserve judgment and take as much time as she needs to methodically check the facts before applying the law. So far, she said, when she’s done that, she’s felt compelled not to file charges.
Back at the town hall in South L.A. in October, activists demanded charges against the officers who shot Ford. They chanted his name.
As a woman handed out fliers — which read “Lacey will prosecute people who leave their dogs in their car, but not Cops who Kill people!!” — a group of LAPD officers watched from a few feet away. Lacey stood with her hands clasped and frequently blinked, breaking her somber expression.
When the father of a man killed by a sheriff’s deputy spoke, he asked Lacey if she worked alongside Satan. And at one point, as the shouting grew louder, an organizer asked a respected pastor to bless the meeting.
“Father, we ask you for justice,” he prayed. Lacey, who wears a WWJD — What would Jesus do? — bracelet around her right wrist, nodded, mouthing, “Amen.”
When she took the microphone, it was dark outside and she was flustered.
“Good afternoon,” she said, catching herself. “Or, good evening.”
As she spoke about her job being “misunderstood,” the audience booed her. Her voice grew quieter, and she started to shift her weight from foot to foot — a woman told her friend that Lacey looked like a scared rabbit.
“I’m just one woman,” she said, “who’s trying to follow the law, who’s trying to listen, who’s trying to do the right thing.”
Eventually, Ebony Fay — a supporter of Black Lives Matter — took the microphone. After addressing the district attorney as “Sister Lacey,” Fay explained that she'd voted for her in 2012 because she had faith in her and thought she’d be fair. Now, Fay said, all she felt was disappointment. She had expected more empathy she told Lacey, from someone who looks like her.
Fay paused, locking eyes with Lacey: “When — not if — but when this city burns, it will be your fault.”
The crowd roared and Lacey stood, with her hands folded across her chest, and shot back: “You have been incredibly patronizing and insulting.”
Then, she walked out of her own town hall meeting.
