The Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station hosted a closed-door meet-and-greet Tuesday with recently sworn in District Attorney Nathan Hochman, according to station officials.  The 90-minute visit is something that hasn’t happened in several years, according to Deputy Robert Jensen, a spokesman for the station who said the visit was a widely appreciated gesture.  “I can tell you, we really appreciated the visit, to put a face to the name,” Jensen said, “And I think anytime we have representatives from the DA’s office come and kind of help us understand what happens after we’re filing cases, the whole station grows.”  Jensen said station deputies highly value their interagency partnerships with other first responders and others working to keep the community safe, and the DA’s office is a big part of that.  Many have been watching Hochman’s office with great attention since he was sworn in Dec. 3 by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.   “Hochman announced a series of immediate policy changes that he said would promote public safety by holding the most dangerous offenders accountable,” according to a statement from the swearing in.   On former District Attorney George Gascón’s first day in office four years ago, he announced a sweeping series of changes that upset many of his top prosecutors and the prosecutor’s union, neither of which were consulted on the new policies.  Hochman defeated Gascón by more than 19 points last month, campaigning with strong criticism of those directives that he described as “soft on crime.”   Hochman said he planned to repeal those in a statement released shortly after his swearing in, and detectives had questions about how that might look, as well, Jensen added.    The new DA talked about how those policies helped normalize criminal behavior in a way that needed to be replaced by a new message, which is that crimes will be prosecuted.  Jensen said he also mentioned the importance of taking each case individually and using “the entire toolbox” to keep the community safe instead of blanket policies.   Within that toolset, Hochman also planned to create a half-dozen task forces to help work with law enforcement officers on issues like fentanyl, hate crimes, homelessness, human trafficking, organized retail theft and residential burglaries.   Hochman compared fentanyl, a narcotic that caused nearly three dozen deaths in the SCV two years ago, to “cyanide,” Jensen said, adding that if someone were going around selling cyanide, it would have drawn a lot more attention.  While the Sheriff’s Department previously created a task force to deal with the issues surrounding fentanyl, up until the last few months of the previous election, Gascon’s office would not charge fentanyl deaths as murders. The members of the task force said the stance of the DA’s office was the reason LASD investigators taking their fentanyl task-force cases to federal prosecutors.   “His big emphasis, which I really appreciated, was just, ‘Do your job, and I’ll make sure we do our job,” Jensen said, “and together we’ll prevent crime.”  The post Sheriff’s Station welcomes visit from new DA  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.