Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Page 3
Former MALDEF Attorney Joins Ridley-Thomas’ Staff
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Former Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund attorney Richard P. Fajardo of Los Angeles has joined Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s staff as senior deputy for justice and public safety issues.
As an attorney for MALDEF, Fajardo was lead counsel in Garza v. Los Angeles County, a 1990 voting rights case that resulted in a court-ordered redrawing of supervisorial districts in Los Angeles County.
Fajardo has spent more than a quarter century in civil litigation, and will advise the supervisor on matters relating to the Sheriff’s Department, District Attorney’s Office and Public Defender’s Office, Ridley-Thomas’ office said in a release.
The attorney will also be the supervisor’s point person on probation issues, and gang prevention and suppression efforts.
Ridley-Thomas praised Fajardo as “a diligent worker with broad policy experience at various levels of government,” and said that the attorney “is well equipped to deal with justice and public safety issues as he has worked on many cases involving law enforcement.”
A graduate of UCLA law school, Fajardo was admitted to the State Bar in 1982. He attended college at UC Santa Barbara, where he also obtained a master’s degree in economics.
In 1990, UC Santa Barbara’s Minority Alumni Association honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award, and the school itself presented him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005.
He also received both the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Pro Bono Legal Services Award and the Mexican American Bar Association’s Cruz Reynoso Award in 1992.
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