Lockyer to Expand Attorney General’s Civil Rights Staff
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SAN FRANCISCO — Speaking at Cesar Chavez Elementary School on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer restated his promise of a new emphasis on civil rights enforcement, including a staff expansion.
“As attorney general I will reverse the politics of division and exclusion which characterized the last administration, and I will instead resume the fight to end illegal discrimination and racism in California,” Lockyer said Friday.
Surrounded by schoolchildren and leaders of civil rights groups, he said the civil rights staff of three attorneys in his 1,000-lawyer office would add three more attorneys and two investigators, and would be upgraded from a unit in the charitable trusts division to a division of its own.
The chief of the new division is Louis Verdugo, 47, a 22-year veteran of the office who also headed civil rights enforcement under former Republican state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.
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