Signal Tribune Newspaper

BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
Second in a two-part series

Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts and City Prosecutor Tom Reeves spoke at the November 3 monthly meeting of the Wrigley Association. They each described how the across-the-board 10 percent budget reduction recently ordered by the Long Beach City Council will impact their respective departments. Last week, the Signal Tribune reported on Batts’ presentation. Reeves’ comments are described below.
“I’m the guy that said, ‘No, don’t cut my budget,’ ” Reeves said. “The reason I said that is because it is bad policy.” He explained that reducing his staff will result in more criminals on the streets of the city and less enforcement of the city’s health and safety codes.
Reeves noted that there are two basic categories of criminal offenses: crimes against people and crimes against property. He said a crime can be a felony or a misdemeanor and that there are also regulatory offenses like violations of building codes. According to the City Charter, the city prosecutor’s office handles misdemeanors and code enforcement. (The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office prosecutes felonies committed in Long Beach City limits.)

To complicate matters further, many crimes are called “wobblers” because they can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on their severity. Reeves stressed that many crimes prosecuted by his office are crimes against people that could be prosecuted as felonies.
He explained that certain kinds of theft, acts of violence and criminal negligence resulting in bodily harm or death can also be considered misdemeanors or felonies. He decried the attitude held by some that cutting back the city prosecutor’s budget was no big deal since it only handles misdemeanors. “To any victim it’s not just a misdemeanor,” he said. “You know yourself if you have been the victim of a crime, it was a horrible event in your life and you wanted a day in court, (you wanted justice).”
Reeves warned that the budget cuts will make it more difficult to give victims their day in court. He explained that during the budget hearings he tried to make the city council understand the importance of maintaining the level of service that the public expects from his office. “My sustainability problem began about two years ago when I realized that I was not competitive in attracting and retaining quality prosecutors,” he said, noting that in the past 18 months, nine of his deputy prosecutors have been hired by other prosecuting agencies.
He added that his office operates a perpetual training program for new deputies and as a result the public is denied the efficiency that can only come with experience. “That’s a part of the problem, but what you have to understand is that 90 percent of the crimes committed in Long Beach are treated as misdemeanors,” he said. “The D.A.’s office has 45 (deputy) district attorneys in Long Beach that do about 5,000 cases a year, my office does the remaining 90 percent, somewhere around 30,000 cases.”
Reeves explained that before the budget cuts, he had 19 prosecutors, but now he has 17. “My prosecutors — even the rookies — are touching one hundred plus cases every day,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to walk into a courtroom and see one of my deputies with 100 to 140 files in front of him.” He explained those files cover a broad spectrum of legal proceedings including as many as 20 trials shared between three deputy prosecutors in one day
He added that by law the prosecution of crime must take place within certain time limits, and his staff’s excessive workload makes it difficult at best to adequately prepare for each case.
“How does that get affected by the budget,” Reeves asked. “I’ll tell you, the deals get sweeter.” He explained that the heavy workload and reduced staff result in plea bargains that are more favorable to the defendants. “What are we going to do? I can’t try 12 to 20 cases in one day,” he explained.
Reeves said that in spite of the budget cutbacks his department continues to prosecute the cases given to it by the Long Beach Police Department. “But we are going to have to do things that we really don’t want to do,” he added. “We will look at time intensive cases, regulatory offenses and prioritizing them.” He explained that his staff will be reluctant to prosecute hit-and-run cases if there is a civil court remedy available to the victim, and will prosecute fewer code enforcement cases. “We’re going to have to cut back on the number of those cases,” he said. “But we will not cut back on our gang injunction efforts because that is a public safety issue.”
Reeves said he was very disappointed that the city council did not heed his warnings, and did not seem to grasp the necessity of prosecuting misdemeanor crimes. “The city prosecutors office is in the City Charter, but other departments are not in the Charter,” he said. “That means the people that wrote the Charter thought this office was very important. What we do for public safety is we put the bite where the police put the bark.”
The city prosecutor’s office has an approximately $5 million budget for the current fiscal year. Reeves said he has to determine where to make an additional $60,000 in cuts.

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