Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Humboldt's Other Police Force

Kudos to the Tuluwat Examiner for bringing to light some information from D.A. candidate, Arnie Klein. I had no idea the district attorney's office has more investigators than it does attorneys:

 “Paul got into office.  He had bad relations with every police department.  He decided to create his own police department.  So DA Investigators went from like 4, or 5, to like 12 now.  There are more DA Investigators than there are DA’s…I’m like Alice in Wonderland up here in Humboldt County, because everything is in reverse.  Everywhere else the ratio is something like 1 DA Investigator for every 5 DA’s.  And they’re the cream of the crop usually.  They’re not somebody’s brother-in-law or somebody’s father, brought in to make money….So it takes away from the DA’s budget to fund prosecutors when you have these special interest DA Investigators.

That's not good. It's also not good that this is the first we've heard of this. I would think this should be a major issue in this race.

One aspect of this I'll differ on is Klein suggesting that this was Gallegos' idea. There's no doubt in my mind these rather bizarre goings on in the D.A.'s office weren't the brainstorms of Gallegos, but of now retired head of D.A. investigations (and past Humboldt County Sheriff candidate), Mike Hislop. Hislop wanted to create his own police department, not Gallegos.

Addendum: I could have sworn I'd commented here before about the D.A.'s office wanting to get AR15s and form a SWAT team, or some such. I can only find this one post that's just as much about goings- on in Mendocino County as it is Humboldt. 

Addendum 2: Received notice from someone in the know that the figure for current investigators isn't correct. I was pointed to this North Coast Journal article that includes figures at the bottom of the story. 

Still, if Klein's assertion that the usual ratio of investigators to attorneys is more like one to five, that would mean we have over three times more than the norm . 

Humboldt County
Population: 135,000
Prosecutors: 13
DA Investigators: 10
General Fund spending on DA's Office: $2.1 million

2 Comments:

At 8:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"So,DA Investigators went from like 4, or 5, to like 12 now."

Well, that's like, fairly precise, coming from a DA candidate.

"Yer honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant killed, like 4 or 5 people last year and like 12 this year."

Where do we dig them up?

 
At 10:07 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Several of the investigators are retired law enforcement collecting their retirement checks and their 1/2 time pay checks, at that top salary rate. The irony is that these are some of the folks on these blogs in Humboldt who are railing against the Government and their entire existence comes from that same government they hate.

 

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