Efficiency, diversity, and the best way to use an expanded jail are among the issues dividing the candidates for Kalamazoo County prosecutor. Voters will pick either incumbent Democrat Jeff Getting or Republican challenger Don Smith on Tuesday, November 8.
Smith served for 12 years with Child Protective Services before moving on to a six-year stint as an assistant prosecutor in Kalamazoo County. Smith left that position in 2006 to join the private firm Willis Law's Kalamazoo office where he's an attorney handling criminal defense cases.
Jeff Getting is completing his first four-year term as Kalamazoo County prosecutor. Before his election in 2012, Getting spent 14 years as an attorney in private practice specializing in criminal defense and family law. Prior to that, Getting spent eight years as an assistant county prosecutor in Kalamazoo.
Is the Prosecutor's Office too big?
Don Smith says it is and could be much more efficient.
"Kalamazoo has nearly as many prosecutors as Kent County. When you run the stats and you look at the annual reports between the Kalamazoo office and the Kent County office, the Kent County folks do approximately a third more work per assistant prosecuting attorney than in Kalamazoo."
But Getting says that isn't the case.
"We are actually the most efficient criminal justice system in the State of Michigan. We resolve over 95- percent of our cases within that first 90-day window. We resolve 98-percent or 99-percent of our cases within that next mark."
Getting also says the size of his staff is in line with those in other counties with similar populations.
Violence in the community
Smith says Getting hasn’t done enough to prevent violent crime in Kalamazoo County. He cites a report, which he could not identify, that he says ranked Kalamazoo as the 39th most-violent area in the country.
"Kalamazoo is way too small a place to have such a high position on that list. So, have things improved in the last four years? No, it's gotten worse, and they just announced that we're number 39. There's no way that we should be number 39."
Getting says that isn’t true either. The Democratic incumbent says a mass shooting in February, and the deaths of five bicyclists, and four more injured a few months later, skewed Kalamazoo County’s violent crime numbers for 2016. Overall, Getting says violence has fallen since he took office.
"We've been able to reduce not only the number of shootings but the number of people who are being shot, dramatically, by two-thirds. We've gone from approximately 47 to 14, people that have been hit by bullets. That's making our neighborhoods safer; that's saving people's lives."
Getting says that was done by targeting a small number of repeat offenders.
Minorities and the criminal justice system
Getting says making sure that people are treated fairly is important, especially when they’re minorities. And he says that includes victims as well as defendants. But Smith says the Kalamazoo County prosecutor’s office isn’t doing that well because he says it doesn’t reflect the community it serves. According to Smith, the County hasn’t hired a black assistant prosecutor since 2006.
"The white guy prosecuting the black person is not the ideal. And I'm not saying that there should be quotas or anything else, but in ten years you couldn't find any African-Americans that are qualified to run in the office? Diversity is definitely something I would be looking for. The same thing with Hispanic or Spanish- speaking people."
Getting doesn’t directly address the issue of hiring more African-Americans as assistant prosecutors. But, overall, he says his office is diverse.
"My office as a whole has 50-percent or more women. My office as whole has, out of the 56 employees, we have over a dozen that are minorities. Out of the 28 attorneys that we have, we have at least four that are also minorities. I think the criticism is unfounded."
The County Jail as a crime-fighting tool
Smith says the facility that was expanded in 2014 has cells that aren’t being used. He'd like to change that.
"We could be giving out more short-term jail sentences to, hopefully, teach people a lesson (and) reduce recidivism."
Getting says that’s no only the wrong way to prevent crime, he says it would not be effective.
"That's a recipe for disaster. It's a social justice disaster to continue to try and incarcerate as many people as we can, and it's an economic disaster."
Getting says filling the jail to capacity would cost the county an extra two million dollars a year without having a significant impact on crime.
Specialty courts
Both Getting and Smith say they support specialty courts dealing with drunk driving, drug abuse, and mental health issues to help keep non-violent offenders out of jail. Getting wholeheartedly supports a new "veterans' court" but Smith has some reservations. Smith says he strongly supports efforts to help military veterans who tangle with the law but he says many of those issues could be handled by the existing specialty courts.
The Kalamazoo League of Women Voters has a voter guide for this and other races in Kalamazoo County.
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