Building Bridges - Volume II, Number 1, 2002
Congratulations to the 75 DOJ-Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Community Prosecution Grantees
In December 2001, BJA selected 75 jurisdictions to apply for community prosecution awards. There are potentially 22 Planning Grantees, 30 Implementation Grantees and 23 Enhancement Grantees, representing 59 prosecutor offices, 11 municipal city attorney offices and 5 tribal jurisdictions. These awards reflect the growing number of diverse groups of people working together to solve neighborhood livability issues. Please refer to http://www.ndaa-apri.org/apri/programs/community_pros/2001_national_cp_grantees.html for a complete listing of all 75 jurisdictions that were selected to apply for funding.
Proactively Speaking: Creative Sales Tax Funds Jackson County Community Prosecution Initiative in Kansas City, Missouri
Since taking office in 1998, Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Beaird has maintained a commitment to fighting crime at the local level – one neighborhood at a time. Jackson County has a diverse population that encompasses Kansas City plus 12 smaller suburban and rural municipal jurisdictions. The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has 75 full-time assistant prosecutors, 4 part-time assistant prosecutors, and 124 support staff.
APRI: You have an interesting story to tell about your program’s financing. What advice would you give a jurisdiction interested in pursuing a community prosecution initiative on where to find available monies?
PA Beaird: There is money out there if you think creatively. For instance, in 1989, the citizens of Jackson County passed a 1¼4 cent anti-drug sales tax referred to as the Community Backed Anti-Drug Sales Tax (COMBAT) that has generated significant revenue and leveraged funding opportunities for treatment, prevention, and enforcement initiatives throughout Jackson County. Our community prosecution initiative falls under the umbrella of programs that this tax funds. The tax was initially passed for a 7-year period. However, in November 1995, it was overwhelmingly passed for another 7 years!
APRI: I understand that the funds generated by COMBAT were initially earmarked to fight drug trafficking and shut down drug houses in Jackson County. As a result, your office formed a Drug Abatement Response Team (DART). Please describe how you continue to fund DART and how it collaborates with the community.
PA Beaird: In 1991, DART was created in response to the epidemic proportions of drug related crimes that were occurring throughout Jackson County. DART funding comes from COMBAT that matches a federal Byrne Memorial grant formula funneled through the Missouri Department of Public Safety Narcotics Control Assistance Program. Jackson County continues to absorb an increasing match percentage of the DART grant.
The number of DART positions has increased over the years. There are now positions for three Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys (APAs) (serving as DART Coordinator, Community Drug Prosecutor, and Forfeiture attorney), an administrative assistant, two investigators, two housing code inspectors, a fire code inspector and numerous personnel from utility companies, state and local health departments, various state agencies, and local police departments and task forces. The DART program truly reflects a community-centered, multi-jurisdictional interagency crime fighting collaborative.
DART takes calls from the community regarding suspected drug activity and then forwards that information to the appropriate law enforcement agency for further investigation. Once that agency confirms illegal activity, DART writes a letter to the owner of the property. The notice letter informs the owner of the alleged illegal activity and of his/her responsibility to abate the activity or face the legal consequences of inaction.
The city agency component of the team is critical to DART’s success because the housing and fire code inspectors use their authority to issue citations for code violations to close drug houses. DART team members can file public nuisance and forfeiture actions against problem properties. DART also coordinates with narcotics enforcement units to conduct reverse stings and buy/bust operations to address street level drug activity identified by citizens.
In addition to its enforcement capacity, DART has a service intervention component. DART partners with the Division of Family Services and the Division of Senior and Health Services to address the needs of children and senior citizens in drug houses. DART representatives attend community meetings along with our community prosecutors to work with residents on livability issues. DART organizes and conducts drug and crime prevention seminars for property owners and managers, as well as seminars tailored to the specific needs of the hotel/motel industry.
DART is a prime example of how enforcement, prevention, and intervention can be woven into a strong community prosecution initiative. Essentially, our community prosecution initiative grew from this concept.
APRI: How do you address other livability issues?
PA Beaird: In 1994, our Neighborhood Prosecution Program began as a pilot program in eight Kansas City neighborhoods. What started as a pilot program has turned into a permanent unit in our office. In 1999, we changed its name to the Community Justice Unit. The rationale behind the change was to address neighborhood-centered problems in an effort to develop community-wide solutions.
Basically, the APAs who are selected for the unit are assigned to work with citizens in established neighborhood associations to combat drugs and other quality of life crimes within specific areas. The Unit has grown and is managed by a Chief Trial Assistant and six (6) APAs specifically assigned to geographic areas.
What originally set us apart from many jurisdictions and what continues to set us apart is that, with the exception of the DART grant, our community prosecution program is completely funded by the citizens of Jackson County. We view COMBAT as Jackson County taking care of Jackson County.
For more information, call Kathy Finnell, Chief Trial Assistant, at 816-881-3802 or email at finnkat@gw.co.jackson.mo.us.
News in Our Community
From Rhode Island to California, community prosecutors are working with their communities and law makers to find creative ways to solve community problems by changing state and local ordinances. These changes arm prosecutors with new tools to improve the quality of life in their communities. Ordinances created in response to community prosecution efforts include:
- City of Oakland, CA’s “Beat Feet” Ordinance—Faced with a large number of non-residents driving into the city to buy drugs or solicit prostitutes, Oakland decided that one way to combat this problem was to make the penalties for committing these offenses more severe. The “Beat Feet” Ordinance provides that any vehicle used to solicit a prostitute or acquire any controlled substance can be declared a nuisance and forfeited to the city.
- Multnomah County, OR’s “Drug Free Zones”—In response to the business, residential, and law enforcement concerns over the large number of drug offenders returning to the same areas of the city to continue their illegal drug activities, the Neighborhood Based District Attorney developed a new legal tool known as the Drug Free Zone (DFZ). DFZs were created for areas that experienced a disproportionately high level of drug crime as compared to other similarly sized geographic areas of Portland. The ordinance provides that a person arrested in a DFZ for a drug offense can be excluded from the area for 90 days and an additional year upon conviction. If the person returns during the period of exclusion, he or she can be arrested on-site by a police officer and charged with Criminal Trespass.
- Rhode Island’s “Community Impact Statement”—In an effort to expand the role that the community plays in the criminal justice system, Rhode Island’s Attorney General worked to have the judiciary consider statements from community representatives regarding the impact of the crime on the community. In July 2001, the Attorney General accomplished this goal. The legislature amended the criminal code to allow written statements by members of the community or community associations about the financial, emotional and physical effects of a crime on a community. In the past, impact statements have been limited to the victim or the victim’s family.
- Clackamas County, OR’s “Chronic Nuisance Ordinance”—The Clackamas County Chronic Nuisance Ordinance declares that a property on which 3 or more nuisance activities have occurred within 2 months (or 12 activities within 12 months) can be judicially closed for a period of 6 months to one year or be assessed fines up to $100 a day. Although the ordinance lists a variety of nuisance activities, behaviors or conduct, it is generally aimed at drug houses and nuisance behaviors associated with a drug house.
NCCP has information on a variety of ordinances from community prosecutors across the country. If you would like more information on these ordinances, please contact NCCP. If you have been successful in getting ordinances passed in your jurisdiction to solve other quality of life crimes, we would like to learn about them.
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