Frustrations with the District Attorney

[jryeo]

The Sonoma County sheriff submitted a request for an arrest warrant to the DA office on July 2 for the suspect in the burglary of my house.

I've called the DA office repeatedly and they can't even give me the status on the case, as nobody has entered it into the system.

Has anybody else had experience dealing with the DA? Is this typical? I'd like to hear other experiences.

I'm moving to Oregon soon, and really want to get this case resolved so I don't have to take a special trip down here to testify.

["Mad" Miles]

I've no "inside" info on the County DA's workings. But there was an article in the PD (yesterday? day before?) about the lack of cooperation Ravitch is getting from Passalauqua, or the interference from Ravitch in Passalauqua's final months in office, depending on how you read the "she said, he said". It was a rough election.

I imagine things are pretty paralyzed there what with the regime change pending, the quotidian budget crisis, worker's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When the layoffs were in the pipeline last fall in the Education Department at San Quentin, productivity plummetted. It's hard to find motivation to push paper and go see students in squalid conditions when your program is closing and you are waiting for the pink slip headed straight for your nose!

Like all bureaucracies, the system will grind away, and they'll get to you in their own slow, aggravating time. I wouldn't plan my schedule around it.

When students complained about things taking too long, my watch phrase was,

"Don't expect anything to happen, until it has already happened. Otherwise you go crazy. That's what they want. I don't know who 'they' are, but they're out there! Don't give them the satisfaction."

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, not prisoners, not cops, not free staff, not volunteers, had anything critical to say about my assessment.

Course I never said it straight to the warden's, or my principal's, faces. But I'll bet they'd also agree.


Be Cool, Stay Strong!

[daynurse]

I have had experience with the DA and a deputy DA that I won't go into now. I found it helpful to go down there myself and tell my story to the receptionist who tried to put me off. I persisted and first talked with an investigator (after waiting only 15 minutes) and later in the same day the Deputy.

If you have the time, I recommend the personal approach. (Be aware that you can't take anything with you to the office so leave cameras, scissors, etc. in your car and save yourself a trip back. Voice of experience here.

Let us know how it goes.

Peggy

["Mad" Miles]

From today's PD:

Criminal Trials Swamp Sonoma County Courts