Listen here:
District Attorney Jason Anderson was the special guest at a public safety open house hosted by County Supervisor Dawn Rowe and held at the Joshua Tree Community Center. After briefing the gathering on the work done and duties overseen by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, which is primarily investigating and prosecuting cases of criminal conduct, the D.A. offered some statistics about his office, saying:
District Attorney Anderson: “The mission of the DA’s office is to abide by the rule of law, if people violate the law and we believe we can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, we’re going to proceed with that in court. We couldn’t do that without our clerical or administrative staff as they are managing our case management system which has to process approximately 65,000 cases.
The vast majority of those cases are misdemeanors. We would like to deal with no criminal cases, but we have to deal with them. The majority of crimes being misdemeanors is a good sign for our residents.”
D.A. Anderson spoke about what he considers to be the most pressing criminal issue facing residents of San Bernardino County, and California as a whole: drug overdoses caused by fentanyl.
District Attorney Anderson: “We continue to see the impact that fentanyl is having within our younger population – 15 years old up to age 20 – across the country the comparison rate of fentanyl deaths is an average of 120 people a day.
Let me put that in perspective for you. If you take a flight from Ontario to Sacramento on a Southwest flight… maybe you are on a flight with 120 people. That’s like one of those planes going down every day.”
D.A. Anderson criticized state and federal lawmakers for the lack of additional laws relating to fentanyl, saying that additional consequences are needed for those who deal the deadly substance to unknowing users.
District Attorney Anderson: “Obviously, if people are addicted, we treat those types of things. We’ve had divergent and drug court programs that have been successful for 20, 25 years. As far as greater punishment that might be a deterrent, we don’t have that right now.
I don’t think there’s many people as this fentanyl crisis goes on that aren’t going to be touched by this.
I have friends whose kids have died as a result of exactly what we’re talking about, so it’s very personal to me.
Until we can catch up and figure out why it is that the lawmakers don’t care about (the equivalent) of 120 people in a plane crashing every day, we’ve got an extraordinary education program.”
To learn more about the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office visit https://sbcountyda.org/
