Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem: DA cuts make our community less safe

When you become a victim of crime, your world gets turned upside down — especially as a victim of violent crime. The community and systems you hoped would be there to protect you suddenly leave you feeling vulnerable, threatened and alone. Crime left unchecked can cause permanent trauma to its victims, to neighborhoods and can destroy property values and livelihoods throughout the community, including for those for whom rehabilitation or diversion programs could break the cycle of crime.

When people talk about the need to address crime, the narrative usually goes to the role of the policing. Rarely do we consider the critical role the court system plays in keeping people safe and getting accountability, or help, for those who commit crimes.

In 2007, after a man with a 20-year history of violent assault convictions tried to abduct me at gunpoint in broad daylight in a busy Uptown parking lot, I experienced first hand the failure of a system in which resource constraints within the court system puts known criminals back on the streets. By forcing an under staffed prosecutors office to pick and choose the cases it can pursue, known felons and repeat offenders are often arrested and released without trial or arrested and held for extended periods of time pre-trial. No justice and slow justice are antithetical to fairness.

What I learned from my own experience and from my work as a founding member of a bipartisan and diverse citizens group called Neighbors for a Safer Charlotte was how critical it is for victims and defendants, and for a city’s well-being, to be served by a well-functioning court system. That is why the current proposed cut by General Assembly leadership to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s prosecutor should concern everyone: It further weakens the court’s ability to serve justice and keep people safe, and it follows a troubling decades-long pattern by the state leadership to defund the court system.

The District Attorney’s office is managed by the state, which controls every dollar spent by DAs in all 100 counties. There was a time in Charlotte when the DA was able to recommend cases to specialized drug or family courts funded by the state, so judges can divert individuals that needed help to address family dynamics, substance abuse and mental health circumstances. Those courts are now funded locally, due to the state’s ongoing depletion of court funding on a per capita basis. Today, North Carolina ranks 45th nationally in spending on its court system. The counties that suffer the most are the ones, like Mecklenburg, that have experienced the most growth and as urban centers, experience the most crime.

This year the N.C. Senate plans to cut funding for prosecutors despite a state-sponsored formula that shows state allocation of prosecutors to Mecklenburg should increase by 5, not decrease. To make matters worse this comes at a time when Mecklenburg, the district with the state’s largest criminal case volume, is facing dual challenges of recovery from COVID court operation restrictions and a spike in violent crime. One has to wonder if the state expects us to pick up the bill locally, as we have done in the past: nearly 30% of Mecklenburg County’s 85 prosecutors are paid for by the city and county to make up for the state repeatedly failing to meet its obligation. Per the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Mecklenburg County should have at least approximately 101 prosecutors.

With a 3 to 4-year homicide backlog that is only growing, our district attorney must choose to assign over-burdened prosecutors to the most serious cases, at the expense of prosecuting lower level offenses. This puts a greater burden on the police who end up having to deal with revolving door crime and makes the community less safe.

Without a well-functioning court system, the cycle of crime continues and policing becomes more difficult. We must all speak up to our state elected officials. This is not a partisan issue: Crime affects everyone. We deserve a well-functioning court system and the state must own its responsibility to fund it.