Opponents reject DA’s proposal to add prosecutors

Members of the Texas Organizing Project gathered outside Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office Friday to add their opposition to her plan to hire 102 additional assistant district attorneys and more than 40 support staff.

During the demonstration, advocates urged people to ask their commissioners to vote against Ogg’s proposal as they chanted and shared personal stories of incarceration.

“I’ve been in Harris County Jail and know what it’s like to be caught up in the system that doesn’t seem to care about your life, and this is what has brought me here,” said Rosie Mccutcheon, a four-year member of TOP. “The judge didn’t sign my arrest warrant because I didn’t pay my ticket, didn’t care if I had the money to pay for it or not. So they put me in jail and deprived my grandchildren of their primary caregiver.”

TOP, a nonprofit that helps organize black and Latino communities in Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties, wants to pause the process so more options can be considered.

“I immediately, in my gut, knew that this was wrong for Harris County,” said Gracie Armijo, community organizer for TOP. “The $20 million we would spend on these prosecutors equals the entire budget for mental health. … $20 million for treatment of mental health just doesn’t seem enough and adding another $20 million to law enforcement seems too much.”

The Harris County Jail provides more people with mental health care than any other mental health hospital in Texas.

TOP originally supported Ogg during her campaign by making 1.2 million door-to-door visits and phone calls and providing almost 2,500 rides to the polls, according to its website.

“We would like to stop the clock and take time to consider other options, primarily looking at funding for mental health issues,” organizer Terrance Koontz said.

Koontz said TOP is looking at housing options for nonviolent offenders who may need to reset their lives.

“We’re talking about individuals who are being arrested for minor drug charges or being homeless on the street or having a mental problem, and they definitely shouldn’t be sitting in jail,” Koontz said. “We are not here to attack D.A. Ogg, we just want more time to consider our options.”

Harris County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dane Schiller said the department has a duty to seek justice for crime victims.

“Ensuring that the justice system is fair requires enough prosecutors to review cases and make decisions in a timely manner, such as whether someone should be given an opportunity to get help, and avoid a criminal record that might keep them out of the work force, or whether a person is such a danger to society that they should be imprisoned,” he said.

Doug Murphy, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, agrees with Ogg’s proposal.

“Having witnessed the daily reality of their lack of manpower what we’re seeing is Harris County was the fastest moving docket in the country, we called it the rocket docket, and it slowed it down to a snail’s pace,” said Murphy. “What we got is bloated dockets because they don’t have the manpower to work these cases up and marshal the evidence.”

Murphy believes more prosecutors would help pick up the pace of getting cases to trial, resolved and even dismissed. “If I weren’t witnessing daily the backlog and the frustration, I would be in total agreement with the other organization,” Murphy said.

Koontz still worries that more prosecutors would ultimately mean more arrests and more people wrongly incarcerated.

“We just want to consider other viable options outside of just hiring the prosecutors,” Koontz said. “Because although it does not seem like putting more people in jail, at the end of the day we feel like more people will end up in jail than not and at the end of the day its black and brown people who are overwhelmingly being incarcerated.”