Santa Clara County is building bridges to safety, justice

We did not call to burn down the courthouse when Brock Turner was sentenced to the equivalent of a semester in jail. Inspired by Chanel Miller, we built a better law. We did not seek to defund the police when jail guards beat to death a mentally ill inmate. We put those guards in prison. We did not throw our hands up in helpless despair after the mass shootings in Gilroy and the VTA. We built resiliency centers for families to heal.

Some are calling for your permission to burn it down. Some only protest the police. Some protest any reform.

This is Silicon Valley. We don't burn bridges. We build better bridges.

We build bridges to our community by deploying lawyers to neighborhoods where people need partners more than traditional prosecutors.

We live up to the promise of never forgetting victims by creating a Cold Case Unit to investigate unsolved homicides. So far, we've solved 18 murders, and counting.

We created a Conviction Integrity Unit to investigate old cases that might have been wrongly prosecuted. We have exonerated seven people.

We created Family Justice Centers for domestic violence victims, drug and mental health courts, programs for the parents of truants and a safe center for sexually abused children.

We reformed bail, charged corrupt officials, tested more rape kits more quickly and expunged thousands of old marijuana convictions.

At the same time, we have collectively built one of the safest counties in the United States. But any crime is too much crime, so we remain diligent.

In the next four years, we will expand our Human Trafficking Task Force, remove more illegal guns from felons and expunge criminal convictions for those who have completed probation and made restitution to their victims.

We at the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office are pro-reform, pro-safety and proactive. Today — as never before — your DA's Office is filled with people of color, women and every letter of LBGTQ. We have a staff that seeks justice in every language, including Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Hindi, Arabic and Punjabi.

To build a safer community for everyone, we charge hate crimes against those who prey upon the vulnerable. The man who ran down an Indian American family in his car. The robbers who targeted Asian women. The man who tried to sexually assault a Filipina. The man arrested in Campbell with a cache of weapons and an antisemitic white supremacist manifesto. Hate has no home here.

Some are trying to convince you that equality for all must be achieved at the expense of your safety. They want to defund the police and fire officers. We need more officers, not fewer. We don't need less prison time for murderers and rapists. We need more diversion for nonviolent drug addicts and the mentally ill.

Others wish to rip down our reforms and overcrowd our jails and prisons with mentally ill, drug addicted and nonviolent offenders.

There will always be those who want to bring down our bridges to safety and justice. Their calculated fury will not take a single illegal firearm off the street. Destructive protests won't protect a woman who is being beaten by her boyfriend. Destroying mental health and drug diversion will destroy lives and make our community less safe and less fair.

I am proud of what we have built, as an office and as a community. As with our technology, many of our Santa Clara County criminal justice policies have been adopted throughout the United States. People are looking for safety and justice. They look to us for bridges.