By Teresa Geimer
As a long-time Davis resident, I am supporting Dean Johansson for District Attorney, because it is time to get smart on crime in Yolo County instead of tough on crime, which doesn’t work.
Here are two examples of how the current DA is tough on crime, wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on court and incarceration costs. The Picnic Day 5 should never have been charged by the current DA. He had all the information on the case from the beginning and knew the officers instigated the encounter as has been revealed in the recent Davis Police Auditor report on the incident. Yet these 5 young people now have attorney fees to pay off and at least one lost a promising job.
A lesser-known case is that of Noah Benham, who was arrested at a UC Davis protest in January 2017 where there was no violence and no property damage. Benham would not take a plea deal, so the current DA charged him with 4 felonies, which a judge dropped to misdemeanors. Most likely Benham will be found not guilty since the arresting officer couldn’t even identify him at the hearing.
These examples show how our current DA is a hammer and everyone arrested is a nail, causing the people like the Picnic Day 5 and Benham to become victims of tough on crime. This also costs huge amounts of tax payer money that would be better used for education. As a result of a pattern of cases like these, Yolo County has the highest jury trial rate per capita in California. Yolo County has more felony jury trials than Alameda County, which has a population of around 1.6 million, compared to Yolo’s 0.2 million, and has a higher crime rate than Yolo.
As District Attorney, Dean Johansson will be smart on crime, prosecuting only those cases with clear evidence, making reasonable charging decisions, and utilizing diversion programs to give people the tools to become contributing members of society—programs which are currently under-utilized in our county. Our communities will be safer as a result.
Let’s be smart on crime by voting for Dean Johansson for District Attorney on June 5.
Trial statistics from “2017 Court Statistics Report” by the California Supreme Court.
