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AFTER PROP.  47, DRUG COURT ENROLLMENT SHARPLY DECLINES

Prosecutor Talks Effects of Recent Measures

VICTORVILLE - Speaking about the erased incentive for lower-level offenders to enter drug court under Proposition 47, San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Kris Parde said Tuesday the resulting declining enrollment could ultimately lead to the program's demise in Victorville.

"Our drug court used to be about 75 to 80 people up here in the High Desert," said Parde during a presentation to the Rotary Club of Victorville.  "It's dwindled to eight."

The current enrollment represents as much as a 90 percent decline, which might spell trouble since drug court programs rely heavily on grant funding, she said.

Calling the state "soft on crime," Parde outlined the affects of Prop.  47, AB 109 and Prop.  215 within the criminal justice system, acknowledging that "as a DA, it's really frustrating to see what's happened in the last 20 years."

A retroactive measure passed in November, Prop.  47 reduced penalties for drug possession and other non-violent felonies, including commercial burglary, forgery, grand theft and possession of a controlled substance.  These crimes used to be "wobblers," meaning that prosecutors had the discretion to charge them as either felonies or misdemeanors.

In addition to criticizing Prop.  47 for removing that discretion, Parde reiterated a troubling point previously made by District Attorney Mike Ramos: Without the bargaining chip of lowering felonies to misdemeanors, the proposition has erased any incentive to compel defendants into drug court.

"Our drug court's basically non-existent," Ramos told the Daily Press in February.

Parde said the DA's office receives between 10 to 20 reports daily of burglaries at major retailers, where suspects walk out with anywhere between $500 to $949 worth of merchandise.  The reason, she said: Anything less than $950 is now a misdemeanor, and they know that.

"We have them on video with calculators, going through the store, adding up things so they can stay below the threshold cutoff," she said.

Regarding AB 109, which went into effect three years ago to address prison overcrowding and shifted a bulk of responsibility from state prisons to local jails, Parde spoke about a cartel drug-runner she prosecuted.  The man was caught with two crates of cocaine and was sentenced to 14 years in state prison.  He ended up, however, spending just two years in county jail.

Meant to divert funds away from locking up non-violent offenders and steer money toward rehabilitation, the measures instead symbolize a swinging pendulum which, she said, has been moving from far right to far left since the 1980s.

Talking to the Rotary members, many of whom are business owners, Parde also addressed Prop.  215, the legalize medical marijuana law, from a business perspective.  She urged members to send any concerns about medical marijuana dispensaries opening near them to local legislators.

Noting the perennial conflict between federal and state laws, she said dispensaries that have been busted by the DA's office, on average, were bringing in $150,000 to $300,000 in cash each day.

"And that's all under the table," she said.  "They're not paying taxes on it.  The clientele that comes with that isn't typically the clientele that the rest of the businesses surrounding there are going to want."

Parde admitted, as a personal bias, she was staunchly opposed to marijuana use for anyone under the age of 25, pointing to studies that show it hinders development.