San Antonio Report
by Andrea Drusch
Bexar County leaders are allowing District Attorney Joe Gonzales to use the salaries of unfilled prosecutor positions to fund overtime work on cases involving violent crime and repeat offenders.
The district attorney’s office says it is creating a “high risk intake team,” designed to allow more prosecutors to chip away at such cases in their off hours in exchange for an extra hourly stipend. Some felony prosecutors were already reassigned to the task earlier this year, and the incentive pay will open the opportunity to others on a volunteer basis.
Gonzales’ office has averaged 20 vacant attorney positions per month over the past year, or roughly 10% of its budgeted prosecutors. That means the county has roughly $300,000 it can use to pay employees who are left to pick up the workload, according to Tuesday’s agreement, which initiates a six-month pilot program using that money.
“We’re talking about [felony] cases that we have been working on getting ready to prepare for a grand jury,” Gonzales told reporters Tuesday after the measure was approved by Commissioners Court.
“There may be a number of reasons why we’ve not been able to to get them ready. Sometimes it’s because we’re missing evidence, or statements, for example.”
Commissioners who approved the proposal were skeptical about a plan funded by the presumption of future staffing shortages. Attorneys at the DA’s office received some of the county’s largest salary increases in May, a decision aimed at reducing staff departures.
But the move comes as city and county leaders are eager to address gaps in the system that led to a string of recent shootings involving suspects who had violent criminal records and were out on bail or parole.
Last month the county invested in a new digital evidence platform aimed at bringing the county’s lagging evidence management technology up to speed. County officials also agreed to spend $100,000 on a partnership with UT Health Houston School of Public Health to study and evaluate how the county processes people who are arrested.
“They’re doing the right things,” said Ron Tooke, president of the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Bexar County. “We’ve been in the dark ages in Bexar County for as long as I can remember,” he said, but local leaders have exercised unusual collaboration in recent months to identify and address systemic problems.
‘Humanly impossible’ workload
Gonzales said Tuesday that his office has about 25 felony prosecutors handling an average 50,000 cases a year.
It’s “humanly impossible for responding prosecutors to get to every one of those cases,” he told commissioners.
Earlier this year the district attorney’s office selected several staff members to step away from trial courts and focus solely on “high risk” cases, meaning cases involving violent crimes, repeat offenders or other factors flagged by law enforcement.
Repeat offenders are suspected of being involved in a number of recent shootings targeting law enforcement officials, as well as a high-profile case in Stone Oak in which a parolee was caught on a Ring doorbell camera threatening people inside the home with a gun.
Though the new program, more staff members would be able to contribute to that work, outside of their regular assignments. They would be paid hourly based on experience, between $42 and $52 per hour.
“We just need more hands on deck,” Gonzales said.
Once a suspect is in custody, prosecutors have 90 days to prepare their case for indictment, or else the suspect can request a bond reduction or a personal recognizance bond. Sorting out high-priority cases should make sure his office is well-prepared to make its strongest case for keeping potentially dangerous suspects behind bars.
“If we don’t have the evidence that we need to to present a case to a grand jury, then sometimes we’re forced to dismiss for further investigation, for example,” he said. “The idea of this team is to work to have these [high risk] cases ready, and have them indicted sooner than later.”
Not alone
How the workload at the district attorney’s office become so insurmountable remains a point of contention between Gonzales and his critics.
A presentation to commissioners Tuesday suggested the massive increase in available video and photo evidence has increased the work load on individual cases.
“When I first started as a prosecutor, you had one or two officers show up at a crime scene and you had a witness statement, maybe one photograph,” Gonzales said. “Today we have several officers that show up on scene, they have body cam footage, they may take crime scene footage. If there’s a shooting, every shell casing is photographed.”
Even so, the presentation said that Gonzales, who was first elected in 2018, has gone from an inherited backlog of 8,639 cases to 6,083 cases this year.
“We can comfortably expect to be able to resolve 2,000 to 2,500 cases [through this six-month plan],” said Gonzales, who was joined by his litigation chief, Christian Henricksen, and new communications director, former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego. “We’re talking about a third of our backlog.”
Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) asked for detailed progress reports each month of the pilot program, as well as additional details on how the DA’s office tracks case backlog.
Less clear from the presentation was how Gonzales plans to make up the staffing shortage.
The “high risk intake team” is being called a “temporary solution” to address “a systemic problem resulting from an increased volume of evidence, antiquated software, and unfilled vacancies within the office of the district attorney.”
The funding is based on the calculation that no additional prosecutors will be hired in the first two quarters of the coming year.
Hiring issues have plagued district attorneys’ offices across the nation, but KSAT reported earlier this year that Gonzales’ former employees called the office a “hostile and toxic” work environment.
Gonzales denies that characterization, and said he currently needs to hire between 13 and 15 prosecutors, an improvement from earlier this year.
“I’ll tell you why we have these vacant attorney positions,” Gonzales said. “When you come to work in the DA’s office, you deal with allegations of violent crime. … We see a lot of crimes committed against children, against our elderly and against women. It takes a toll on our prosecutors.”