A New Measure of Success for Prosecutors: Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer

In this podcast recorded at the Courts, Community Engagement, and Innovative Practices in a Changing Landscape symposium held in Anaheim in December 2015, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer discusses his work in Los Angeles and his belief that prosecutors should be judged on their success keeping neighborhoods safe, ensuring community well-being, and building trust in the justice system.

The following is a transcript of the podcast:

Raphael POPE-SUSSMAN:
This is Raphael Pope-Sussman with the Center for Court Innovation. This podcast is part of a series of dispatches from the Courts, Community Engagement, and Innovative Practices in a Changing Landscape symposium held in Anaheim, in December 2015. The conference focused on justice reforms, including recent developments in California. I hope you enjoy listening.

Hi, this is Raphael Pope-Sussman with the Center for Court Innovation. And today, I'm here at the Courts, Community Engagement, and Innovative Practices in a Changing Landscape conference in Anaheim. Right now, I'm sitting with L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer. So you've talked about your vision for a very active role for prosecutors. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Mike FEUER:
Sure. I think it's essential that we as prosecutors... We in the justice system irrespective of our roles, define our jobs through how effective we are at solving the problems that we confront, authentically solving the problems. In the case of an arrest and prosecution, looking to reduce recidivism and keep communities safer. If we can in the process transform the lives of offenders, all the better.

We have to keep our obligations to communities at the top of our agenda. And those obligations transcend merely convicting someone, if in so doing, they're going to be back on the street re-offending within a short timeframe.

We have other obligations to a community. We need to keep it safe, we need to restore faith in the justice system in communities. We can do that in part, by engaging people from the neighborhoods we serve with us, whether it be to volunteer in an alternative justice program, or be active participants in defining for us the most important problems they confront. Many of the issues as a prosecutor with misdemeanor jurisdiction we confront, are issues that don't readily admit of a simple solution.

Sometimes those problems require working across jurisdictional lines with social services providers, or a business community, or a school system. Because if we work in isolation from each other, we tend to only solve our problem in a piecemeal way. I'm a fan of comprehensive solutions to real problems.

POPE-SUSSMAN:
Are there any particular initiatives that you're working on in this area right now, or [crosstalk 00:02:33] other horizons?

FEUER:
Yeah, there are multiple initiatives. As I've said, the expansion of our Neighborhood Prosecutor Program, is an element of this vision. The creation of our Neighborhood School Safety Program, which engages directly with schools to make those neighborhoods safer, very important. Creating our Neighborhood Justice Program, which involves volunteers from communities, mediators, and providers of services, to address the underlying issues that may have led offenders to commit a crime in the first place, to help clean up a community as an outcome of that intervention, also a very important part of this.

Grappling with the issue of homelessness through a whole new lens of trying to help get homeless people back on their feet, by exchanging a commitment that is fulfilled to perform community service, and take advantage of services that might lead to a job or housing, in exchange for eliminating outstanding citations that have been impeding access to jobs or housing, very important.

Other aspects too, I mentioned inspiring faith in the justice system in a community. We have a program I did not mention in my address, that addresses the issues surrounding police and their relationship to communities. Where, if there is a community complainant and a police officer, both of whom agree to mediation, we perform that mediation to help bring a deeper level of understanding to the two of them.

And talking about very serious issues, an example of this very specific one. It was a guy walking down a street in a neighborhood of Los Angeles, that's predominantly populated by people of color, mostly African-American, who was himself African-American, wearing what might be called stereotypically gang attire, and walking with a very severe limp. A white police officer pulls over to the side of the road and says, "Do you live around here?" To which the citizen says, "Do you live around here?"

The situation escalates some, but there's no arrest because the individual has done nothing to warrant an arrest. They both agree to go to this mediation. It goes something like this, the community member says to the officer, "Do you know how I feel when you come to my neighborhood, you are a white police officer, and ask me if I live around here, how disrespectful is that? And I was doing nothing wrong."

The white police officer says, "You have to understand my position. I am here to help protect the kids in this neighborhood. I see you walking in what looks like... Wearing what was like gang attire, walking with a severe limp. And I'm thinking, a gang member with a sawed-off shotgun in his pants. You have to see where I'm coming from." That conversation continues. There is a meaningfully improved level of understanding of each other's perspectives. And the police officer is proselytizing with the other officers now to go through the same program, because he has an entirely different perspective of the community he was serving.

So, there are multiple iterations of what I think is the goal... Programs designed to address what has been a chasm between communities we serve and the systems in which we operate. And making real tangible solutions happen in neighborhoods that have been very, I think, disaffected by what they think is the lack of success in the system.

If we can bring actual change to a neighborhood, people in the neighborhood will be inspired to demand more change. That's a good thing.

POPE-SUSSMAN:
And what was the mechanism for bringing the police officer together with that citizen, if there wasn't sort of a formal arrest or citation?

FEUER:
We got the individual complaint. So the filing of the complaint triggered the opportunity for the intervention.

POPE-SUSSMAN:
All right, I just have one more question. I'm wondering what lessons you might have to share for prosecutors around the country, who have to balance political pressure, limited resources, and institutional barriers to reform?

FEUER:
This is a very significant challenge because prosecutors typically are successful, especially if they're elected prosecutors, by running on tough on crime platforms. And it's kind of trite to talk about being smart on crime rather than tough on crime. And I don't want to fall into speaking in cliches. But there is something that matters about that appellation I think.

There's nothing mutually exclusive on my view, between on the one hand being a prosecutor who says, I define success in many instances by conviction rate and by being tough, on the one hand, with the same prosecutor saying, but there are many problems I don't admit of that as being the most effective of way to address the underlying problem. And I think that in some ways, prosecutors... All of us in politics, but prosecutors need to be authentic with the communities we serve, about our levels of success or the absence of that success.

And so to me, being able to effectively communicate to the communities we serve in a way that is very genuine, what our challenges are, how we are grappling with problems in new and effective ways, using metrics to assess our efficacy, not just slogans. These are some of the elements I think from which all of us can benefit.

POPE-SUSSMAN:
This is Raphael Pope-Sussman of the Center for Court Innovation, and I've been speaking with Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer. For more information on the Center for Court Innovation, visit www.courtinnovation.org.