 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner and as you know, every month we strive to bring a different department focus, a different department head to talk about their roles and responsibilities. And today we've got new legs in the seat over there. And one of our newest department heads and elected department head, our district attorney, Joel Ormansky. Welcome, Joel. Thank you very much. This is a nice program. I'm glad to be a part of it. It's wonderful to have your Joel gave a nice update to the county board earlier this month. And we're going to talk about the roles and responsibility of the district attorney's office. But before we get started, before we get into the meat of the content, please share a little bit about yourself and your background and how long you've been associated with the DA's office. Absolutely. I have been the district attorney since January of this year, taking over for the retiring of Joe DiCecco. I've been in the DA's office, however, since June of 2006. So it wasn't a new job, a new position or a surprise to me. And I'm one of those weird kids that in middle school, I wanted to be a district attorney. I was always gravitated to position. It was the sense of there's right and there's wrong, there's fair, there are people that take advantage that that's not fair and appropriate. And I wanted to give a voice to the victims to ensure justice and fairness. Since middle school. I, weird kid, but absolutely. That's remarkable. Yeah. Well, I always give people credit if they know they want to be a nurse or a school teacher, something like that early on. But you don't see it that often. That's impressive. So you delivered. I'm here every day. I'm living my dream, literally. I tell people that all the time. If you have a dream and you can succeed and accomplish it, every day is just a bonus. And every day going into work, no matter how difficult the day may be, I'm still doing what I've always wanted to do and set out to do. So there's always a silver lining, no matter how bad a day or difficult the day may be. So big picture. What is the function of the district attorney's office? Our office is in charge of all of the criminal prosecutions in the entire county. So you watch law and order in movies and they always talk about victims pressing charges that doesn't happen in Wisconsin. Law enforcement makes a determination initially of whether there should be an arrest or not. No matter what their discretion decision is, it comes to the DA's office. And it's myself or it's one of the assistants in the office. We make the decision of should someone be charged, if they should be charged, what should be the crime or crimes they're charged with. Now our office also deals with non-criminal affairs. So individuals with speeding tickets or other ordinances that occur in a municipality where there's not a municipal court, we handle those cases. We're also in charge of all the juvenile cases, whether that's a delinquency. So it's an allegation a child is committed, what would be a crime if committed by an adult? Or if unfortunately there are concerns that parents are not appropriate for their children and children are at risk of abuse or neglect or they've been abused or neglected, our office steps in for those cases all the way to when necessary, trying to terminate a parent's rights to their child or to their children. So everything law and order and protection, safety, compliance with the rules, our office is in charge of all of those obligations. And then on top of that, we're technically the lead law enforcement agency of the county. So we work very closely with law enforcement to make sure they're aware of changes in laws and procedures, make sure that we can assist in any way that we can to make sure each of our agencies is on top of all legal information and knowledge so that every agency is doing their best to protect everyone in the county. You know, Joe DeCecco had such a nice personality bigger than life guy, you know, and I see you bring that to the table as well. And, you know, as I think about it, you really have to have a pretty good personality and be able to, you know, maneuver through the very challenging heavy issues that you and your staff deal with. It's remarkable the heavy lifting and the important work that your staff do. As you describe your department, one of 19 departments in Sheboygan County, yours is a little bit of a hybrid because of the makeup of state officials, county officials. Share a little bit about your staff and why it's unique from some of the other departments. Absolutely. So almost all of the attorneys are state employees. It used to be that we were all county employees across every county in the state. There had been a change and ultimately all prosecutors became state employees. The problem is the state has not been funding any office to the level that they should be fully staffed. Our county unfortunately is short many attorneys. So thankfully Sheboygan County came forward and funded one prosecutor for us to be a county funded special prosecutor. So for the most part, we're all state attorneys except for one individual who is a county employee attorney. All of our administrative staff, they're all county employees. So we have three victim witness professionals who work closely with all of our victims and witnesses, answering questions, getting them to court, helping us to prepare for trials and other hearings. They have one administrative assistant to help them with their obligations. We have one office manager. We have one paralegal to help the attorneys very closely. And then we have an additional staff of eight, one being part-time administrative professionals to help us with calls, taking care of discovery, getting defense attorneys what they need, making sure that we're getting files typed, filed, in the locations where they need to be, getting orders prepared, doing any of the numerous things we have to do on a daily basis. And when you mentioned your short staffed, just to be clear for our viewers, that's not just your opinion or the county board's opinion. These are studies that are done statewide on the number of prosecutors that should be in each county based on the number of cases they have, the clients they serve. And we've been short staffed for some time, yet though Joe DiCecco was always an advocate to share that information with the state, it hoped one day that might be addressed. Unfortunately, it hasn't been. And as you touched on, the county board did step up and established this county prosecutor position. Joe, I was so impressed with your leadership that was as Joe DiCecco was leaving, you were coming aboard, the transition was in place. And I really felt you championed the argument and you were highly successful. Please share a little bit about, well, what's this county prosecutor do? Why is it a benefit to the community? We had a huge need. To be honest, we still have a huge need. As you said, every county has a need. But for us, one of the major problems we were having was with our backlog of termination of parental rights. So what happens in essence in those cases is you have a child who has been out of the home for 15 of the last 22 months because it's been deemed appropriate by the department, our office, and a judge that it's not a safe home environment with their parents or guardians. So they're out of the home. Some of them were out of the home two, three, almost four years. You have now that child getting older, being in either a relative's home or a foster home, and they don't have permanence. They're just out there somewhere with parents that are supposed to live up to obligations of an order to become fit parents. And most of them, because of heroin, haven't been able to do it. Others, for other reasons, they haven't met the obligation. But we have children that are languishing. We have the county that was spending up to maybe $400 or $500 per month for those children for their costs of care with parents that aren't fit to provide that care. So I looked at the situation and I said, we need to address this TPR backlog. Right now that backlog is around 41 children still waiting for some degree of permanence. What we did is we justified one person in our office, our deputy, Chris Stock, who has had years of work with juveniles. He is now handling only guardianship, TPR, internships cases dealing with parents and protection of kids. What we've been able to do in having him focus in that area is decrease our TPR backlog to a degree. We have issued more TPR cases this year already than all of last year. That is a savings of significant money to the county. More importantly, it's permanence for those kids and permanence for those foster parents and relatives taking care of those kids. The only way we're able to do that is having the county funded prosecutor, Joe Andrioni, who we hired, he's taking all of the juvenile delinquencies. That's not all he's doing. He's working on asset forfeitures. There was rumor out there, law enforcement was hearing that people were sharing, hey, if you commit crimes in Sheboygan, at least they won't forfeit your money or your car or the proceeds of your legal activity. That's not the case anymore. He's also processing all of those asset forfeitures. It used to be that we were delayed and getting warrants out so we could try and arrest people. Well, now Joe is in charge of those. We're getting warrants out almost same day or next day because he's working so well, so quickly and diligently in getting these cases out. He's also covering cases for us. Unfortunately, we have five courts. We have one court commissioner's office. There are times that one prosecutor needs to be in two places. Well, we'd love to be able to do that. We can't, but because of his position, because the county came forward, we can have someone to prosecute those cases. And as attorneys, we can do a little bit more with what we have to make sure we get the right result and we get justice at the end of our cases. Thanks to him and ultimately the county being willing to fund that money to have him come to our office. Excellent overview, excellent response to the question. So hopefully people have a little more appreciation for not only the work that goes on but the importance of it, the sensitivity of it. When you're dealing with termination of parental rights, not only as you said, to find a good permanent home for the child, but the foster parents, I've received calls from foster parents in the past who they want the permanency, they want the decision made, they want to move forward with their lives and it leaves you a little bit limbo. So appreciate the good work and also appreciate the support of chairman Tom Wagner and the county board. The decisions to provide additional funding, whether it's the district attorney's office or any office are not easy decisions in part because the resources just aren't there to spread around and so it's always difficult but certainly this went to a good cause and you really gave a nice segue to my next question. That example you just shared, the leadership you provided to address a growing problem is an example of what department heads do, what leaders do. You touched a little bit on the overall breadth of the role of your department. Share a little bit more about your role specifically as the elected district attorney. A large part of my role is to make sure that all the prosecutors in the office are doing their job correctly. That means that they have the knowledge and resources to do their job. It means, and this is extremely important to me, that they're doing so at the highest level of ethics and morals, that they are not taking advantage of opportunities or people, et cetera, but they're doing it right and our office has always had very high moral standards and I want to make sure we maintain those and we are. Now on top of being in charge of all those attorneys and the administrative staff, I maintain my own caseload. I have a number of cases. Most of them are the, not necessarily higher profile, but the serious cases. I take very seriously all sexual assaults, whether that's of children or of adults and I handle a large number of those cases. When there are heroin or other drug cases that lead to overdoses, I take those cases. I handle all the child pornography cases, in part because there are victims, serious victims. So I want to handle those cases and also so that the assistants don't have to look at that evidence. Unfortunately, there are some things that we see in our job and hear that you can't take out of your mind or your memory. If I can affect and change a prosecutor having to see that, I'll do that. Now we go above and beyond that. I'm also going to all of the chief's meetings. I'm a primary contact of sharing information with law enforcement and what's also really important to me, our office technically doesn't get involved until a crime's happened. I don't like that. I tell people the best prosecution is the prosecution you never need to have because the crime didn't happen. So I go out with the community various times, very frequently, to educate. I work very closely with Safe Harbor. We've been going to middle schools and high schools to talk about sexting, healthy relationships. We go to Lakeland and UW-Shabuigan for freshman orientation to talk about consent and sexual assaults. Trying to get out into the community to talk, educate, and try and prevent crime. I'm also available 24 hours a day when law enforcement needs me for a search warrant. Last year we had just over 200 search warrants that had to be judicially approved. So I'm available for questions and search warrants 24 hours a day when I'm needed by law enforcement. Very good. Very good and very heavy. So last question before I turn it over to Tom. It's been a rather short stint so obviously you've been with the department since 2006 but as the elected district attorney, what have you enjoyed the most so far and what frankly have you enjoyed the least? There's a long list for the most. If I had to pick the one thing that I appreciate the most, at least in my opinion, I think there's a little bit more of a breath of fresh air for victims in some areas. We have partnered with Safe Harbor in domestic violence cases and we've created an education resource discussion. If a victim has a no contact order as a part of a domestic violence case and they would like to have that order modified for any reason so that they're allowed contact. In the past there's always been a concern that some people feel forced or obligated. Sometimes we had concerns that people just wanted to have that person back in the home because they needed a place to stay and that person's name was on the lease or they needed transportation or some resource and they thought their only option was to have that person come back in. And unfortunately domestic violence is not only bad for that victim but the effects of domestic violence on children is huge and I don't think people really pay attention or appreciate it. The education resource discussion is a session that we ask all victims to go through and we object if victims in DVO cases do not go through it, we object to modifying that bond. I have learned through that program that victims are getting an education about what is domestic violence, how does it affect children, what are the resources in the county for your living situation, transportation, ability to have phone and phone access, babysitting. And on top of that they do a safety plan. So if and when there's domestic violence or violence again, that victim has thought about what they will do and how they will make sure they and their family are safe. And there have been victims who have gone through that program with a better appreciation and understanding, they're protecting their children and some of them decide they don't want that modification afterwards. We're also working very closely with Safe Harbor in regards to advocates for victims of crime to make sure that victims know they have support and they have strength. I'd like to say that we're focusing on those victims because they're the ones that were harmed by this crime primarily and we're giving them a voice and opportunity and we're standing up for them. That is what I really appreciate. What I like least, there can be many challenges to this job. What concerns me the most is that there are times I need two prosecutors in a court. I have another prosecutor who's leaving because life is easier with a different job because children at home are saying when are you gonna be done with your work? When can we finally have family time? So I have prosecutors that have a dedication, a heart and passion for the job but they have to step away because they have too many cases and not enough time in the day. And what I'd love to see and we're working on efficiencies to maximize their time in the office but I'd like to see the state step up to the plate and other things we can do and I'm looking at some diversion programs too to get some people some solid counseling and treatment. I'd like to make it so that I don't have prosecutors saying I don't have time or boy, I really want to do something with my kids or my family and I couldn't because of this job. So we're trying to make changes because that one challenge, that one problem has bothered me more than any other. I don't like it when prosecutors have to sacrifice their own lives and family time because of the dedication they have to the job. I'd like them to be able to have a family and enjoy it and get their job done and do it well too. Thank you, Joel. Tom. Thanks for coming, Joel. Obviously we've talked about your case, the caseloads are high and we know that, that's why the county put forth an additional assistant DA. How many cases do you on average handle in a year in the DA's office? As far as criminal adult cases, we're looking just over 2,000 and about 800 of those are felony. So felony are we have the possibility of going to prison and they typically have the most on the line and sometimes they have the most evidence to them as well. So they take the most amount of work. The rest of those criminal cases are going to be misdemeanor cases, whether that's traffic or non-traffic. But our office, as I said, handles juvenile matters and other non-criminal ordinance offenses. Those we're looking at around 2,000 cases too. So all in all, last year we had just over 4,100 cases coming through our office. Now that does not add to the number of cases that we review and decide there shouldn't be charges or maybe the warrants that we execute where evidence is not found. There were about 5,000 referrals of potential criminal violations and referrals to us in general last year. So very busy office, a lot of activity on a regular basis. And just a quick comment, I assume relative to when you're, if you do have turnover, that creates just natural inefficiencies as you have to train people, et cetera. There's some lost time there too. Right, a lot of the people that unfortunately or fortunately, depends how you look at it, come into our office or people straight out of law school. I tell people all the time, I can't teach you passion and desire for the job or heart to do the job. I can teach you criminal law. And there are a lot of people coming out of law school that they have the heart and passion and we teach them the criminal law, but it takes time. So a lot of new people and it does slow us down a little bit, but one of the people we just hired in January too, two of the people we hired are fantastic. They're excellent, they're doing great work. Judges have recognized how good they are and the asset they're bringing to the county. We have a new person that started this week. She's got the heart and she's got the passion. She'll be an asset too. Now unfortunately, we have another seasoned person who's leaving and will be involved in the hiring process and find another person, but it's the young people, a mix with the old people. It's the dedication of our crew that is the glue that sticks us together that helps us move forward. Thank you. Do you see any trends in Sheboyin County as it relates to criminal activity? Heroin is still a major problem. That's starting to transition into methamphetamine. It had been prescription pill abuse. That went to heroin, then methamphetamine and that's where we're finding ourselves still. In addition, one of the trends that's very disturbing to me is sexting and unfortunately that sexting is going all the way to middle school. So sexting would be primarily sending nude or semi-nude pictures or videos, typically via text message. Unfortunately, when I go out to middle schools, I was at one county middle school earlier this year. We were talking to about seventh graders, about a third of them knew someone who had sent or received a sext. I talked to the counselors and or teachers in these sessions and I ask, how big of a problem is it here? And every single one has said it's huge. So one of the major problems we have are these kids that are sending, they don't realize for the most part what they're doing is possessing and sending child pornography. Thank you. How do you and your staff prioritize the type of cases and you're gonna, some after you wanna move faster on them than others? In some way you don't have a choice. When a crime happens and arrest is made, we have to step in. We certainly don't want someone who is arrested to say, we'll deal with you later because we don't have time. That's not being responsible. Some defendants enter speedy trial demands, which means we have a statutory timeframe by which we need to act unless there are complexities to the case to grant more time. Otherwise, we merely look at the cases and we decide, how can we best handle it? When there are identified specific victims, not just the county, we try and address those sooner if we can or faster. When we have sexual assaults of children, we certainly wanna get those resolved as quickly as we can. Oftentimes you like to resolve them when it's a summer situation before school starts so that child has a fresh start and sometimes the worst thing for a victim of a sexual assault is school. Sometimes their first thought is, I can't go to school. What are my classmates or peers going to say? So those cases we try and get done quickly. That being said, those cases also sometimes take the most work and effort. Sometimes they go on for six, nine or even 12 months. But we try and get them done because we appreciate the effect on the victims. Besides obviously your own office and the courthouse, you work with other county departments. You wanna talk about that a little? We work very closely with a lot of departments and one way I'm trying to work on efficiency is to work better with those departments. So corporation council, we're trying to work better as it relates to how do we handle child support cases when people fail to provide that support for their children. We're trying to work and we work with them about a different way to refer cases for us to prosecute them. Mental health, there are many people that enter the criminal system or at least are arrested because there are mental health issues. We're trying to work with them so that we can identify who really needs to be criminally charged and what do we need to do as opposed to mental health and that system can step in. We work closely with the court commissioner's office, obviously with the judges. The circuit court and clerk of court's office, we're working with them as e-filing is starting soon among other projects to make sure we're working well with them. Department of Social Services for all of our juvenile cases and TPR cases to prioritize which cases should be filed and when should they be filed. I'll be working and I've started working very closely with Cheboygan area school district to try and work on some of the trauma effect that crimes and being a witness to crime can have and how can we get knowledge and resources out to students as well as to parents, counselors and teachers and those are just a few of the agencies we're trying to work closely with as we try and really work efficiently and gather as much information as we need to be justifiable in what we're recommending and to have justice be done and ultimately to give to the judges so the judges can give the right sentence because no matter what we recommend at the end of the day, it's the judges that need the information and give the sentence to be the end result of the case. Not going on by far. I'll turn it over to Adam then. Not a lot of time remaining but excellent overview, a lot of good information here and obviously if you have questions or want to learn more don't hesitate to contact Joel or want to have a staff. If they have an opportunity, which I'm sure they'll make, a busy place, heavy lifting, you've already talked about some of the changes you've made. What are some of the changes you'd like to make going forward as you look at next year and beyond? There are a lot of things I'd like to do. Some efforts have already been made, some we've put out in the distance a little bit because we have new people and new responsibilities. One thing we're trying to work on is a program for young individuals, whether they would be 17 or older, so criminal or under the juvenile code, we'd like to create kind of a rehabilitation second chance type program where they can not have to be involved in a formal setting of a criminal case but they can get some counseling, some treatment, some community service, some understanding and hopefully that is gonna be better than any criminal conviction could be for them. I'm working with multiple service providers so that we can try and create some diversion programs. Unfortunately our probation parole system is full. We like to say in the criminal system, we're gonna put you on probation and as part of that probation is counseling and treatment but the reality is that for many of the people on probation they meet with their agent once every three or four months. So for one year probation, which is the maximum for many offenses, you meet with someone three or four times and you're done and oftentimes they're referred for counseling, they don't do it. What I would like to do is get approved quality treatment and if the defendant is willing to go through that treatment then at the end of that case maybe we dismiss, maybe we look at an ordinance, maybe it's a fine only or a smaller amount of jail. We save ourselves bed space for the detention center. We hold people accountable because they've gotten quality treatment that they really wouldn't have gotten even with that conviction and for some people without a criminal conviction their life and that for the victims and family can be better but we're also holding accountable because we're tracking all of that information and if they come back again with a crime, we say to the judge, we gave them that chance and this is what they did and certainly in our own rhyme we're thinking we gave you that opportunity and now we need to look at them differently. I wanna work more closely with all the school districts. I wanna make sure that students who are victims or witnesses are able to have a voice and they're able to have someone know what's happening for them in their home. The effect of trauma is significant and people are starting to learn more about that. I wanna make sure that there are counselors, parents, teachers that can be out there to provide some counseling and treatment and oversight to help those young people. We're also bringing in people not just to our office but the court system in general for training. I want Shabuigan County's DA's office to be known as the office to go to as experts in what they do. They do it right, they do it smart, they do it fair. So we're working on additional treatment and bringing in invited guests to make sure that we're on top of everything we need to be in charge of not just for ourselves and the office but ultimately for the entire county. I think it's a wonderful vision and I have to believe the folks that took the time to watch this program appreciate what you're doing and where you're headed. We only have two minutes remaining. In a minute or less, what do you see as the greatest barrier or obstacles to bringing that vision to reality? Right now unfortunately I say it's staffing issues. They say as just an example, a sexual assault case should take 100 hours to prepare and be ready for trial. Same thing for a homicide case. Unfortunately the way things work for most of the attorneys in our office, we start preparing a case for a jury trial maybe two weeks prior to trial. More often it's about a week. We are not putting in 100 hours worth of time to do what the state says we should be able to do to be prepared in those cases. If we had more prosecutors or if we were able to work out a system potentially with the courts that we could be more prosecutor time per case, we could really do some amazing work. And all of those things that I've talked about, I would have a chance to get out in the community more for education. I'd be able to work with some of those treatment providers to ultimately put together a great program where we can provide treatment, counseling and benefits to the community. I wish there were more time in the day. If we had more hours, I can't do that, but if we could have some more people and some more efficiencies, we could start seeing some positives and some of those goals would come to fruition faster. District Attorney Joel Armansky started January as our new elected DA, has been with the office since 2006. And I hope like Chairman Wagner and I, you gained an appreciation for the very important work that you do, that your staff do. Thank you for being here today and sharing some wonderful insight and information. Thank you, appreciate it. Next month, we're gonna have another department head here who used to be elected and is now appointed, the coroner who is now the medical examiner, Dave Lafine's gonna be here to talk about his roles and responsibilities, always very interesting as well. So until then, I hope you're having a safe and wonderful summer and we'll see you next month.