District Attorney Greg Totten’s visit to Simi Valley Sunrise Rotary Club

Thursday October 30th. District Attorney Greg Totten spoke at the Simi Valley Sunrise Rotary Club meeting.  DA Greg Totten had several important topics to share with the group.  This first was that the District Attorney was opening an office in the East County court house located in Simi Valley.  Noting the geography of Ventura County created a natural east-west split, the DA’ office hoped to bring services close to the residents in the Conejo Valley, Moorpark and Simi Valley areas.

This office was the former office for Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy who relocated to a building outside the east county complex.  Foy’s move was a great idea in that you had to go through all the court’s search screening of the metal detectors and xray machines just to visit the supervisor’s office.  Distric Attorney Greg Totten’s new east county office will serve the public and the DA explained that the following four areas will be the top activities for the Simi Valley office.

• Victim services – Domestic Violence creates the need for restraining orders and restitution.
• NSF check enforcement - Persons that receive bad checks can use the DA services to collect on those checks.  There are fees built into the collection and this service pays for itself.
• Consumer services – the DAs office actually has mediation services to mediate between Business and Consumer disputes.
• Government Fraud – Goes after welfare cheaters, mis-use of food stamps.  Checks on residence and income and also goes after section 8 housing cheaters.

District Attorney Greg Totten went on to explain that the only additional cost to the county budget in running this office was the addition of a community prosecutor.  The community prosecutor is here to work with Simi Valley and Moorpark police and learn about the issues relative to the Simi Valley and Moorpark areas.  Part of the funding ($52,000)  for the community prosecutor was obtained through the Department of Justice with the help from congressman Elton Gallegly.

District Attorney Greg Totten’s main topic for Rotary was the important issue of a prison hospital to be located in Camarillo.   Federal lawsuits brought by inmates regarding overcrowding claim that inmates are given inadequate health care and that inmates as a result are dying form inadequate care.  Currently California houses 170,000 inmates in 33 prisons.  Each inmate is budgeted approximately $14,000 per year in medical benefits. This lawsuit plans to force California to spend $8,000,000,000 (billion) of California state taxpayer money  to build 10 new prison hospitals for 10,000 inmate patients.  

The DA was quick to point several myths surrounding  this issue.

• Myth #1 California has the fastest growing inmate population
• Myth #2 Most inmates are in for petty crimes
• Myth #3 Three Strikes is increasing the population
• Myth #4 The prison system is a care systemfor the aging.

The fact is that the California Prison system has experienced a 1% per year growth rate over the last 10 years and there are 20 other states ahead of California in this growth rate.  This growth rate as a per capita comprison is decreasing.  140,000 of the 170,000 inmates are incarcerated for serious criminal convictions.  Before the three stikes law, Califonia had the 4th highest crime rate. California now is 29th.

District Attorney Greg Totten left us with a quick message to Vote No on Proposition 5.  This proposition is often referred to the Drug Dealer’s Bill of Rights.  There is sentiment that drug users are thrown in jail and they really only need rehabilitation in a drug treatment program.  The proprosition as it stands sounds good on the surface but  it creates and added expense in the budget with more bueracracy, shortens sentences and will release many form prison terms early.  The term non violent drug dealers seems to be an oxymoron as drug dealers will be some of the first to benefit from this proposition.    Even the very skewed Los Angeles Times is against this proposition along with our last 5 govenors, MADD and many others.

Overall, District Attorney Greg Totten was able to give the Simi Valley Sunrise Rotary Club great information on issues important to our county and state and his talk was warmly received.