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.
jeff huff says
hi my nane is jeff and i live in simi valley.i dont mean to bother you
but i wonder if you can give me a littlr direction.my neighbor shot my
cat in the head this weekend and killed him.i made a report to the police department and they asked me what i wanted to do.i dont really know.this was my friend for about 25 years.he has always bragged about how he shots cats or opposums or anything that comes in his back yard.he has a small pond with some fish in it.he saw my cat in his back yard once when i was back there with him and i told him please do ever shot my cat and he said oh i wont.well i guess he changed his mind.is there anyway you guys can shake him up so this never happens again.2 or 3 of my neighbors found out what happend and came over to my house and told me once one of their cats had his eye shot out and
another one said their cat died of a pellet wound and still another one said said they took their cat to the vet to get a pellet removed
from the cats upper body.we live in a nice neighborhood and we’ve
all lived here a long time.everybody says i wish he would move away.i said i might get another cat for my girls maybe this christmas and they said why so he can shoot another one.of course i said we should not have to live in fear like this.this is wrong.this guy has a serious
drinking problem…his name is ralph palmer.he is a painter and has his own business.what do you think we can do here?this hurt so much this weekend im still having a hard time with it.it was sat, about
10:00 in the morning..he could have came over and told me maybe there is problem with my cat going into his back yard.but that wasn’t the case.like my neighbor said somebody needs to send a massage to this guy
its not ok to kill a beautiful animal like that.please help us..
everybody is affraid of him because he has guns and bb guns and a pellet gun.whats next..than you for taking the time to read this.i know your very busy…
jeff huff
847 harper
simi valley ca,93065
805 527-1437
p.s. he is not my friend any more.
Ted Mackel says
Jeff,
I would go to the DA’s new office int he east County Court house in Simi and Start there. I’am not sure, but the police may not be able to do anything unless someone catches your friend in the act of shooting animals.