Everybody loves Mikey
The fearless Boy Wonder running the Multnomah County prosecutor's office, Mike Schmidt, is terrible. His ineffectiveness and bizarre priorities are in the news just about every day.
This week, the Tri-Met bus drivers' union is on his case, because when people attack bus drivers in his county, there is usually no real consequence.
According to TriMet, there are hundreds of assaults or attempted assaults against TriMet employees each year.
There were 170 just in 2022.
“I am not aware of any of those going to a prosecution on an assault charge. As far as I know, the DA's office has either dropped the charges or settled on a plea deal with a misdemeanor of 'interfering with public transportation,'” said ATU 757 Vice President Fred Casey.
He said they don't perceive the same leniency happening in neighboring counties.
“There’s a stark difference when something happens on a bus out in Washington County, or Clackamas County. And the response is quite different than here in Multnomah County,” Casey said.
It's pretty much that way with most serious crime under Mikey. If you kill somebody, maybe you'll stay in jail; otherwise, you're out on the streets within hours. And property crime? Neither he nor Portland's toy police force could be bothered.
Meanwhile, several of the women who have worked for him have been complaining about the atmosphere around the office water cooler since Mikey showed up as boss. The other day we got the response. Mikey and his pals at the county hired an employment law firm that specializes in defending employers to "investigate" some of the charges against him. To no one's surprise, they found him innocent and sent the taxpayers a bill for $200,000. The report was marked as confidential, but since it said what Mikey wanted it to say, he immediately made it public.
Even the milquetoasts at the O weren't impressed. They poked fun at it with this unusually candid headline:
And on and on it will go, until Mikey is voted out or made a judge. I count 650 days left on his current term of office.
Will the last person who leaves Multnomah County please remember to turn out the lights?
ReplyDeleteDon't forget to check that box with a capital "F".....another Portland/Oregon epic FAILURE......for MultCo and the O. Move along....nothing to see here.
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how glad I am that I can see the county line from my front door. Unfortunately, I'm on the wrong side of it.
ReplyDeleteexactly Jack, he'll get a plum appointment if he gets booted out, thwarting the will of the voters. Let's hope it's just trial judge and not Court of Appeals or SC.
ReplyDeleteIf Kohoutek's gonna do it, I wish she would do so ASAP.
DeleteThis is a serious question: if they’re not prosecuting crimes, what are they doing down there?
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of good, hard working prosecutors in that office who deal with insane caseloads. Instead of managing the office in a way that would impact real public safety priorities and advocating for more prosecutors so their crushing caseloads could be reduced, he is an absent manager, doesn't truly understand the day to day pressures of being a front line prosecutor handling serious cases, and devotes precious resources into virtue signaling programs, policy advisors, or paying high priced law firms (see above) instead of real public safety priorities that could move the needle. The result is that there are too few DDA's to handle the work effectively and plenty of provable--and even very serious--cases go by the wayside (not to mention that he has developed a culture where prosecuting quality of life crimes by repeat offenders is viewed as some sort of social injustice). He also enacts policies where bail recommendations for serious offenders are laughably low and sentencing recommendations can be disproportionately low compared to the seriousness of the offenses and/or the offender's criminal history. The result is high burnout and a lot of people leaving, which leads to DDA's being promoted into positions of greater responsibility without having the necessary experience and they are left with little mentorship or training because their supervisors also have crushing caseloads. He is not all to blame though. PPB frequently submits barely completed investigations on assaults or quality of life crimes that even the best DA's Office wouldn't file, and the judges are just as complicit as many sign off on every weak bail or sentencing recommendation ("Oh, this is the 3rd time you've attacked a stranger in the past year? Let's release you on your own recognizance again"). Bottom line is that they aren't just sitting around doing nothing, but he doubles down over and over on a course that doesn't allow those DDA's to do their work effectively and there is no real mentorship or training. The only priority in that office seems to be Mike Schmidt.
DeleteYou sound like an insider.
DeleteNot enough public defenders and now not enough prosecutor’s ?
ReplyDeleteWhat are these high caseload numbers if the police aren’t doing there part.