Campaign Platform: To Have a Real Investigators Unit

When I am elected to office, one of the first orders of business will be to put into place a finely tuned, highly skilled and aggressive investigator's unit headed up and staffed by the most qualified investigators I can keep or recruit. Money that is currently being wasted on the crazy DIMS program and prosecuting cases that should not be prosecuted will easily finance the unit. I will not be going to city council and commissioner's court with my hand out. I will be streamlining the budget and using the extant money correctly. There are currently many cases in El Paso that are either not investigated at all or are unsolved cold cases due to laziness and negligence and corruption. These are serious cases and represent a threat to the security of the citizenry and also result in a cynicism toward our legal system. For example, Brandon Moon was actually innocent of the rape he spent 17 years in prison for. Where is the real rapist? What efforts has my opponent made to find the real rapist? Last summer, an El Paso man was released from prison when DNA tests showed he was serving time on a murder he did not commit. Where is the real murderer? There is an unsolved hit and run where the family of the deceased was out picking up debris on the side of the road and carrying the evidence to the police to investigate. Why is the family having to do that ? The culprit to this day has never been sought. My opponent knows about this case. It sits and gets colder by the day. I know of another murder case from many years ago and I have reason to believe it was handled in an incorrect manner. The murderer was never nabbed. There is no statute of limitations on murder. I will have a cold case section of the unit and I can get started on these cases as soon as I am elected.

A modern, progressive DA's office would have its own sharply honed investigator's unit INVESTIGATING cases. big cases. I have also said in an earlier blog and in my article in the Border Observor that I want to have a special financial crimes unit that investigates and prosecutes complex financial crimes. There is rampant high level theft going on in this town and aside from a few federal cases, no one is investigating the stealing going on in government, the embezzling in businesses, and the obvious stealing that becomes apparent in probate cases.

Why is this not being done now? Well for one, we have a district attorney who has been in office for too long (14 years to date). He has never been challenged and this has resulted in great complacency and very unimaginative administration on his part. Currently the DA's investigator's Unit is made up of mainly retired police officers who spend their time serving witnesses with subpoenas and one sees them rolling carts of coffee and donuts around the second and third floors of the court house for different social occasions. These kinds of tasks are a waste of their energy, talent and experience. Another problem is that most El Pasoans do not know that they can file a case directly with the District Attorney's office for investigation and prosecution. In fact Mr. Esparza actually discourages that practice. He does not want you to know this because then you might find out that he is behind much of the decision making to not prosecute the real thieves and that he is unequipped to handle a real investigation.

Let's get this town moving and let's let the innocent out of prison and imprison the real murderers, rapists and thieves. Let's use our tax dollars wisely and let's put someone in charge who has the education, courage, experience and intelligence to do it and to do it right.