Law enforcement frustrated over problems in the Pima County Attorney's Office

KVOA-4 ^ | May 7, 2005 | Lupita Murillo

[Ramonan]

The county attorney's office has some explaining to do.

Why are hundreds of drug cases being dropped and now, Eyewitness News 4 has learned that more than 300 summonses involving domestic violence haven't been served.

This latest problem, involving domestic violence cases, could be particularly troubling for County Attorney Barbara LaWall.

Lawall has run for office on a platform to fight domestic violence. Yesterday, Eyewitness News 4 broke the story that the county attorney's office was dropping over 500 drug cases.

A letter went out to law enforcement agencies telling them about the drug cases the county attorney's office is dropping. Now, the Pima County Sheriff's Department has assigned a detective full time to review all 141 cases that belong to the Sheriff's Department.

Sgt. Ken Coultas says, "We are having to go through each and every case that we've already gone through, spend time and money to get that done in an efficient manner."

Sgt. Coultas works under cover and is assigned to the Counter Narcotics Alliance squad. He's extremely frustrated over what's happened.

So far, the cases they've come up are not minor drug cases as the county attorney's office claims.

Some of the cases are serious, dealing with meth and cocaine.

Sgt. Coultas says, "I don't know of any drug offense that is not major. I know that meth in particular is a contributor to property crimes in the community as is cocaine."

[Ramonan]

Same County Attorney refused to prosecute Ann Coulter'sattackers.

[hsmomx3]

Hmmm........wonder what Butch has to say about this?

[NonValueAdded]

Y'all ought to show LaWall LaDoor.