“Coming back here gives another meaning to ‘returning to the scene of the crime,'” joked Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca as he addressed the Oxford Area Chamber of Commerce at the group’s monthly meeting last Thursday.
Gorcyca explained that a few years ago he wrote a check for a golf outing in Oxford, which later became the subject of an investigation.
The prosecutor was alluding to former Oxford Police Chief Gary Ford and the donation checks to a cancelled 1999 police department golf outing, which led to Ford’s arrest on two felony counts of larceny by conversion, for which he will be tried in circuit court beginning Monday, March 3.
Gorcyca began his speech discussing his role as a county prosecutor.
He said he’s responsible for the enforcement of 250 statutorily-defined duties and upholding state laws in the county’s 63 jurisdictions.
Each year 20,000 cases come through the prosecutor’s office, Gorcyca said, noting “that doesn’t mean we prosecute all of them, but we do review each and every one of them.”
In addition to prosecuting crimes, Gorcyca said his office has a civil arm, the Family Support Division, which collects between $4 million and $5 million per year in judgements against parents who fail or refuse to pay child support.
Gorcyca then talked about some recent crime trends that affect county residents.
He said up until 2001 violent crimes were decreasing at the local, state and national levels.
However, a new Federal Bureau of Investigation report indicated that violent crimes, including murders and rapes, increased for the first time in a decade by two percent nationally, Gorcyca said.
“Many attribute it to the economy,” he said. “Fortunately, I think if the economy turns around, we’ll see a change in that crime rate. Fortunately, it was only a two percent change. That’s good thing.”
The “escalating” war on drugs was another topic Gorcyca addressed.
He told chamber members that crimes involving so-called “club drugs” such as Ecstacy and GHB are “very hard to detect.”
For instance, GHB, commonly known as a date rape drug, “evaporates and dissipates” in the body’s system “quickly.”
“Unless the person is taken to the hospital very quickly and blood is drawn, you can never tell if the substance was ever in their system,” Gorcyca said.
It’s also hard for police to determine who put the drug in someone’s beverage, he added.
Tracking down the sources of drugs is also getting more difficult for law enforcement authorities given anyone can surf the Internet and find a recipe to make methamphetamines using over-the-counter drugs bought at any convenience store.
Gorcyca said drugs are a problem that “must be continually be addressed.”
He cited statistics that show 60 percent of all murders in Michigan are drug-related and 70 percent of rapes, robberies and property crimes are drug-related.
Another “insidious problem” of drug use is child abandonment, according to Gorcyca.
“Over the last several years, there have been about 1,000 babies abandoned” in drug houses (where they’re sometimes sold), trash cans and restrooms, he said.
Each year 16,000 babies are born to drug addicted women, the prosecutor said.
“To care for these medically fragile and drug-exposed children,” it costs taxpayers $60 million annually in Michigan and $1.5 billion at the federal level.
Gorcyca noted that last year there was a movement to legalize marijuana in Michigan, but “fortunately” the issue did not make it to the ballot.
He called marijuana a “gateway drug” that leads to other drugs “much like tobacco leads to marijuana.”
A growing crime trend, which Gorcyca called “alarming,” is “homicide in the workplace.”
He called it “the fastest growing form of homicide and murder in the U.S.” and said their numbers have “doubled since 1983.”
Gorcyca said homicide in the workplace is the “leading cause of occupational death in Michigan, which is very troubling.”
School violence is another trend Gorcyca touched on. He said it’s estimated 100,000 kids nationwide bring guns to school every year and as a result 160,000 kids don’t want to go to school every day because of “fear.”
Firearms are the “leading cause of death” for people between the ages of 15 and 34, Gorcyca said.
However, despite earlier forecasts that predicted the worst regarding juvenile crime and called this the “baddest generation known to mankind,” the juvenile crime rate has actually “gone down” over the last three years, Gorcyca said based on his personal review of state and local numbers.
Although citizens see more “high profile” juvenile crimes in “the media and front pages” that suggest the rate is up, “fortunately, it is not on the rise,” the prosecutor said.
Gorcyca said previous studies have shown that the “obvious factors” related to juvenile crime are the “availability of drugs and alcohol, exposure to crime, poor family support environments, school dropout rates and access to guns.”
In addition to those factors, a new study has established a “direct link between truancy and delinquency”
“If you’re not going to school, you’re getting into trouble,” Gorcyca said.
“Nearly one-half of all violent crimes on school days occur between 2 and 8 p.m.,” the prosecutor said. “Crime triples between 3 and 4 p.m., the first hour after school.”
Gorcyca said that’s why he hates to see budget cuts hit after-school programs.
Despite most people’s assumptions that most crime happens late at night, Gorcyca said “only one-seventh of all crimes occur between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.”
Gorcyca said his office has instituted a new “early truancy prevention program.”
He explained that if a child is not attending school, his or her parents will get a letter from the prosecutor’s office telling them they must go to the school and sign a contract ensuring their child’s regular attendance.
If the child violates the contract, the parents can be charged with “educational neglect” and the student with truancy.
The prosecutor noted that it is a misdemeanor charge for parents if their child is not attending school. “Parents are obligated to have them there,” he said.
Computer and high tech crimes are another growing crime trend, according to Gorcyca.
He said it’s “expected that those businesses directly related to computers will lose billions of dollars” through financial fraud, theft, stealing of corporate secrets, sabotage and viruses.
“It’s a big problem,” he said, adding that computer-related crimes are “difficult to enforce and detect” because they can easily cross state lines.
The prosecutor’s office has established a Computer Crimes Division, in conjunction with the sheriff’s department, to investigate these matters.
Gorcyca said another computer/Internet related crime problem is sexual predators and pedophiles finding young victims from the “comfort of home” in on-line chat rooms instead of “parks, schools and malls.”
“It’s so insidious,” he said.
He noted that when the Computer Crimes Division was launched in a press conference, a member of the sheriff’s department demonstrated by logging onto a chat room as “jenna14,” meaning a 14-year-old girl named Jenna.
“Within five seconds,” there were “several hits”and two of them were solicitations for sex, he said. “That’s how quickly it happens.”
Gorcyca also informed chamber members about some of the programs he’s instituted through the prosecutor’s office.
One of them, a “bad check program,” is designed to help merchants and retailers, particularly small, family run businesses, recover their money when customers write bad checks by simply filling out a form.
The individual who wrote the bad check then receives a letter from the prosecutor’s office informing them they won’t be prosecuted if they make 100 percent restitution to the merchant plus pay all banking fees and attend a class entirely at their expense, Gorcyca said.
“It’s a win-win situation because the offender pays for everything,” he said.
Gorcyca said, to date, the two-year-old program has collected about $550,000 in restitution to merchants
Another program Gorcyca is proud of is “Teen Court.”
Under this program, those guilty of committing juvenile crimes not of a serious nature, for example property damage to someone’s front lawn, have the option of appearing in “Teen Court,” which is comprised of a group of peers who serve as the prosecutor, defense attorney and jury.
This court then “fashions” the defendant’s sentence, which ultimately must be approved by a real judge.
According to studies, Gorcyca said “less than 5 percent” of defendants who go through this type of program ever commit another crime.
“The idea is to get them through the system once and hopefully never see them again,” he said.
Gorcyca said the studies also show the teen juries are “harsher” in their sentences than real judges and the defendants “more readily accept” sentences from their peers rather than “another adult in a black robe, pontificating and telling them what they can and can’t do.”
“It’s a great program,” he said.