By John Fredericks / Staff

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, fresh from praise for his landmark decision to locate a dedicated Community Prosecutor in North Fulton County, went “on the record” with The Beacon to set the record straight on several perceived general misconceptions by local politicians. The main one centered on his infamous “complaint room,” and its alleged role in what is described by some as the area’s “revolving crime” door. Local law enforcement officials have long been frustrated at the speed with which their arrested criminals are sent to Fulton County, booked and then released on nothing more than a signature bond. The crooks soon return to the North Side to commit another crime, and the wheels spin again. Below are key excerpts from that interview.

Q: Your “complaint room” has been blamed for contributing to the revolving crime door being experienced in North Fulton. What role does that process play in releasing criminals quickly?

Howard: When I started as Fulton County D.A. in 1997, we had about 4,300 people in the Fulton County jail system. According to reports given to me in my first week on the job, over 1,600 of those [prisoners] were un-indicted.

In one of my first cases, a Fulton County judge provided me with a list of people who had been in jail over 90 days – the list was 15 or 16 pages. We had people sitting in the Fulton county jail for as long as five years who were not indicted. I said immediately that could not work, and I set out to fix it.

We commissioned a study that revealed it was taking our criminal justice system and the D.A.’s office an average of 111 days to charge someone who was in jail.

On the contrary, if you were not in jail, it took the D.A.’s office 260 days make a charge. I set out visiting other D.A.’s offices – I went to New York – and saw them operating their “complaint room system” quite effectively.

Q: So what exactly is this notorious “complaint room” and how does it work?

Howard: It’s a front-end immediate screening process. It’s very simple. I have a staff of employees including lawyers who are here 24 hours a day, so when a crime occurs in Fulton County, we ask the police officer to simply call us and fax a copy of the detailed reports. We discuss the reports with the police and we make a charging decision based upon that information. Sometimes we say the police need to go back and get tag numbers, but we are able to make a charging decision usually in less than 30 minutes. So rather than 111 days, we’re taking 30 minutes.

This saves us from paying for somebody to be in jail that should not be in jail. But what was happened over the years, the police departments around the county have gotten a lot better. So when they call us with a case, they have already oriented themselves with the necessary evidence. Our decline rate, the number of cases we turn down, is less than one percent. And I think it’s because of the police training and them knowing what is required to charge someone. So we decline very few cases. But what does happen – and sometimes people don’t understand – when those cases are prepared, it then becomes the court system’s duty to set bond and to schedule hearings. If there is a release that goes on, it is not the prosecutors who are caught in the release, it is the judicial system.

Q: So your office doesn’t facilitate the early release – it’s the judicial system that is at the center of the controversy?

Howard: Yes. It’s the magistrates who work in the Fulton County judicial system that generally make those decisions. What the citizens see – and what is widely regarded as a revolving door – is the same thing that our office complains about.

We often complain about less than appropriate sentences for some defendants. What the public sees are criminals moving through the system very quickly. But when the sentence by the court is lenient, or not adequate to detain them, that person is right back in the public’s view. This gives the impression that it is a revolving door.

Q: So the judicial system is the culprit in the releases, not the D.A.’s office?

Howard: [Essentially], yes. The crux of this misconception is not the “complaint room” itself: It’s the fact that the “complaint room” prepares cases quickly for the judicial system and the judges may be not handing out sentences that people believe are appropriate.

Now that the information is provided quickly, the cases are ready to be processed so when the defendant is at the point where his case is ready for disposition, it is now up to the judicial system to sentence him properly. If they don’t, then the police and the citizens will get the impression that the revolving door is the fault of the complaint room, but is not.

Q: So how do we solve that? Get new judges?

Howard: The noncomplex court division has recently gotten better since Judge Richard Hicks got involved.

Q: So how does your “complaint room” concept improve anything, other than save jail costs?

Howard: One prime example is more local police on the street. The police officer that made that report to the D.A.’s office is no longer required to appear before the judge when the defendant does. This saves millions of dollars and helps keep officers on their local beat. My office calculates that that process alone has saved the county more than $10 million per year because these defendants aren’t just sitting in jail waiting – their cases are ready to go.

Q: How has this impacted your communication with the cities?

Howard: When I started in ’97, if someone called me to ask what was going on with a case in Roswell, I would have no idea. We didn’t have a central area that received all of the cases immediately. Now that’s not the case. We know about each case immediately.

Q: Besides our North Fulton Community Prosecutor, what is your biggest accomplishment so far in 2009?

Howard: Our biggest accomplishment this year was the number of death penalty verdicts returned by [jurors]. The reason I believe that’s important is because the thought process in our county for so many years has been that Fulton County jurors would not return appropriate sentences. Much of it, I thought, was for some reason based on race. Because people would just say, ‘African Americans won’t do that.’ I thought that was crazy. I find it even offensive in some ways. But the people in our county, they clearly said it was crazy, too. What our jurors are now saying is: ‘If you give us a good case, something we can understand, we will return an appropriate verdict.’

Q: What is your ultimate vision for the Fulton County D.A.’s office?

Howard: I’ve said many times I would like for Fulton County to become Mayberry. In Mayberry, the law enforcement structure is a very responsive sheriff who is personally acquainted with many of the citizens. That’s what we’ve tried to do with our Community Prosecutors. We’ve strategically placed them in the community to make direct responses to crime, to the community and to the police. I would like for our communities to become so safe that maybe one day we can just have a sheriff with no gun and no bullets and a deputy with one bullet in his front pocket. We should not accept crime as an automatic outgrowth of development in our communities, but we have to put in place programs to keep us at a certain level and that’s what our vision is – is to make sure our community remains safe.