County attorney: 'Busy' inadequate word for workload

Hill County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson took over her new duties Nov. 25, and she says the word busy is inadequate when it comes to describing her workload during the last three months.

"To say that we are busy is like saying the Titanic sprang a bit of a leak," she said Friday.

Before she came onboard, two deputy attorneys left for other law jobs in August under former County Attorney Gina Dahl. Since then, one replacement was hired in October, but the other position wasn't filled until last week.

While excited to get a second deputy attorney, Cole-Hodginkinson said, she's not satisfied, as she still will not be able to give as much time as she wants to on criminal cases. The crime in this region, she said, is high, and she needs more attorneys than the office has had and can afford to hire.

"If you take the crime rate in Havre and you parse it amongst the population, it's incredible. It's the highest in the state," she said. "We really do have a four-attorney caseload."

The crime, she said, often comes down to one common denominator - drugs.

"The stream starts up here with drugs, and they just poison everything downstream from there," she said.

The youth-in-need-of-care cases, for example, have gone up 30 percent the past fiscal year. The previous 12-month period saw 152 cases, and before that there were about 163 cases, she said.

"This year, we're going to be well over 200, and most of what I am seeing are cases that, indirectly, at least, relate to illegal drug use. A lot of methamphetamine use by parents," she said.

Partner family assaults, aggravated assaults, and assault involving weapons - those crimes also, she said, generally have a drug or alcohol component.

Crime normally correlates with poverty, she said, but in Havre it has gotten to a point where even people with better economic opportunities are "starting to feel the bite." She cited a recent slew of burglaries of Beaver Creek Park cabins, along with reports she said she'd heard about burglaries in neighborhoods historically safer.

"I've had people tell me personal anecdotes of being in a neighborhood that traditionally keeps doors unlocked and having people with flashlights scouting their building ... casing the joint," she said.

Burglaries, she said, concern her because it's very taboo to cross someone's personal threshold without permission.

"If you can do that, what else can you do?" she said. "What's a burglar going to do if he encounters someone at home?"

To combat the problems, Cole-Hodgkinson said, her goal, which she joked is sure to get her elected at the end of her appointed term, is to get the budget for her office increased.

"We have managed with three attorneys for 12 years, and you can imagine that as the crime rate has increased, the office just hasn't grown to compete with the caseload," she said, adding she would like an attorney to specialize. "I would really, really like somebody who could focus specifically on partner family member assaults and the youth-in-need care cases, because those are the ones I want an attorney to carry the least number of cases, and be able to put the most time into them to make sure those aren't being over looked."

She said she knows getting more money will be a challenge and that she's another mouth scrambling for a piece of a small pie.

"I don't think that I'm not getting the additional funds because nobody thinks it's important. I'm not sure people understand just how bad it is, the crime rate," she said.

Marsy's Law, a ballot initiative amendment emphasizing victim's rights which will be implemented July, is another reason her office will need more resources, she said. There are a lot of uncertainties as to what the implementation of Marsy's Law will mean, Cole-Hodgkinson said, but one thing is for sure, and that is that more hours will be needed to keep up with the law. The law will make the county more susceptible to lawsuits, should her office misstep, she said. And those are the kind of lawsuits the county doesn't have insurance for, she added.

Hodgkinson said she's aware that nobody wants to pay more taxes.

"But, at the same time, you pay for things that are important to you. Safety in a community should be important to you, and insuring that the county isn't open to a really big expensive lawsuit should also be something really important," she said.

A recent hot topic has been releasing booking photos to the public, and Cole-Hodgkinson will side with the minority of county attorneys in the state. Without a uniform state law compelling her to release booking photos when someone is arrested and charged with a crime, Cole-Hodgkinson said, she will not release the photos.

"You can look at and say booking photos are clearly just public property, but in Montana you have to balance the individual's right to privacy against the public's right to know," she said. "I'm not going to make the decision to release booking records. I will comply with court-ordered decision to release booking records happily. Bring me a piece of paper that tells me I have to, they're yours."

Despite the mountain-like pile of work and various incoming challenges, Cole-Hodgkinson said, she is more than content. In her last job when she practiced private civil law, she said, she spent most of her time working cases in which arguments were mostly about money. She missed being in the prosecutor's office, in which she had spent eight years as a deputy county attorney in Lake County.

"It's one of those jobs that you look at you say, 'Am I even allowed to say I enjoy my job considering that my job is dealing with all this tragedy?'" she said. "Yes, I am enjoying my job because I'm not powerless. When you sit home and you watch the news and you see everything that's going wrong, you feel powerless. I get paid to work on it. I'll never be able to fix it, but somebody has given me the task of making it better, and I do love that."