Riverside County DA Hestrin touts public safety track record, says challenger is unproven

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin is asking voters to focus on his public safety track record as Superior Court Judge Burke Strunsky ramps up his campaign to unseat the two-term incumbent in the coming election.

Strunsky announced his bid for Riverside County District Attorney on Jan. 20 in a video that takes aim at Hestrin's record. Citing California Judicial Council statistics showing reductions in filings, trials and prosecutions, Strunsky claims Hestrin is a "bad investment" for Riverside County taxpayers.

Hestrin countered in an interview with The Desert Sun by outlining several actions he's taken over the past four years that he believes should earn him the support of voters come June.

Chief among those are the steps Hestrin has taken to bolster the department's policing and investigative duties, which he says have helped moderate increases in the county's crime rate while others around the nation have spiked in recent years.

"In the face of this surging violence, Riverside County is standing tall," Hestrin said, later emphasizing his belief that "proactive policing is working."

Hestrin cited California Department of Public Health statistics that homicides increased by about 30% in the state from 2019 to 2020.

California Department of Justice statistics show that Riverside County has seen about the same 30% increase in homicides from 2019 to 2020 that the state reported in total. The county's per capita rate, however, is lower than those of some similar-sized and neighboring counties.

Alameda County's rate of homicide was 8.6 per 100,000 population in 2020. And neighboring San Bernardino county's homicide rate was 8.3. While Riverside County's was 6.3 in 2020.

Hestrin also cited a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's report that homicides in that county have increased by 94% over the past two years.

Hestrin said Strunsky lacks the experience to be the county's law enforcement leader, and compared his approach to those of progressive prosecutors who have recently taken or are vying for DA offices around the state.

"I have a proven track record," Hestrin said. "My opponent, Mr. Strunsky, doesn’t have a proven track record, quite the opposite. So we don’t know what he will do, and some of his pronouncements are very concerning."

Both Hestrin and Strunsky served as prosecutors in the county's DA's office before their paths diverged. Hestrin was elected to lead the department in 2014 and Strunsky became a judge in 2017.

A third candidate, Lara Gressley, has also announced her campaign for the position. The primary election is scheduled for June 7, with a possible run-off if no candidate wins a majority of the vote.

'A proven track record...'

Hestrin said that he won office in 2014 as an "anti-establishment" candidate, who gained the support and endorsements of many among the county's leadership throughout his two terms.

Since in office, Hestrin said, he has bolstered several of the department's multi-agency task forces. He reimplemented the county's Gang Impact Team, and established the Child Exploitation Team and Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team.

Under his leadership, Hestrin said, the gang team has arrested more than 100 suspects on suspicion of murder and seized more than 1,000 firearms from suspected gang members. Rod Pacheco, who served as DA from 2006 to 2010, also emphasized gang enforcement, netting more than 100 arrests in various large-scale operations in the county. But his successor, Paul Zellerbach, said he didn't have the budget for it.

"That’s key to keeping the crime rate down, guns in the hands of criminals and dangerous people are clearly the cause of skyrocketing homicides," Hestrin said.

This approach to the office, with emphasis on proactively policing rather than reactively charging suspects who repeatedly offend, is central to how Hestrin believes he has distinguished himself from Zellerbach and will prevail over Strunsky in the coming election.

"A criminal, a gang member with a gun, that's a homicide waiting to happen," Hestrin said. "We can stand back and say, well, we’re just gonna wait for it to happen and then we’ll file the charges or we can be proactive and say ‘no, let’s go,’ if someone’s breaking the law, let’s go get them and get the guns out of their hands."

In addition to violent crime, Hestrin said his child exploitation team has investigated and arrested pedophiles seeking to victimize children through social media and other online forums.

The cold case team, which is managed by DA's office investigators, recently identified two bodies using genetic information from decades-old remains believed to be victims of homicide. The team identified Patricia Cavallaro's remains, according to an announcement in early January, nearly 30 years after she was found buried in a shallow grave near Thousand Palms.

These successes, Hestrin said, represent his commitment to not only prosecuting cases, but policing.

"The DA is not just the county attorney," Hestrin said. "The DA is also the leader of law enforcement countywide."

Cops and campaign contributions

Strunsky said that Hestrin's emphasis on multi-agency collaboration is symptomatic of a larger concern for him: the prosecutor is too cozy with departments he has the responsibility to oversee.

"I think it should go without saying that it is unprincipled for a prosecutor who is funded by the taxpayers to accept most of his campaign cash from a group over which he has mandated criminal oversight," Strunsky said in his campaign announcement video.

The Riverside Sheriffs' Association, the union representing personnel from the sheriff's department and DA's office, has made substantial contributions to Hestrin's campaigns. The group gave $200,000 to the district attorney in December 2020.

"I raise money from all kinds of businesses, a wide range of donors give money to my campaign," Hestrin said in response. "They all understand that my job and the reason why they’re supporting me is to do justice, to follow the evidence and there’s no bias. I don’t give anybody special treatment."

To provide an example, Hestrin noted that he charged Oscar Rodriguez, a former sheriff's deputy, with murder for the on-duty shooting of an alleged romantic rival. He noted that he has charged police in recent years for domestic violence and assaults, and several for an alleged tow company bribery scheme.

The district attorney reviews every shooting by police in the county to determine if the use of force was legal. That oversight role, Strunsky argued, requires checks and balances between cops and prosecutors that are weakened by lavish contributions from police unions.

Hestrin countered that cop money in his campaign coffers does not compromise his ability to do that job.

"When the crime and the evidence of the crime is there, we file those charges," Hestrin said. "And we do so fairly and we do so as we would any other case. And all of my supporters, including law enforcement PACs, understand that and they would not ask for anything less."

Budget grows as filings drop

Hestrin said that when he took office in 2015 he inherited a department ravaged by the recession, and has since worked hard to hire and develop lawyers and other staff.

In 2009, the department had about 840 employees, including 280 attorneys. But the department shrank substantially as the county was pummeled by the failing economy.

Hestrin said the department was "$20 million in the hole" when he was elected. "I’ve asked for increased funds because we needed it," he said. "We had been cut to the bone and could no longer do the job that the public needs us to do."

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office has a budget of about $95 million for the current fiscal year. Orange County's DA has a budget of about $173 million. Riverside County's DA's Office has a budget of about $158 million for the current fiscal year.

The department has made gains to recover staff lost, Hestrin said, but is still short of pre-recession staffing levels — with 693 employees, including 244 attorneys, as of November.

He emphasized that during and after the recession Riverside County grew in population by about half a million residents, while his staffing levels have not fully rebounded.

"We’ve asked our employees, all our employees, over the time that I’ve been district attorney to do more with less," Hestrin said.

Strunsky, meanwhile, has countered that California Judicial Council statistics show Hestrin has instead done "less with more."

Those statistics show that the number of annual felony filings has dropped by about 5,000 — from about 16,000 to 11,300 — between the fiscal years 2015 and 2020. Between the fiscal years 2012 and 2015, the county averaged about 570 criminal trials a year, dropping to an average of 475 between 2016 and 2019. And resolutions of felony cases, including pleas and convictions, have dropped from about 21,000 in fiscal year 2015 to 12,000 in 2018.

The drop, Hestrin said, can be explained by sentencing reform efforts and other legislative changes, such as Prop. 47 which changed some offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. That proposition, Hestrin noted, took effect right before he took office.

"A whole host of felonies now became misdemeanors," Hestrin said of the proposition, adding, "these changes in the law have had a profound effect on prosecutor’s offices around the state."

Capital punishment

Strunsky said that if Hestrin is aggressive at filing anything, it's death penalty cases. The county has sentenced 10 people to death between 2017 and 2021, the most of any county in the nation, according to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on executions of condemned inmates in 2019. California has 699 inmates sentenced to death in its prisons, as of July 2021, but last conducted an execution in 2006.

Strunsky said he would instead pursue sentences of life without the possibility of parole: "It makes a whole lot more sense to use our scarce public safety resources to seek punishments that we know we can and should impose."

Hestrin responded that he will continue to pursue the death penalty, despite the state's refusal to execute the condemned, in the "most serious, heinous cases."

Voters in California and Riverside County, he said, "want the death penalty for the most serious cases and they want it to work." The state's refusal to execute, Hestrin said, amounts to "lawlessness."

And that final point, he added, summarizes the choice he believes voters have in the coming election: to vote for his proven track record of enforcing the law or the "absolute disaster" that is unfolding in other parts of the state that have elected progressive prosecutors.

“What I would say to the people is: Pay attention to what laws are being enacted out of our capital in Sacramento," Hestrin said. "Pay attention to the people you elect to enforce those laws."

Christopher Damien covers public safety and the criminal justice system. He can be reached at christopher.damien@desertsun.com or follow him at @chris_a_damien.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Riverside County DA Mike Hestrin touts public safety track record, says challenger is unproven