about the DA? Doesn’t the marshal have to report to the district attorney?”
Yates’s yellow-brown eyes glanced from the narrow highway toward Wager, unsure just how much might be repeated and to whom. “Our DA don’t like to prosecute. He don’t like us spending our time in court when we should be on the road or serving warrants, he says. Besides, he’s a Republican, and the marshal’s a Democrat. They don’t work together too well.”
The deputy was a lean man in his thirties whose Adam’s apple bobbed prominently when he talked. Beneath his tan uniform shirt, trimmed with western piping on back and chest, the faint outline of straps and ridges showed that he wore body armor. Most of the street cops in Denver wore it, too, but there it seemed necessary. “What about the sheriff’s office? How does Tice get along with the DA?”
“Not too good. Tice wants to provide law enforcement for the unincorporated areas of the county—which is most of it. The DA thinks the sheriff should spend his time serving papers and running the jail. We make a little money on papers and prisoners.”
“How in hell does the DA get any convictions?”
“Guilty pleas on reduced charges, mostly. He says it serves justice and the county budget at the same time. Besides, he’s a good buddy of the leading defense lawyer in town. I won’t say there’s any pay-offs, but if you ever get charged with something, there’s one lawyer who can get you out of it without ever going to trial.”
As in every judicial district in Colorado, the DA decided which cases to prosecute and how hard to go after them. Plea bargaining could save the state a lot of money and the prosecutor a lot of work, as Kolagny, the Denver prosecuting attorney, knew. And if you only went after the sure cases, you could have a very good conviction rate, one that the state’s attorney general would be happy with. “It sounds like a real circus, Roy. How about the municipal police? How do you get along with them?”
“There’s only one municipality in the county—Loma Vista. The rest of the towns have marshals, and some are good and some are bad. As far as the Loma Vista police is concerned, it depends on who’s got duty. If you need backup, your friends come when you holler. The others don’t.” He told Wager about a bar fight during one of the region’s summer tourist celebrations, Gold Rush Days: two sheriff’s officers sent to quell a brawl of thirty drunken construction workers and not-too-sober cowboys. “Municipal didn’t send anybody into the county to help with that one. We ended up standing outside the door and picking them up when they flew out. If there’d been just four or five of us, we could have gone in and broken it up. But just the two of us, and one of them a reserve …” Yates tried to answer Wager’s silence. “Look, Gabe, the s.o. has three full-timers for the whole county, including Tice. We’re not as rich as Cortez or Grand Junction. We just don’t have the tax base for a good sheriff’s office. If I spend two, three days on a court case, I’m not out on calls, like I should be. And I’ll tell you what, if we don’t respond to calls, Sheriff Tice don’t get re-elected, and I don’t get reappointed. That’s just the way it is out here.”
Out here, back there, anywhere and everywhere, the sure conviction of criminals was the best prevention a law agency could offer. Proving your case in court was what it was all about, and if a DA took only the easy wins, the real crooks would get a lot smarter a lot faster. Wager gazed out the window at a flooded meadow whose grass was so green it was almost black against the blue of water-reflected sky. He was here on one case. As an outsider. He wanted to remember that. And Yates, like any good cop, preferred to be on the street instead of in court or filling out time-study forms. Even if things were done differently or downright wrong in Grant County, he wanted to remember
Yates’s yellow-brown eyes glanced from the narrow highway toward Wager, unsure just how much might be repeated and to whom. “Our DA don’t like to prosecute. He don’t like us spending our time in court when we should be on the road or serving warrants, he says. Besides, he’s a Republican, and the marshal’s a Democrat. They don’t work together too well.”
The deputy was a lean man in his thirties whose Adam’s apple bobbed prominently when he talked. Beneath his tan uniform shirt, trimmed with western piping on back and chest, the faint outline of straps and ridges showed that he wore body armor. Most of the street cops in Denver wore it, too, but there it seemed necessary. “What about the sheriff’s office? How does Tice get along with the DA?”
“Not too good. Tice wants to provide law enforcement for the unincorporated areas of the county—which is most of it. The DA thinks the sheriff should spend his time serving papers and running the jail. We make a little money on papers and prisoners.”
“How in hell does the DA get any convictions?”
“Guilty pleas on reduced charges, mostly. He says it serves justice and the county budget at the same time. Besides, he’s a good buddy of the leading defense lawyer in town. I won’t say there’s any pay-offs, but if you ever get charged with something, there’s one lawyer who can get you out of it without ever going to trial.”
As in every judicial district in Colorado, the DA decided which cases to prosecute and how hard to go after them. Plea bargaining could save the state a lot of money and the prosecutor a lot of work, as Kolagny, the Denver prosecuting attorney, knew. And if you only went after the sure cases, you could have a very good conviction rate, one that the state’s attorney general would be happy with. “It sounds like a real circus, Roy. How about the municipal police? How do you get along with them?”
“There’s only one municipality in the county—Loma Vista. The rest of the towns have marshals, and some are good and some are bad. As far as the Loma Vista police is concerned, it depends on who’s got duty. If you need backup, your friends come when you holler. The others don’t.” He told Wager about a bar fight during one of the region’s summer tourist celebrations, Gold Rush Days: two sheriff’s officers sent to quell a brawl of thirty drunken construction workers and not-too-sober cowboys. “Municipal didn’t send anybody into the county to help with that one. We ended up standing outside the door and picking them up when they flew out. If there’d been just four or five of us, we could have gone in and broken it up. But just the two of us, and one of them a reserve …” Yates tried to answer Wager’s silence. “Look, Gabe, the s.o. has three full-timers for the whole county, including Tice. We’re not as rich as Cortez or Grand Junction. We just don’t have the tax base for a good sheriff’s office. If I spend two, three days on a court case, I’m not out on calls, like I should be. And I’ll tell you what, if we don’t respond to calls, Sheriff Tice don’t get re-elected, and I don’t get reappointed. That’s just the way it is out here.”
Out here, back there, anywhere and everywhere, the sure conviction of criminals was the best prevention a law agency could offer. Proving your case in court was what it was all about, and if a DA took only the easy wins, the real crooks would get a lot smarter a lot faster. Wager gazed out the window at a flooded meadow whose grass was so green it was almost black against the blue of water-reflected sky. He was here on one case. As an outsider. He wanted to remember that. And Yates, like any good cop, preferred to be on the street instead of in court or filling out time-study forms. Even if things were done differently or downright wrong in Grant County, he wanted to remember
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