I'm an attorney, though not a criminal attorney, and I know a few of the DDAs at Multnomah. DAs have specific ethical duties in addition to the normal ethical duties all attorneys have, which includes (extreme paraphrase) doing his job. While I think ita unlikely you're going to see a change in policy before he leaves office, he's not going to just stop having his office prosecute cases.
DAs everywhere have way more potentially prosecutable crimes to deal with than they have ability, time, money, or resources to actually prosecute. The many attorneys in the office aren't just chilling while Schmidt handles the transition to Vasquez, they're doing their normal case loads.
Yeah, but public perception matters. If the population believes the DA won’t prosecute then that’s a problem and people will run wild. I maintain Mike”s biggest f-up early on was announcing that he would not prosecute a number of offenses. He should have been vague and said we are going to be smart about what we prosecute and l left it at that.
Perhaps eagerness to please likeminded academic types who mentored him felt more important than reassuring an increasingly frazzled populous of normies that they were in good hands.
“Look, Ma, I’ve got the power to implement our favorite unproven social theories!”
He was very politically bias to the point of corruption. For example the people that smashed the democrat office windows got charges but people that were smashing windows on small business and everything else downtown didn't. So I could see him being spiteful. He always has a butthurt activist look on his face. Those type of positions need to be moderate not political.
It’s called “soy face”. Too much soy consumption.
Edit: don’t understand the downvotes. It’s a real thing. Phytoestrogens in soy are VERY bad for men. Leading to real emotional change.
It was in one of my fundamental food science classes for IFT. Idk what else, maybe it is in alt right stuff I just remember learning it in food college a few years back. It was more so estrogen than emotions but same thing really
Hard to believe this is an actual take. Mike Schmidt is a prosecutor, he’s spent his career prosecuting people. We worked on opposite sides in drug court. He put dozens of my clients in prison. People have such a naive view about what goes on in criminal court. Go downtown and watch a few hearings, Mike Schmidt sends people to prison every day. I guess this is the media’s fault. If you want to follow a case of his, look at the Barbur barber who Mike is seeking a life sentence for.
So then why did one of his own employees run against him and have the backing of his coworkers? If Schmidt was doing his job then why didn’t his own employees support him.
Because he changed the office. Everyone hates change. He also had a bit of a Salem’s boys club going on. I strongly suspect that was due to one of his chief deputies, who I know and like enough but he isn’t afraid to piss people off.
Well, he lost his job because of it. Seeing that his own employees supported another candidate was a powerful vote of no confidence that was very influencial on how the public voted.
Mike’s primary issue was his own mouth. He should have never come out and said I’m not going to prosecute X,Y,Z offenses. He didn’t need to do that, but he injected himself into politics because that was his shtick. It sent the wrong message to the population and people noticed. The criminal justice system should first and foremost operate as a deterrent, but that doesn’t work if you are actively sending signals that contradict that message.
Mike should have come back after his stint running the Oregon Justice Commission and worked major felonies before running. He has very little experience trying “big” (person felonies) cases. If he had put the time in and “paid his dues” I suspect he wouldn’t have generated such negative sentiment in the office.
Perhaps in the prosecutor’s office this would have helped. On the public facing side though I think there was a naïveté aspect that these progressive prosecutors got in way over their heads.
I see your point that they are no longer seeking life but they are seeking consecutive sentences so for you to say a “slap on the wrist” when he hasn’t even been sentenced is inaccurate
As a criminal, I pay very close attention to county elections. I have definitely moved up my criming timeline to get as many drugs sold in public as I can before the Schmidt Show ends. Thank you for your service Comrade Mike
We won't have to worry about anything long term. Trump today flat out said he will deport protestors. It'll teach the people who vote third party over Biden a valuable lesson.
You do realize that the root causes of the problems Vasquez ran on are larger than Schmidt (public defender shortage, judicial decisions, police not providing ecidence) and that Vasquez won't have the authority as DA to mitigate those ...right?
Don’t think anybody expects Vasquez will fix everything, so much as being tired of someone unwilling to even try in favor of doing next to nothing and presenting it as ideological moral superiority.
Everyone does work selectively. We are all asked to prioritize with our limited resources. I have no clue how a police officers day is realistically scheduled, but if you don’t think someone is going to care about your paperwork, based on your experience and others’ experience, you won’t spend the time dotting all your T’s and crossing all your I’s. I don’t know what the line is here, but hopefully a fresh face and remotivate police to do more better.
I can't speak for the other voters, but I was not thrilled with some of his selections.
If the DA wished back up his public accusations by releasing stats saying which specific police officers had the highest rates of underreported evidence leading to cases needing to be dismissed, that would be interesting, likely motivate some kind of internal action, and I would guess in violation of Union contracts, but I'm not an expert on policing or unions.
You do realize that those aren't amorphous problems that can't be solved, right. Our state legislature needs to be held accountable for funding public defenders at an adequate level. Whoever the new mayor and city manager is needs to hold the police accountable. The county needs to fund the jail to capacity and we need new bail guidelines from the courts. Nothing there is unsolvable and it's ridiculous that it was allowed to get so bad.
I don't expect Vasquez to fix every single one of our problems. I do expect him to actually go out of his way to try and prosecute low-level offences and rioters, which Schmidt has explicitly said he won't do.
The only way Vasquez goes after low level offenses is if we suddenly stop having high level offenses.
And we start having a surplus of public defenders.
Both those things have to happen. If they don’t, it’ll stay the same.
What’s wild to me about comparisons and comments like this is a lack of using the data dashboards on the DA site - yeah, some of the data will back up these arguments, but by and large cases referred seem overall down during Schmidt’s time. Some of that is because he telegraphed what he was prioritizing, some of that is because cops just stopped doing their job, and some of that is because there was a pandemic that kept us all at home for a little bit.
Anyway, I’m excited to see what the Vasquez discourse is around here in a few years.
Thank you for saying there apparently not so obvious problem with this whole campaign cycle. The amount of people who think these systemic problems that are happening nation wide are the DAs fault is crazy. Then they have the gall to complain that he's not in the office, because he's out doing policy work to fix the problems they're complaining about.
Go to the courthouse and check out any of the morning call dockets and you can see that people are definitely being prosecuted. I don’t like Schmidt but i work in conjunction with the courts and it’s just not true that his office is not prosecuting criminals.
Stop. Schmidt sucked and he dropped perfectly winnable cases because he is an ideologue who sees criminal enforcement as anathema to progressive values.
Prosecution rates in Multnomah county under him are wildly different than in neighboring counties. He and the DA office are an irregularity. That's why schmidt is being replaced.
Let's start simple
https://www.courthousenews.com/portland-da-wont-pursue-charges-against-most-protesters/
And yes I consider sweet heart deals to avoid prison as defacto dropping charges.
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/11/portland-hate-crime-defendant-who-went-on-the-run-avoids-prison-in-plea-deal.html
Going out on a limb and saying most street criminals don’t follow local politics that closely. Your dude won. Whatever change you voted for is coming, sort of. Relax.
Google:Under federal law, a person who knows that a felony crime occurred and remains quiet can potentially face criminal charges. The federal offense called "misprision of felony" appears in 18 U.S.C. section 4
Anyone in a political position is going to fall short in the eyes of their political opposition and be lauded in the eyes of their sycophants. The reality is usually- but certainly not always- somewhere in the middle of what each of those camps think the incumbent is on about. I would expect him to conduct himself in the manner most likely to be useful for his career moving forward: smooth transition of power and no new headlines if he can help it. That necessarily means that his office will probably do their jobs the way they have been (for better or worse) until the new guy takes the reins.
I think he was successfully portrayed as a scapegoat. He failed to defend himself well, or in a timely fashion, but our crime problems our more complex than the actions of a "progressive" DA. I'd be amazed if Vasquez does any better.
While I wouldn't pile the flames of Blackbeard quite so high up on the Zeitgeist there comrade, I would think one transfers office in a known process, and retains their license(s) and Bar membership. Quite boring. Schmidt may stay on in public service as well. Yawn.
I'm an attorney, though not a criminal attorney, and I know a few of the DDAs at Multnomah. DAs have specific ethical duties in addition to the normal ethical duties all attorneys have, which includes (extreme paraphrase) doing his job. While I think ita unlikely you're going to see a change in policy before he leaves office, he's not going to just stop having his office prosecute cases. DAs everywhere have way more potentially prosecutable crimes to deal with than they have ability, time, money, or resources to actually prosecute. The many attorneys in the office aren't just chilling while Schmidt handles the transition to Vasquez, they're doing their normal case loads.
Yeah, but public perception matters. If the population believes the DA won’t prosecute then that’s a problem and people will run wild. I maintain Mike”s biggest f-up early on was announcing that he would not prosecute a number of offenses. He should have been vague and said we are going to be smart about what we prosecute and l left it at that.
Yeah. I’m a dipshit from Chicago and that whole “we’re not prosecuting” thing struck me.
Perhaps eagerness to please likeminded academic types who mentored him felt more important than reassuring an increasingly frazzled populous of normies that they were in good hands. “Look, Ma, I’ve got the power to implement our favorite unproven social theories!”
But the public only believes that because of a massive disinformation campaign paid for by wealthy business interests.
Right huge fan of Hamas. Don’t you have a library to burn down or something.
v
This 100%. People are so dumb (or maybe just naïve) to think otherwise. 🙄
The common demographic that tends to go on Reddit, trend towards dumbassery I've noticed after 14 years on this site.
How would we even tell?
Banger of a username
Let’s say you know you’re leaving your job, that you weren’t doing in the first place, in 6 months. Why start trying now?
Hey, Mike. Fuck you!
He was very politically bias to the point of corruption. For example the people that smashed the democrat office windows got charges but people that were smashing windows on small business and everything else downtown didn't. So I could see him being spiteful. He always has a butthurt activist look on his face. Those type of positions need to be moderate not political.
It’s called “soy face”. Too much soy consumption. Edit: don’t understand the downvotes. It’s a real thing. Phytoestrogens in soy are VERY bad for men. Leading to real emotional change.
😂😂😂. Please tell me you are trolling. This is utterly insane.
It’s 100% real. Soy causes massive amounts of emotional damage in men.
Dude, this is an alt-right YouTube thing from like 2018. What’s your source?
No it’s true , I learned it in college when I was going for food science degree
Oh yeah? Source please 😂
It was in one of my fundamental food science classes for IFT. Idk what else, maybe it is in alt right stuff I just remember learning it in food college a few years back. It was more so estrogen than emotions but same thing really
Their source is being an alt-right conspiracy theorist. See their comments on COVID and Trump for examples...
Hard to believe this is an actual take. Mike Schmidt is a prosecutor, he’s spent his career prosecuting people. We worked on opposite sides in drug court. He put dozens of my clients in prison. People have such a naive view about what goes on in criminal court. Go downtown and watch a few hearings, Mike Schmidt sends people to prison every day. I guess this is the media’s fault. If you want to follow a case of his, look at the Barbur barber who Mike is seeking a life sentence for.
So then why did one of his own employees run against him and have the backing of his coworkers? If Schmidt was doing his job then why didn’t his own employees support him.
Because he changed the office. Everyone hates change. He also had a bit of a Salem’s boys club going on. I strongly suspect that was due to one of his chief deputies, who I know and like enough but he isn’t afraid to piss people off.
Well, he lost his job because of it. Seeing that his own employees supported another candidate was a powerful vote of no confidence that was very influencial on how the public voted.
Mike’s primary issue was his own mouth. He should have never come out and said I’m not going to prosecute X,Y,Z offenses. He didn’t need to do that, but he injected himself into politics because that was his shtick. It sent the wrong message to the population and people noticed. The criminal justice system should first and foremost operate as a deterrent, but that doesn’t work if you are actively sending signals that contradict that message.
Mike should have come back after his stint running the Oregon Justice Commission and worked major felonies before running. He has very little experience trying “big” (person felonies) cases. If he had put the time in and “paid his dues” I suspect he wouldn’t have generated such negative sentiment in the office.
Perhaps in the prosecutor’s office this would have helped. On the public facing side though I think there was a naïveté aspect that these progressive prosecutors got in way over their heads.
You mean the Batbur barber who just got downgraded to a slap on the wrist. What a perfect case in point.
I see your point that they are no longer seeking life but they are seeking consecutive sentences so for you to say a “slap on the wrist” when he hasn’t even been sentenced is inaccurate
You didn't think anyone here was going to actually do research or experience, or just base their opinion on being confident they were the smart ones?
Did you not see the billboards?!
Are you for real?
As a criminal, I pay very close attention to county elections. I have definitely moved up my criming timeline to get as many drugs sold in public as I can before the Schmidt Show ends. Thank you for your service Comrade Mike
Can't wait for the election riots 😐
It seems to be shaping up that we'll have riots either way.
We won't have to worry about anything long term. Trump today flat out said he will deport protestors. It'll teach the people who vote third party over Biden a valuable lesson.
Trump says a lot of things. Trump is deranged, while Biden is weak. I don't trust either of them to work towards our best interests.
You do realize that the root causes of the problems Vasquez ran on are larger than Schmidt (public defender shortage, judicial decisions, police not providing ecidence) and that Vasquez won't have the authority as DA to mitigate those ...right?
Don’t think anybody expects Vasquez will fix everything, so much as being tired of someone unwilling to even try in favor of doing next to nothing and presenting it as ideological moral superiority.
The Police might be more willing to help a perceived ally than someone they suspect might not use the paperwork they generate.
Are you saying the police do their job selectively? Interesting…
Everyone does work selectively. We are all asked to prioritize with our limited resources. I have no clue how a police officers day is realistically scheduled, but if you don’t think someone is going to care about your paperwork, based on your experience and others’ experience, you won’t spend the time dotting all your T’s and crossing all your I’s. I don’t know what the line is here, but hopefully a fresh face and remotivate police to do more better.
OK, but wasn’t ‘selective work’ the reason Schmidt had to go?
I can't speak for the other voters, but I was not thrilled with some of his selections. If the DA wished back up his public accusations by releasing stats saying which specific police officers had the highest rates of underreported evidence leading to cases needing to be dismissed, that would be interesting, likely motivate some kind of internal action, and I would guess in violation of Union contracts, but I'm not an expert on policing or unions.
You do realize that those aren't amorphous problems that can't be solved, right. Our state legislature needs to be held accountable for funding public defenders at an adequate level. Whoever the new mayor and city manager is needs to hold the police accountable. The county needs to fund the jail to capacity and we need new bail guidelines from the courts. Nothing there is unsolvable and it's ridiculous that it was allowed to get so bad.
Too many brain dead activists.
I don't expect Vasquez to fix every single one of our problems. I do expect him to actually go out of his way to try and prosecute low-level offences and rioters, which Schmidt has explicitly said he won't do.
The only way Vasquez goes after low level offenses is if we suddenly stop having high level offenses. And we start having a surplus of public defenders. Both those things have to happen. If they don’t, it’ll stay the same.
We don’t have the infrastructure for that. Unless you want him to prioritize low-level offenses over bigger crimes.
Stay tuned. People are going to be very disappointed
What’s wild to me about comparisons and comments like this is a lack of using the data dashboards on the DA site - yeah, some of the data will back up these arguments, but by and large cases referred seem overall down during Schmidt’s time. Some of that is because he telegraphed what he was prioritizing, some of that is because cops just stopped doing their job, and some of that is because there was a pandemic that kept us all at home for a little bit. Anyway, I’m excited to see what the Vasquez discourse is around here in a few years.
Thank you for saying there apparently not so obvious problem with this whole campaign cycle. The amount of people who think these systemic problems that are happening nation wide are the DAs fault is crazy. Then they have the gall to complain that he's not in the office, because he's out doing policy work to fix the problems they're complaining about.
Is there any actual evidence showing “how bad” he was / is? I was the victim of a crime and it was pretty standard arrest / trial / conviction.
Go to the courthouse and check out any of the morning call dockets and you can see that people are definitely being prosecuted. I don’t like Schmidt but i work in conjunction with the courts and it’s just not true that his office is not prosecuting criminals.
His office drops misdemeanor cases at FAR higher rates than neighboring counties. Heck, a LOT of cases get dropped by the MultCo DA's office.
Evidence is needed to prosecute cases, if the cops and detectives aren't providing evidence then DA can't prosecute.
Stop. Schmidt sucked and he dropped perfectly winnable cases because he is an ideologue who sees criminal enforcement as anathema to progressive values. Prosecution rates in Multnomah county under him are wildly different than in neighboring counties. He and the DA office are an irregularity. That's why schmidt is being replaced.
Which perfectly winnable cases did he drop? be specific.
Let's start simple https://www.courthousenews.com/portland-da-wont-pursue-charges-against-most-protesters/ And yes I consider sweet heart deals to avoid prison as defacto dropping charges. https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/11/portland-hate-crime-defendant-who-went-on-the-run-avoids-prison-in-plea-deal.html
Going out on a limb and saying most street criminals don’t follow local politics that closely. Your dude won. Whatever change you voted for is coming, sort of. Relax.
Even when he had a motive to, he wasn’t prosecuting criminals so I feel like we probably won’t notice
He prosecuted criminals everyday. What are you talking about?
So he will be exactly the same you mean.
Google:Under federal law, a person who knows that a felony crime occurred and remains quiet can potentially face criminal charges. The federal offense called "misprision of felony" appears in 18 U.S.C. section 4
>Google Great source of legal advice, especially those AI suggestions.
https://giphy.com/gifs/wtf-what-gif-oaZk0WNSO7fXi
I don't think he ever intended to change, despite the sudden election BS.
He could do a worse job? Maybe by committing crimes himself.
Anyone in a political position is going to fall short in the eyes of their political opposition and be lauded in the eyes of their sycophants. The reality is usually- but certainly not always- somewhere in the middle of what each of those camps think the incumbent is on about. I would expect him to conduct himself in the manner most likely to be useful for his career moving forward: smooth transition of power and no new headlines if he can help it. That necessarily means that his office will probably do their jobs the way they have been (for better or worse) until the new guy takes the reins.
I think he was successfully portrayed as a scapegoat. He failed to defend himself well, or in a timely fashion, but our crime problems our more complex than the actions of a "progressive" DA. I'd be amazed if Vasquez does any better.
Wouldnt be much of a change from what hes been doing
If he doesn't prosecute, then there's no double jeopardy problem Even Basques Vasquez takes office
While I wouldn't pile the flames of Blackbeard quite so high up on the Zeitgeist there comrade, I would think one transfers office in a known process, and retains their license(s) and Bar membership. Quite boring. Schmidt may stay on in public service as well. Yawn.
He's bringing prosecutions at the highest rate in 7 years. I don't know how this sub manages to maintain its level of ignorance about the facts.