In advance of the November 7 elections, the Pilot is interviewing candidates for major county and local offices. Our interview with Parisi’s opponent, Republican Matthew Weishaupt, will be published within the coming weeks.
Democrat Anthony Parisi is running for District Attorney against Republican Matthew Weishaupt. They are competing to fill the vacancy left by retiring District Attorney William V. Grady, who has served as DA for over 40 years.
We sat down with Parisi to talk about his service in the Dutchess County criminal justice system and his ideas for modifying some of the existing policies and procedures.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
Hudson Valley Pilot: You got your start in the Dutchess County Public Defender’s Office representing indigent defendants. How has such work shaped your view of the criminal justice system?
Anthony Parisi: I was a public defender and got my start here in Dutchess County and worked there for three years. I was then recruited by the DA’s office. It was a difficult decision to leave, because I liked the work and I had an incredible mentor, but it was really difficult to get the prosecutors at the time to understand what were appropriate dispositions [a court’s final determination in a criminal case] for my clients.
So rather than beating my head against the wall, trying to get what I think are fair and just dispositions, I decided to make the move to the other side, the District Attorney’s office, where I would become the decision maker and do what seemed honest and fair. It’s funny that you ask this question, because I always say this: I wish that every prosecutor could be either a defense attorney or a public defender before they become a prosecutor. It provides a particular perspective that I think I was able to gain, and one of the biggest problems with prosecutors, in my opinion, is they tend not to view defendants as people. This is a huge problem.
I’ve been a prosecutor for 25 years now, so I can see both perspectives. However, I feel like having been a public defender gave me the ability to actually see both ends of the spectrum and be able to understand better when we can actually work with someone who has come in on a criminal case and prevent them from becoming a recidivist.
HVP: But, to be fair, we do not have the foresight to know who will be the person who has simply made a wrong choice and who is the recidivist.
AP: Yes and no. Generally speaking, when a case comes in, you know who should be given a second chance. We have so many tools now as prosecutors and defense attorneys to assess a defendant’s needs that we have a better understanding of what is in front of us. Do they have mental health issues? Do they have drug dependency issues? We want to get at what is driving this behavior and we’re in much better shape to understand that now than we were a few years ago. You want to give these defendants every opportunity.
HVP: But the role of the District Attorney is to be the chief prosecutor in the county. The statistics in Dutchess County do not exactly follow in line with the perception that crime is up, since violent crime is down and petty crime like break-ins and property theft fluctuate but are not up by any significant amount. This being said, how do you take what you are saying about giving defendants every opportunity and match it with the job description of being the chief prosecutor of the county?
AP: I’m currently the Major Crimes Bureau Chief and we prosecute violent felony offenders and career criminals and I consider myself a “law and order Democrat.” Everyone’s safety in this community and in this county is my primary concern. And that’s the reality of it. And when I say that I’m a law and order Democrat, I mean I am going to use a smart approach to reduce crime and prevent crime. My strategy is intelligence-led policing and intelligence-led prosecution. Essentially what we’re looking to do is to prevent future crime, not just react to it.
Law enforcement and policing are traditionally reactive. A crime is committed, the police respond, they investigate it, they make an arrest, the case comes to the DA’s office, and we prosecute it. And we do that kind of in a blanket way, which is not a smart approach because we have limited resources. What intelligence-led policing and intelligence-led prosecution are designed to do is collect information from all sources, along with community engagement, to understand what the problems are that each of our communities in the county is facing with a view towards addressing those issues. We collect information and intelligence from a variety of sources, whether it be citizens in the community or defendants who have been arrested.
We have the goal of speaking with everyone who touches the criminal justice system with a view towards learning from them what they know about criminal activity in the county. It is a process that works. Essentially we come up with a cohesive plan to prevent the future crime that way, rather than react to it. I can tell you, the DA needs to take a leadership role in law enforcement so that all agencies are heading in the right direction.
HVP: You have been working in the DA’s office for decades, and you have said that one of your primary goals is to bring the County DA’s office into the 21st century, as you have said the office under the leadership of DA Grady has “failed to keep pace with modern ways of operating.” So what do you plan to do to bring the office up to 21st century standards?
AP: I am a technology guy and I have been deeply involved in any technology upgrades the District Attorney’s office has ever done. When we most recently upgraded our case management system, I was the lead in designing the system for the office. When we needed to really come on board for discovery management, I was the lead on the digital evidence management system. This modernization needs to get done, it needs to get done now. We need to become a digital office, essentially a paperless office.
We need to make these changes, not just for internal purposes, but from a communications perspective for the people of the county as well. One of the items that I think is important as part of my strategy as district attorney, is to allow much more transparency in the DA’s office. I plan to create an online portal, so that whether it be a victim, a defendant, or a community member who wants to see the status of a case, that such a thing can be accessed by the public, they can see it, they can check on it, in real time. I think that’s important. The DA is an elected official, the DA should be transparent, just like any other public official. The people of the county should be able to question what the district attorney’s office is doing.
August 11, 2023 – Source: Hudson Valley Pilot