college of law at university of toledo and back in two thousand and one so i've been practicing right ten years now most of which has been prosecution live in south minneapolis mary have two kids two little girls ellie and addie and i know that my my oldest my five year old addie would be upset if i didn't say hi to daddy so how long are you have you here been here in oakdale and where were you before that well i've been prosecuting for oakdale for four years now i was hired in july of two thousand and seven prior to that i've been a combination of things i work at a firm in st paul i've been out on my own for a while all of which involved in prosecution you k now you actually have an office in the city hall i do i'm actually office in the police station spec you know comes and helps them when they need them the only thing is with you being on scene and on site it just must be a lot better isn't it i mean well there are certain aspects there i'm sorry there's certain aspects that i definitely think are great and i have hands on with with our police department so if i have issues that can be dealt with training issues with officers i have access to them to speak to them i also don't have a case load that i'm working for a firm in what i have in front of me is what's important to me so i have the time that i can put in to make sure things come up with a supposed now and a personal life do you do you like this better i mean it's kind of basically going to a job every day i do i really enjoy it in fact i think a lot of other municipalities could benefit for this kind of system really ok financial financially speaking is this better for the city of oakdale or would it be better to contract out you know i think it's kind of a wash in either way i mean i know i've been on both ends of it i've been on the contract  end of it and i think the city would end up paying about the same if not more when they've got a firm that's working that they're working on a contract basis with but being in house i'm a salaried position so they have a direct control over my salary and what it is what it is and if i take vacation they might have to pay outside counsel to cover a calendar but that is few and far between interesting ok right now you prosecute all criminal matters in the city we're going to go over some of them and you tell us what they are for us civilians that don't understand this sort of thing ok let's talk about petty misdemeanors what does that mean all petty misdemeanors basically the way we divide things up in minnesota's by potential punishment or potential sentence and petty misdemeanors a minor crime in fact it's not even considered a  and what would give me an example will be missed i mean it might be a more serious driving offense your first time d w i is a misdemeanor you know whether you're driving after suspension that's a misdemeanor if you're reckless driving or careless driving those can be misdemeanors as assaults generally it's offenses where you had prior prior offenses in the past some thefts can be gross misdemeanors if they're over five hundred dollars in the thousand some criminal damage to property if it's over five hundred dollars can be a  you also code violations and traffic tickets that sounds kind of petty for you i mean you're you're being paid to do all this and ok let's just say code violations what's that all about i'm not saying these petty but well i mean i understand but compared to murder well that's a little low code violations i mean those are those are all considered misdemeanors ordinance violations you get a lot of compliance issues whether people you know they are in establishing the turf in their lawn or they've got take up some time because you're not really just trying to punish you're trying to get them to correct the problem and sometimes it involves a few court appearances and you know i'm not as interested as hitting them on the punitive side as making sure they correct the behavior sure now so we're talking like a trash how sore sure what about somebody that builds a grudge twenty feet over and their neighbors same thing and again is trying to rectify the problem right absolutely i mean there's there's two rows that can be taken a lot of those there are civil roads there's  a city contract with a civil attorney and you know through injunctive relief and lawsuits of a civil nature they can try and correct the property or correct the violations but the faster way to do it unfortunately is the criminal system because you can issue a citation that day and put them into the criminal arena and hopefully by being in there they know to correct the problem can you give us an example of where this happened an ordeal well i know the biggest example the last  years i know the city and i work closely this was the bus company was a first didn't bus company and there were some issues neighbors were complaining about the noise when they warm up the buses in the mornings when we had our colder months and that did two things one  zoning regulations so it was a civil issue but at the same time that was a noise ordinance violation so we brought them into court through the noise ordinance violations and then got the civil attorney to get things moving on their end of it and of eventually it was resolved and civil and which is where it should be resolved and i was able to dismiss the criminal actions because they were able to comply with everything now i live in oakdale for twenty five years and i know when that bus company put there there was nothing the road in the right or i'm sure you had a heck of a problem with that right well it was it was different i mean you know you'd think you know when people buy properties around the bus company and the bus company was there before a lot of how they were but at the same time you know they have a right to live there they have a right to live without certain inconveniences and we did a lot of tests in the noises were excessive ok all right let's talk about prosecuting you prosecute within the city limits scuse me typically speaking v the prosecuting agency is going to be for the jurisdiction where the crime originated so somebody robs a super american woodbury and they're caught in oakdale the prosecution is going to be done in woodbury  oakdale for the crimes they committed an oath well if it was separate from the original crime ok let's say that there's a body found in or down in the crime was committed in north st paul then who gets that one typically speaking i think it would be north st paul because the crime was there absolutely ok and of course investigation has to go back and find where the crime was committed is that correct absolutely ok ok down do you prosecute that sort of murders and that kind of thing i do not those would be fel level which would be defined as anything where the punishment can be over a year if another is three hundred sixty five days plus one and those would all be handled by the county attorney's so what gets them into the into the picture just the  ok once it reaches a felony it's on their desk ok and then you work with these the prosecutor on this keys and they kind of thing or i do a lot and a lot of ways where crimes go to their desk first but they don't feel it reaches a felony level and trying to work out a plea agreement sentence as a major factor in what we're determining is going to be the result as a general rule do you think that the general population feels that criminals get away with an awful lot when they start plea bargaining and i mean some serious crimes were committed in the two days in jails in these new i mean it's really all relative i know when when it's the defendant themselves they tend to think it's not as bad a crime as everybody is making it out to be and they shouldn't be punished as well solve cases where there's an event where there's a victim involved or come of them as a property cases where there's a victim involved and it's not downplaying it because i'm sure i feel the same way if i was in a position sure but when you're the victim of a crime there's absolutely no way that they can be punished enough so it really varies and i would think you know when you start comparing certain cases other cases hundreds of thousands of oranges and i would think the general public would  recently about tax preparers that were cheating you know reporting wrong taxes and that sort of thing and it was all for personal gain and a lot of it another thing is the people who are cheating from  now the senses when they were in the paper they seem to be awfully minimal and i guess i'm wondering do you ever are you ever of collusion with the judge as to how that what the sentencing should be well a lot of times i'm in those what you're talking about a lot are white collar crime and and a lot of federal offenses and the problem is in many cases there are sentencing guidelines that either the legislature or the congress have taken upon themselves to determine what somebody's going to get based on what they did how many priors they have and a lot of it's taken out of the lawyers hands out of the judge's hands but in a lot of the more serious cases they get second the judges get sentence recommendations from whether it's probation or the lawyer themselves and so they have as much information as they possibly can but going back to these cases do you feel that some of them some of these people skate pretty easily on these some of these crimes sure i mean and not face it seems that way a she did and i can't remember what the sense was but i just remember we got it was just so not much right and a lot of it too i mean it's like you said we're not there we don't know i and a case like that you know i don't know what they're pleading guilty to i don't know if they're getting a better deal because a prosecutor doesn't feel that they can prove a top charge the one that might have the biggest weight to it and it may be that they're offering the defense is offering up a plea in exchange for lower level sentences so i mean really it's just it's there's no for you i mean i would think on a weekend it must be ten fifteen at least you know it hasn't been that bad but i mean it does vary you can have weekends where you know there's one or two or not and you have weekends where there's you know anywhere between ten and twenty but yeah they all come across my desk that's part of the advantage of being in house is and that's what i do so i have the time to do it so what is your relationship with the police department there being they are ok there's a crime committed they come do you want to say this is what happened and then what you send them out of him start investigating is that correct so sometimes times what they'll do is they'll just they've done the investigation they've decided to charge whether by citation or they've asked me to do charges but a lot of times they'll send me  case where they're at and you for an opinion whether they think or whether i think the charges are ready to be brought and whether there's any questions that i want them to ask somebody and we can work together in that way so that you send the police department all to do more investigation sometimes sometimes potentially over a year in jail so you know a lot of burglaries obviously homicides you know if you just air force d w i in ten years that's going to be a felony offense and those you know those will get to prison time those aren't county jail time those are state prison time to take us through a procedure a defendant that's charged with a crime take us through the procedure one time well it'll vary by crime it's a petty misdemeanor you'll come in you'll speak to me an arraignment date and if we can't resolve the case it'll go right to a court trial because the petty misdemeanor since there's no jail time possible you don't have a right to a jury trial so the judge will decide on a misdemeanor your central getting three appearances you have an arraignment where you talk to me a pretrial where you'll eithe attorney attorney will talk to me and then a jury trial date and i had gross misdemeanor has several more appearances you have a first appearance and you have an appearance which is essentially just to set up the list of dates we're going to have for further appearances on in this hearing where it's your you had a chance to have a hearing to talk about constitutional issues you know somebody saying that why i didn't receive a miranda warning before the officer asked me a bunch of questions so i want those statements i made to be held out to be dealt with an anonymous hearing then you have a a lot of times there's not crimes of the courts going to hold them on but on serious level say assaults they've got priors off and they might be held and then those procedures will happen faster because they can they have a right to have things done in a speedy manner sure because they're sitting in jails and absolutely ok now one thing i was wondering that you always hear about sure if you're in county jail any hacker was there and was it just because of the jurisdiction or is there something more here than county jail  dealing with he was being held there because here in county has a federal detention facility where the u s marshals actually maintained a little more secure through then i'm absolutely oh ok well now just a final question here how many cases a year do you try to actually have a trial and well yes well i mean basically my case loads around this probably bought a thousand eleven hundred cases last year that that were my officers was responsible for now a lot of those are dealt with real early on  might see the hearing officer maybe a petty and they just move you know paying their fines but i probably have a dozen to twenty court trials in a year where i'm just you know whether it's a speeding ticket in some way want to have a trial and it's just me the defendant the cop the judge i had three jury trials go last year one of those ended up in the court of appeals really what was the case were they actually all three were domestic assaults it was are those are tough ones to deal with prior to a jury trial by well are you pretty happy with what you're doing are you happy with oakdale and you know i really couldn't be happier i mean i get a lot of flexibility with the city i love being in a house because of the hands on dealings i have with the officers and like i said if i have a if i have an issue whether it's a training issue the chief the captains will let me have a meeting with whatever officers see there ask the questions they have or tell them what i think and so that people learn and it's absolutely invaluable and the times i've prosecuted for other jurisdictions i didn't have that contact and the same problems would come up over over and over and over again and i couldn't be happier and a great deal i guess one last question here did you know come up with this idea or is this how did this happen you know it was with their previous prosecutor my city and they just really like the system so when it came time for him to become a judge and i was applying for the spot you know the city wanted to keep that same system going and i really think it's invaluable do you think are the communities certainly look at this you know i  know some do and i think there are some larger ones that could definitely benefit from it or you know it's tough and i am a toes but i mean it's there just advantages that can't be denied that you're ok good all right we are all the time but i want to thank you for joining us and you fill this in with a lot of information  good things ok all right thank you thank you it's time for short break but first here's this month's trivia question the annual winter wonderland is scheduled for december seventeenth at the discovery center our trivia question is how many years has the band been healed is it three years six years or eleven years we'll have the answer later in the show we'll be right back with more of oakville update in just a minute a gray what do you do when the boy should you not then just doing some bird watching yeah yeah you know this doesn't seem like such a great place for birdwatching all right i was just trying to get a look inside my city hall i don't know any other way to get information greg you're such a silly man you don't have to be a creepy spy why don't you just watch g p s and t t n yeah g t n the government television network it's on cable channel sixteen they've got a ton of information of everything that's going on in the twelve different communities in the northeast suburbs of ramsey and washington county no kidding you mean i can get all this information by watching channel sixteen at my own home you better believe it and they've got all their souls on their website too it's g t and that old r g p wow i should go check out channel sixteen right away hey we are doing over update the county has a new emergency notification system we recently visited with fire chief jeff anderson to learn more about the code red code red is a automated emergency warning system that allows the city officials or public safety officials to get the emergency nor the notification or warning out to citizens the system works by basically it's tied to a an address so for instance a party living in the city of old dale if you have a hard wired phone that system of that information is probably already in the system so one two three four main street is associated with a certain phone number if the fire official for instance if we had an incident at fifteenth and hadley and i need to notify everybody within a one thousand foot radius of that intersection we can call the county dispatch center they enter those coordinates in the system will search and find all the addresses within that thousand foot radius and then make phone calls to the phones that are associated with those addresses you could go to the city's web site that just c i dot oakdale dot m and that us and right on the web page on the front you'll see a big logo for code red if you click on that it will take you into a registration page and from there you can enter your address your name and then put any cell phone numbers are that you might want to receive the message at or if you want to get a text message or email addresses or those then again if your address comes up it will notify the those devices gives us another tool and another way to fairly quickly you know notify the public that need to be notified it gives us the ability to you know rather than broadcasting through a radio or television station we can broadcast to just a very specific audience and that's what we're looking for we're just about out of time but first let's answer a trivia question we asked how many years has the winter wonderland event been held in the city the correct answer is eleven years the feature events at this year's winter wonderland are visits with santa take a horse drawn sleigh ride snowshoeing petting zoo and reindeer and a number of other winter activities and events along with breakfast and lunch this free event is sponsored by the city the oakdale business and professional association platinum bank and the lions club that's all we have time for for everyone at the city of oakdale thanks for watching here are some scenes from winter wonderland activities l winter wonderland is a big big big deal the two thousand and ten fest had an estimated crowd over twelve hundred visitors there's plenty for them to do doors in the nature preserve for indoors and the warm and inviting discovery center outside was a free petting zoo with some fuzzy and interested friends snowshoeing rentals this very popular here ride to one point five mile loop in the nature preserves trails inside the discover center it was sometimes hard to find a place just to rest free food was provided by local sponsors businesses in the city of oakdale