... along the lines of your final comment will follow, Pete, but first wanted to say I thought I remembered you saying that you were a PD. Sorry for the error. Perhaps sometime in the past??

Anyway, I agree 100% with your final assessment regarding the waste of taxpayer dollars.

When I was a prosecutor myself, I spent a year (1980) assigned as the assistant head of court in the Orange County California DA's office juvenile branch. In that capacity, I was responsible for reviewing the filing of certain kinds of cases.

One day, one of our young DA's referred to me a report requesting the filing of several fairly serious misdemeanor charges, including reckless driving, evading a peace officer, resisting arrest, driving on a sidewalk and assault on a peace officer.

The facts, essentially, were as follows:

A teenage boy on a bicycle in a bike lane was stopped at a red light when a police car pulled up next to him. He looked over, saw the cop in the passenger seat "giving him a funny look" and spit on the right side of the police car.

The passenger cop started to get out and the kid booked, running the red light. The cops took after him with red lights and siren going. The kid rode his bike like a banshee, running a couple of other red lights, riding on the sidewalk and causing pedestrians to scatter like ten pins.

Eventually, he got tired and the cops closed in, so he ditched the bike and ran into a local supermarket, where the cops found him hiding in the produce bin! They dragged him out of the bin (unresistance at this point), arrested him, cuffed him and took him to juvenile hall, where they held him until his parents arrived to take him home.

I didn't think much of the case and thought the cops had seriously overreacted, both in their actions and in their requested charges (the "assault", BTW, was for the spitting, not for trying to hit one of the cops). So, I wrote across the face of the complaint request, "Refused -- Contempt of cop is not a crime." The report was then returned to the PD via their liaison officer.

The next day, a sergeant from the department called and asked to speak to the head of court. He was on vacation, so the call was referred to me. This Sgt. was apoplectic as he screamed at me that he "wanted the ass" of the DA who had refused the case, thinking it was one of our young and inexperienced trial lawyers.

I told him that it was I who had refused the case and explained why, in no uncertain terms, there would be no prosecution. Unsatisfied (to say the least ), the Sgt. went over my head to the Assistant DA in charge of Special Operations, which included juvenile court.

The Asst. DA backed my decision not to file charges, but came to see me with the following advice (paraphrased, as I don't recall his exact words, but something very similar to this):

"The next time you want to refuse a case like that, please use the phrase, THE APPROPRIATE ALLOCATION OF SCARCE PROSECUTORIAL RESOURCES DOES NOT PERMIT THE FILING OF CHARGES IN THIS CASE."

Frankly, I still like my version better!

----- jim o\-S