ELK GROVE, Calif. — The City of Elk Grove is bringing on a new community prosecutor to focus on enforcing quality of life crimes, ranging from retail theft to loitering.
The prosecutor will work with the city and regional law enforcement to come up with strategies and to find answers to address these problems.
As of now, four community prosecutors are assigned to various neighborhoods across the county.
"What we try to do is we try to prevent crime from happening," said Rochelle Beardsley, assistant chief deputy district attorney.
Unlike traditional prosecutors, who work reactively when someone commits a crime, the community prosecutor works proactively.
"They work proactively with law enforcement to handle kind of like quality of life issues, quality of life crimes -- think about neighborhoods experiencing blight, nuisance, think about the broken windows theory, right?" said Beardsley.
Elk Grove Police Department said the program has proven successful in other parts of the county as they look to bring it into the city.
"It's the perfect time to bring this to the department and take our service to the next level," said Lt. Dan Templeton.
He calls the program another tool in the department's toolbelt to hold criminals accountable.
"We want to further enhance our current existing partnership and prosecution with the district attorney's office to further address quality of life issues such as substance abuse, retail theft, sideshows, reckless driving behavior, loitering and trespassing disturbances and nuisance properties that we commonly get complaints about," said Lt. Templeton.
The community prosecutor is also expected to attend meetings of community organizations and get to know people in order to better meet their needs.
Lt. Templeton said the goal is to bring the community prosecutor on board by July.
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