Drug court

He knew I was just wrapped up in addiction.

Um, he s- "Steve, what are we [chuckles] gonna do to get you on the right track?" Um, so instead of putting down a serious, throwing me in jail for a while, uh, he got me into drug court, which was a two-year thing where I had to go see a judge once, at least once a month, have a consistent connection with a probation officer.

I had to be in treatment the entire two months.

I had to have drug tests through that treatment center, but also through the state, um, several times a week Um, and it was the best thing that happened to m- to me, uh, being that restricted in that sense, uh, where I had no room to mess up.

W- we have alcoholics and addicts, and we have gambling addiction.

We have, uh, overeating addiction.

And, um, we actually, this next couple months, I'm very excited, we have a, uh, a drug court judge coming on.

Mm.

I've known them for a long time, like them, respect them.

Here's what happened is we have drug court in both Payne and Logan County.

It's one corporation that provides services for both Payne and Logan County because the DAs and the judicial district is one district, those two counties together.

And so drug court is in dire straits as far as finances go.

A lot of that's coming from mismanagement of the Department of Mental Health.

And I will openly say that.

So funding is an issue.

We've seen funding go downhill.

And the typical order of business on that would be they would be charged with felony possession of dangerous drugs, maybe being under the influence of those drugs if sufficient evidence could be collected.

They'd go to court and they'd have a chance to stipulate to their guilt but go to drug court where they had supervised, court supervised treatment.

And that was very, very effective.

So if you think back to the time before Proposition 47 was

Thomas Aquinas' approach towards justice, actually recognizing the fact that there's a duty and an obligation, not only for the would-be victims, the potential victims, but the offenders themselves, to have the benefit of a more whole approach to imposing consequences against bad behavior.

Well, and how many people, you know, have testified, right? People that were in that lifestyle, you know, and got their lives back on track, right? What was sort of the signal? What was the reason that they were able to do that? For a lot of them, it was they hit rock bottom, right? They ended up in a place that they never thought they would be, and they saw no other choice but to reform their lives.

And Drug Court was a big part.

In fact, you were present at the biggest signing event for Proposition 36 in the state of California.

When it comes to some of the tenure here, I had some questions of some of the changes that have happened.

In January, I think it was of this year, you mentioned that the supervisor, that your office won't participate in the Drug Court, Veterans Court, or DWI Court this year.

But I do note that you also said, hey, look, we're going to reevaluate maybe in 2027.

What needs to change? Well, first, why? Why are you not participating in that, number one?

Yeah, and so I've talked a lot about drug court.

We've seen success in drug court.

I was instrumental in one of the individuals that started drug court 20 years ago.

And so we knew we had a good system in place when we had really, I guess, the right mix of the right judges, the right prosecutors.