Elsewhere?

Note to self (and everyone, I suppose): If you’re going to go to a beautiful country for some reason, go ahead and stay longer than six days. It’s fun.

When I got back Monday, I meant to tell a little about the trip to Guatemala a few of us took. It was a wonderful place. Andrew Donohue‘s wedding could not have been better. But upon my arrival, I heard there was a bit of a change in District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ indefatigable pursuit of public integrity so I just jumped back into the thick of things with that.

I’m still waiting on a call back. I’d like to know a bit more about why Patrick O’Toole was transferred away from Dumanis’ public integrity unit and what that means for the great cause. Like I said before, his placement at the top of the unit was apparently worthy of a major public announcement. Now he’s been removed and they’re just clamming up. I suppose they’d rather just keep letting me put the whole thing into perspective alone.

So let’s do that shall we? I need some help. Can anyone out there think of a district attorney somewhere who has a functioning public corruption investigation team? I’d like to look into some examples of DAs getting this done right — with seasoned prosecutors bringing strong cases over many years and, most importantly, giving the entire community the sense that everyone needs to keep things straight or the DA will pounce. Perhaps there’s just no one who has figured out how to do this well. Or maybe, San Diego is squeaky clean and has nothing to investigate and the district attorney has to move prosecutors out of the division after only 17 months just to keep them from dying of boredom.

That must be it. But if you do know of a good example of another community’s prosecutor setting this kind of thing up right from whom we might learn, let’s give it a look anyway.

— SCOTT LEWIS