Lessons Learned About Prosecution and Police Partnering
The experience of the King County Prosecutor’s Office and the Seattle Police Department during the grant period produced useful information about interagency partnering.
- Collaboration among agencies can take time and persistence, especially
when the partnership is new. Working out program issues and details
among agencies and including all the appropriate players can be a complicated
process, even when agencies have agreed to collaborate on a new program.
- Selecting a prosecutor who has real interest in and enthusiasm for
the particular project is essential.
- Flexibility is important. SPD adjusted its program to fit the talents
and skills of the prosecutor chosen for the project, and the prosecutor’s
office allowed him the freedom to work with SPD to refine the program
to best meet the goals of the grant.
- All agencies in a partnership benefit. Improving communication between
the police and prosecutor had a big payoff in the creation of stronger
cases.
- A new program does not have to be costly. The Seattle YHVI program included a database component. Another agency interested in starting a similar program could use the database information from this pilot project to guide the creation of its own program without duplicating the database component of the grant. An agency could restructure to create a half-time prosecutor position to perform the law enforcement liaison and prosecutor functions of the YHVI grant position.
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