You may have heard that electing Nicole Thomas-Kennedy as the City Attorney will trigger torrents of blood and heroin needles to fall from the sky. That’s because Fox News and the suits who back her Trumpian opponent spent a lot of money making histrionic claims about the perils of not throwing poor people in jail (at a cost of $176 per night) and pointing to some allegedly NTK-involved tweets that say pee pee poo poo on the cops. Now don’t get us wrong — nobody loves wild theatrics more than the SECB, especially when there are drugs involved — but let’s all calm down for a second.
The City Attorney’s office defends the city against lawsuits, advises City Hall on the legality of certain policies, and makes decisions about prosecuting misdemeanors and traffic infractions. That’s the scope.
NTK’s opponent, Ann Davison, who became a Republican during the Trump administration, thinks NTK will unleash chaos by declining to prosecute most low-level crimes. To make her case, she points to a recent increase in the rates of some felonies, which the office doesn’t handle. When challenged on that point, Davison falls back on the theory that jailing more people for misdemeanors will prevent felonies.
