D.A. Raises Priority of Low-Level Offenses : Law: Michael D. Bradbury has drawn on $2 million from Prop. 172 to hire 19 new attorneys. Many will prosecute misdemeanors ignored since ’91.

Most people driving without a license, mistreating their animals or pulling too many clams from the ocean have escaped prosecution in Ventura County for nearly three years.

But those days will soon be over, the district attorney’s office says.

Using his $2-million allotment from Proposition 172--the voter-approved half-cent sales tax for public safety--Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury has hired 19 new deputy district attorneys, many of whom will be prosecuting low-level misdemeanors that have been largely ignored since August, 1991.

Bradbury once had a staff of 24 attorneys prosecuting misdemeanors, but severe funding cuts reduced it to 14 at one point. With the new hires, it is back up to 21, officials said.

With the Proposition 172 funds, just about all misdemeanors will become a priority once again, said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee.

Many public officials who had lamented the decision to stop prosecuting some misdemeanors said they were pleased to see those crimes getting more attention.

But McGee said it will take a month or two to get the new hires fully trained because some are recent law school graduates.

One of the new prosecutors, 27-year-old Tina Nunes-Ober, said she looks forward to trying misdemeanors as she tackles trial work for the first time.

But another new hire, 54-year-old Bob Calvert, is not new to prosecuting crimes. He comes from the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office with 16 years experience, prosecuting everything from minor crimes to murders before juries.

“Doing a misdemeanor trial or a murder trial is the same thing,” Calvert said. “You still have to convince 12 people of the facts.”

Ventura County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Ken Kipp said that with the new emphasis on misdemeanors, criminals will get the message that their behavior won’t be tolerated.

He said his deputies have continued to make the same number of misdemeanor arrests the past three years, despite the fact that many would not be accepted by the district attorney’s office for prosecution.

“I understand that the rejection ratio during those times was higher, and I would suspect as the district attorney’s office hires on more personnel that the ratio will drop,” Kipp said.

Animal advocates hailed the change in policy, adding that since mid-1991 prosecutors have been less willing to file charges of animal cruelty.

In fact, said Joyce George, president of the Humane Society of Ventura County, prosecutors stopped filing misdemeanor animal-cruelty charges altogether.

“There were several cases of ours that were not prosecuted because they were not felonies,” said George, who said prosecutions went from about a dozen a year to about four a year. “Sure, they were just misdemeanors, but tell the animal that. We are certainly in favor of prosecuting misdemeanors again.”

Prosecutors said they never flat-out rejected any category of crime for prosecution. But they concede that they focused on the more egregious misdemeanor offenses.

“We’ve never had a complete ‘we-won’t-file-them’ attitude,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Nancy Ayers, supervisor of the misdemeanor unit. “But we were looking at them with a lot more decision making.”

Ayers said budget problems also affected the ability of the district attorney’s office to fill the jobs of some felony prosecutors lost through attrition.

She said most of her experienced misdemeanor prosecutors were promoted to felony divisions once the new group of attorneys hired in March arrived.

This has resulted in a misdemeanor unit that is eager but relatively inexperienced, she said.

“Not very many people have very much experience,” Ayers acknowledged.

But new prosecutor Nunes-Ober said she expects most of her colleagues to catch on to their jobs quickly because of their enthusiasm.

Nunes-Ober, who graduated in 1992 from Suffolk University in Boston, moved to California with her husband, Rich. After two years of public-interest work, she decided to become a prosecutor, but every office in the state said the same thing: not hiring because of funding.

But she persisted and got one of the 19 new jobs in Ventura County when the budget loosened up.

After a month of training, Nunes-Ober won her first case three weeks ago. It was a marijuana-possession case, one that might not have been tried before March for lack of resources. The defendant was fined several hundred dollars, she said.

“I was nervous and excited at the same time,” said Nunes-Ober, who is soft-spoken but authoritative in court. “Your adrenaline is going because you’re not sure you know what you are doing. But it’s the only way to learn.”

Bob Calvert tried his first case in 1975 as a rookie prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, where his 16 years as a deputy district attorney included a stint as felony supervisor.

In one case, Calvert obtained a conviction against Yolo County prosecutor Steve Henderson, who had been arrested in Santa Barbara for drunk driving.

In 1991, Calvert said, he decided to spend time doing other things in life.

“I got on my sailboat, headed out to the South Pacific and spent two years floating around out there,” he explained.

Despite his experience, Calvert said his return to the courtroom made him nervous. His first trial was also a misdemeanor drunk-driving case, which he won.

“I certainly had butterflies when I did the trial,” he said.

It was his last misdemeanor trial too. After just a few weeks on the job, he was promoted to the felony sexual-assaults unit.