Protecting Witnesses to Crimes

All too often, police scour a crowd that surely contains witnesses to a blatant crime, but bystanders claim they didn’t see a thing. It’s a frequent refrain. At other times, witnesses who have agreed to testify suddenly change their minds; not even the threat of jail time can persuade them to cooperate. And some witnesses end up dead before they can testify.

It’s a Southern California problem, and a national one as well. In November 1996, for example, a Justice Department report said that “witness intimidation is widespread, increasing and having a serious impact on the prosecution of crime around the entire country.”

Local criminal justice efforts at protecting witnesses are thin, involving only money for the witnesses’ first and last month’s rent at a hideaway house. The problem is severe in Los Angeles, where only one-third of homicide investigations result in successful prosecutions. Protection programs are so inadequate that police have had to dig into their own pockets for relocation money. Witnesses are not protected or supported financially.

Assemblyman Robert M. Hertzberg (D-Woodland Hills) would buttress local efforts through a bill to create a state witness protection program run through the attorney general’s office. It would provide protections from ranging from physical relocations and new identities to psychological counseling. Federal funding would be sought to help administer the program, since the cost factor figures to become the biggest stumbling block for Hertzberg’s bill. Mike Genelin, head Los Angeles deputy district attorney for the hard-core gang division, notes, for example, that “relocation is a sizable chunk of change.”

Simply put, if the Legislature and the governor back this bill, they must do so with the knowledge that the program figures to be expensive. But expense alone cannot be allowed to thwart plans for a well-run and efficient witness protection program. Hertzberg’s bill addresses the fact that too many hard-core criminals are literally getting away with murder; his efforts deserve strong consideration and support.