WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) -- One of Wisconsin’s candidates for Attorney General campaigned in Wausau Friday afternoon. Jon Richards is leaving his 19th Assembly District seat to run for Attorney General. The Milwaukee area Democrat believes there are several areas the Department of Justice can do more to improve Wisconsin...
Richards believes the top issue right now is fighting the drug and alcohol problems, and continue to fight Internet crimes against children. “Wisconsin faces a number of challenges. We face a terrible problem with heroin here in Marathon County, and around the state. We continue to have a problem with drunk driving, and our consumers are under attack, children are being preyed upon by people who are on the Internet, and we have to protect Wisconsinites from all of those things.”
The Legislature did not make significant changes to the penalties for first-offense drunk drivers. Richards believes the Legislature failed on this issue. “I think we should get tougher on first-time drunk driving. If you look at the number of people who are killed due to drunk driving accidents, most of the time, it happens when that person hasn’t been cited before for drunk driving. That means we need to do a better job of reaching out to people and making sure that everyone understands that driving drunk is serious business and can end up killing somebody, and there had to be some serious consequences.”
Technology has made investigating crimes much different than things were even 10 years ago. Richards believes the Department of Justice needs to help local enforcement agencies deal with lengthy and complicated examination of smartphones used in crimes. “When you get into a situation where there’s been a long relationship with somebody, and a death results or something else terrible happens, the prosecutor and the police department has to spend a great deal of time going through that smartphone to take a look at what’s there in terms of evidence, and it’s very time consuming. The Department of Justice has a very important role to play to help move that along and to make that process quicker and more efficient.”
Richards says Wisconsin should invest more in alternative programs like drug courts, which he says reduces costs and the rate of recidivism. “Drug courts are a good investment for Wisconsin, a great investment for public safety. We say if you’re just looking at it in dollars and cents, we save two dollars for every dollar we invest in drug courts, but much more important, we end up with a safer community because what we find is when people go through a drug treatment court, they’re far less likely to reoffend when they come out of jail.”
The controversial voter ID law is still tied up in the courts. The Milwaukee Democrat believes the court should block the law, and that the law as passed prevents people from voting. “I think it goes way too far, and I think it restricts people from voting who have been solid citizens for thirty years, sometimes poll workers for thirty years, and it gets to the point where if something is out of whack with your birth certificate or other vital record that you need to prove who you are, you end up having to pay the state to exercise your right to vote, and I don’t think that’s right.”