King County prosecutor candidate calls pursuit laws ‘outrageous’

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell is a candidate for King County prosecutor. As part of his platform, he said we need to address flawed pursuit laws.

Ferrell is facing Leesa Manion, Chief of Staff at the prosecutor’s office. Manion will be on KIRO Newsradio Thursday.

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Ferrell, appearing on The Gee and Ursula Show, said that the King County prosecutor should go down to Olympia and fix the laws. “Because right now, if your car got stolen, and a police officer was behind your car, that police officer is not allowed to pursue your stolen car.

“That’s outrageous, that needs to get fixed,” Ferrell continued. “And we need a prosecutor going down there and link up arms with prosecutors and law enforcement to fix that.”

Ferrell says he would address the case backlog issue

On crime and drug issues, Ferrell said the first thing he would do to address the backlog of cases in the prosecutor’s office is to dismiss some low-level cases.

“It’s a capacity of the system issue. There are cases that are going to be in the medium and the low level,” Ferrell said. “Some of the low-level cases are going to have to be dismissed. You cannot push 4,500 cases through the system. Without them falling away.”

Ferrell said solving the backlog will not be an easy issue. “You’ve got to make some difficult decisions. But you’ve got to get to zero on this backlog because these cases don’t get better over time.”

Crime is a top priority

Ferrell believes that crime in the area is getting to unacceptable levels. He also feels he has the background to tackle the problem.

“I’ve put together a coalition of people from law enforcement, city leaders, and mayor’s from around the region to be able to really make an impact on crime. I believe in second chances, but not a revolving door.”

Ferrell says he has two decades of experience

Ursula asked Ferrell what he would bring to the prosecutor’s office. “I was formerly at the prosecutor’s office for 16 years, where I was a senior deputy prosecutor.

“I tried hundreds of cases and handled thousands of them,” he continued.

“Even before that, I was a city prosecutor with the city of Renton for three years. So I’ve got almost two decades of experience. Nineteen years, you know, I’ve been leading the city of Federal Way, a city of over 100,000 people now.”

Listen to Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.