LYNN — Paul Tucker is taking an unconventional path to the Essex County district attorney’s office.
The former Salem police chief and current state representative said he wants to be the county’s top law enforcement official in part because he sees the job as being “the person with the vision,” meaning his relative lack of experience as an attorney wouldn’t make an impact on his ability to do the job.
“Honestly, I think if the DA is in the courtroom every day, there’s something wrong,” Tucker said in an interview with The Item’s Editorial Board Monday morning. “That’s not the job. The job is to lead, is to be a community person. I spent as a police chief and as a rep, I spent 85 percent of my time in the community.… I think it’s the DA’s job to be the face of the office and to make sure that he or she is accessible.”
Tucker said his breadth of experience as a public official has made him well prepared to succeed Blodgett, citing his time on the judiciary, public safety, and mental health substance use disorder committees as a state representative.
“All of them, I believe, touch directly upon what the DA’s office does,” he said. “A lot of people have a sense that the DA is just in there prosecuting cases and works these high profile cases. I see that as a very small percentage of the job, that’s the assistant DA’s job. But the DA has to do so much more … I just think that if people look at my experience as long as they don’t stop at the law enforcement piece … I can get them to understand what I would do as DA.”
Despite the DA’s position as the chief law enforcement official in the county, Tucker said he would take a team approach if elected.
“It really is a team effort,” he said. “When I worked with the DA’s office, there may be times where I thought the investigation was at a very good point. And an assistant DA might say you know what, go back out, interview this person, follow up on this, check this building, see if there’s cameras here, and it’s a working team.”
Tucker is running against Middleton-based Attorney James O’Shea to replace Jonathan Blodgett, who decided against running for re-election after serving for 20 years. Both Tucker and O’Shea are running as Democrats, meaning the election will be effectively decided next Tuesday.
Blodgett endorsed Tucker as his successor earlier this month, and Tucker said he would aim to build on the work Blodgett did in the area of cybersecurity.
“The laws have generally not kept up with the pace of technology,” he said. “On the DA’s end, there was a very, very big role to play. I think a lot of it has to do with prevention and education.… It’s about being in a place where you can do something about it and hence we have to work with the schools as well. This is a big deal, I think this is sort of a hidden secret, the cyber stuff.”
Tucker stayed away from criticizing O’Shea, but said he believes they have fundamentally different views of the position.
“My opponent last week … he talked about as DA still wanting to go in and try cases and be in the courtroom,” he said. “The assistant DAs are in court every day. He talks about how the law has rapidly changed in district court and unless you were there you won’t know it. I think that that would come as a surprise to the Supreme Judicial Court, the appeals court, and the Legislature. Frankly, we make the law, we set the punishment.”
Q: What is your vision for the DA’s office under your leadership?
“A lot of it right now is as the whole country and the state has moved away from a punishment based system. It’s really about how do we help people before the system. A lot of people don’t know that the district attorney has really the sole discretion on what charges are brought, if charges are bright, and really acts at the very beginning, at the front end of the criminal justice system to see who enters the system. And, frankly, a lot of what we’ve done over the years is put too many people into the system.… A lot of it is making sure you have best practices on the front end, it’s really about getting away from convictions, rather than securing justice and what’s best for people.”
Q: How can the DA’s office discourage repeat offenders?
“It’s really a team approach. It’s working with corrections. It’s working with probation. We have so many good things in place right now. We’ve done a lot at the statehouse in the last eight years in terms of programming, and really it began with a shift in the thinking about this. If you took a look back in the mid 80s, it was all punishment based. We didn’t know the difference between somebody who was in the grip of addiction, versus somebody who was selling or trafficking drugs, particularly now fentanyl, which has been the biggest problem. I think we missed a lot of that. So now I think there’s a realization and how do we carry that out? So I think it’s really, it’s good discretion.”
Q: What makes you the most qualified candidate?
“In 32 years, I was a very, very active police officer, most of my time in detectives. I followed cases all the way through, over 1,000 cases. I was on the DA’s domestic violence team, did the sexual assault investigations, did the homicide investigations. I think it really shouldn’t be lost on anybody and one thing my opponent does not talk about is the DA is the chief law enforcement officer of the county. And we just saw that again the other day when [Blodgett] brought this John Carey to justice it was leading on the criminal justice front and the law enforcement front. And that’s something that my opponent, I’ve never heard him talk about that, that’s a big piece of the job. By law, the DA is in charge of any unintended death. Those are all criminal investigations. And the person I believe at the top of the list, the DA, has to have the criminal justice experience and investigative experience.… Second part I think is being a voice for victims. I don’t think anybody else in Essex County has talked with or worked with more victims than I did in my career. I still get calls from families of homicide victims to check in with me, see how I’m doing because you develop relationships with them.… And I think that has a lot to do with building confidence in the DA’s office to make sure that people know that you’ll stand with them.… I’ve been here at the front end. In my eight years at the State House, I think we’ve done some of the most consequential reforms in the history of the Commonwealth.”
Q: What is the DA’s role in criminal justice reform?
“The DAs have a role to play here and they have a voice to use and I think it’s important to hear their perspective. We also have to respect and understand that it’s the Legislature that ends up making the laws and we did that we did a 600 page reform in 2018. Actually, I was on the committee that worked on that, I was on the committee with the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, one of only two non-members. We wanted to make sure that everybody was heard in this case, and I know some of the DAs will be unhappy about some of the things. For instance, some of the penalties, changes in the law … but the important thing is that they were heard. They’re not always going to get everything they want. That’s just not the system, but they do have a role to play.”
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].
