Pima County Attorney forum a one-man show

A planned forum with incumbent Barbara LaWall and her opponent for Pima County Attorney Brad Roach ended up being a one-man show as LaWall didn’t attend on Saturday.

She was represented by a letter sent to the forum’s sponsor, the Green Valley Sahuarita Chamber of Commerce, with Randy Graf reading the letter to an audience of eight.

“As you can imagine, my campaign calendar has been solidly packed for weeks now, and has actually become rather overbooked as the election approaches. Unfortunately, due to several previously scheduled and long-standing commitments throughout the day on Saturday, Oct. 6, I am unable to attend the Sahuarita Green Valley Chamber’s two-hour discussion forum on crime and the community.”

The e-mail letter was dated Thursday, Oct. 2 at 5:26 p.m.

Her letter goes on to say that if she is given the privilege to serve the people of Pima County for another four years, she will be more than willing to schedule a community forum after the election to discuss the issue of crime and the business community and other matters.

Lack of an opponent or a substantial audience didn’t stop challenger Roach from talking about problems and issues he sees in the current Pima County Attorney’s office.

On the issue of property and business crimes, he said the Attorney’s office has failed and that when LaWall took office she eliminated the fraud unit.

He explained that crimes of fraud are not easy to prosecute and said, “There was some hope with a fraud unit.

“It’s very, very difficult for any business who’s been embezzled to get help. The Pima County Attorney’s office simply doesn’t take the cases,” Roach said.

One question from the audience focused on how to stop low-level crimes. If such criminals succeed and aren’t tried and punished, they then move up the ladder to higher-level crimes.

Responding, Roach said, “The message is, if not prosecuted, it’s OK to steal. When we don’t prosecute property and fraud cases, we fail the whole community.”

He also spoke about illegal immigrants being held accountable for any crimes and said businesses must be held accountable, as well.

“Walls will do so much. If people are starving, they’ll continue to try to cross the border, but if there are no jobs here, they’ll stop coming,” he said.

If elected, Roach said, he would occasionally take a case to trial “as a leadership thing.”

“I’ve never seen Barbara LaWall in court watching her attorneys. How does she know if they’re doing a good job? Her employees are her prime asset,” Roach said.

Asked to qualify a statement he made at the Wednesday, Sept. 24 forum at the West Center regarding Pima County’s crime rate being higher than New York City’s crime rate, Roach said, “Violent, burglary and property crimes are 285 percent higher in Pima County” and those statistics were taken from the 2006 Uniform Crime Report. The 2007 report statistics isn’t yet available.

Ellen Sussman is a freelance writer in Green Valley. Contact her at ellen2414@cox.net.