Douglas County district attorney details staffing, case backlog and data-storage costs

District Attorney Dakota Loomis told the Douglas County Board of County Commissioners on March 5 that his office is working to reduce a backlog of charging decisions, restore interagency relationships and address significant data and storage challenges in the office's case-management and discovery systems.

Loomis said the office has about 600 backlog cases that need charge decisions and prosecutes roughly 1,200 criminal cases a year plus about twice that number in traffic cases. "Roughly right now, we have about 600 backlog cases that need to have charge decisions made on them," Loomis said. He said the office is budgeted for 15.4 full-time attorneys and currently has 13 full-time attorneys plus the district attorney.

Loomis described ongoing operational reorganization and recruitment. He said six new staff had recently joined the office: the district attorney, a chief of staff, an executive assistant and three prosecutors (named in the transcript as Eve Kempel, William "Will" Skepnick and Jason McElrath). He also described several planned or recent retirements and departures that contributed to turnover.

A central topic of Loomis's presentation was technology. The office uses a cloud-based case-management system known as PBK; Loomis said the system was implemented countywide in October 2022 and requires training and configuration. He said discovery storage is a particular challenge: the office has about 44 terabytes of video queued for cleanup in PBK and large amounts of additional video stored outside the prosecutorial system. Loomis said consolidating video storage in the Axon Justice discovery system and keeping large media in Axon rather than PBK could significantly lower costs, while PBK retains documents and indexing. "We probably have, in the last 4 or 5 years, 10 x that, if not more, in terms of video and data that we have to store," Loomis said.

Loomis gave a concrete cost figure for storage as an example and a driver for change: "At this point, it should be $2,223,000 dollars a year because that's what the storage for PBK costs us," he said, adding that much of that video is also stored in Axon and that storage choices can reduce duplicated costs.

He described steps to rebuild relationships with local police agencies and the sheriff's office, including biweekly meetings with chiefs and special-victim-unit discussions with investigators. Loomis said restoring communication aims to improve charging decisions, evidence collection and timely responses to prosecutors' needs.

Loomis also discussed victim services. The office has a VOCA-funded victim-witness position and a VAWA-funded position for domestic-violence and stalking cases; he said the office is seeking to hire for those roles and to implement updated victim-centered policies and training in coordination with the Kansas Attorney General's Office.

On specific operational changes, Loomis said his office is reinstituting weekend charging so prosecutors can make earlier charging decisions and reduce time people spend in custody awaiting charging decisions. He said early charging decisions can reduce unnecessary time in custody and better inform bonding decisions at first appearance.

Commissioners asked about compensation, recruiting and whether the office can publish goals and performance data. Loomis said the office is working with the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and county partners to improve data integrity so the public can access nonconfidential metrics about case pendency, charging times and victim contacts.

Loomis closed by saying the office is still building capacity and relationships but has received cooperative support from law enforcement and county partners as it works through staffing, training and systems changes.