Jamestown Police Chief Harry Snellings

JAMESTOWN – Police Chief and Public Safety Director Harry Snellings gave a brief update Monday night to the Jamestown City Council on how the new criminal justice reform laws changes are impacting Jamestown Police Department.

Snellings said department personnel put the rule changes for discovery into place last month to try and get a sense for how they would affect operations and he said city police have fallen behind on recording evidence.

“Our big concern right now is discovery. We are kind of in a wait-and-see mode as far as how that is going to affect us,” Snellings said. “We actually started implementing this back in December just to get the bugs out and get a better feel. We’re now a month in. We thought a month would be a good measure and it definitely has been. Once happening now is we’ve actually fallen behind in the handling of physical evidence because the majority of our attention is focused on all the digital evidence right now. We’ve got only one person who can handle it.”

Snellings adds that a plan is now in place to deal with the backlog of evidence.

“What we’ve done in the interim, we have a plan. Right now we have a case detective that we’ve cross-trained in the evidence handling who is assisting, but that takes that detective away from his day-to-day case work,” Snelling said.

Snellings added that to compound the problem he currently has one staff member responsible for processing digital evidence out on medical leave.

Under the state’s new discovery law, all evidence collected by police now has to be submitted to the court within 15-days, although a judge is allowed to grant an extension upon request in some instances.

The city council is also weighing the option of voting on a motion that would call for the state to repeal or at least an amending of the criminal justice reforms.

Members of the county Community Justice Coordinating Council – including Sheriff James Quattrone (left) – during the panel’s September 2019 meeting.

MAYVILLE – The issue of criminal justice reform and the impact its had on law enforcement across the state will likely be the main topic of discussion when Chautauqua County’s Community Justice Coordinating Council holds its January meeting Wednesday in Mayville.

The council – which includes various members from local law enforcement including the sheriff’s office, the county DA’s office, and the county probation department – was created a couple years ago to identify and address issues and challenges in the local criminal justice system. For much of 2019 the panel’s main focus was on the state’s criminal justice reforms, which include eliminating bail for non violent crimes as well as changing rules involving discovery.

Now that the reforms are fully in place, the council will likely get an update on how they have impacted law enforcement and prosecution at the local level.

Wednesday’s meeting of the council is at 1 p.m. in the Gerace Office building in Mayville and is open to the public.

• AUDIO ALSO AVAILABLE AT SOUNDCLOUD

Originally airing on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019

WRFA’s Jason Sample talks with Chautauqua County Public Defender Ned Barone to get his take on the state’s new Criminal Justice reform measures that will be going into effect starting January 1, 2020 and why he is in favor of them.

• RELATED: SHERIFF JIM QUATTRONE AND DISTRICT ATTORNEY PATRICK SWANSON DISCUSS CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM (SEP 2019)

Ned Barone

• ALSO AVAILABLE AT THE WRFA SOUNDCLOUD PAGE

WRFA’s Jason Sample talks with Chautauqua County District Attorney Patrick Swanson and Chautauqua County Sheriff James Quattrone about the impact the recent Criminal Justice Reform measures enacted by the State Legislature will have the local criminal justice system and their respective offices.  According to Swanson and Quattrone, the state’s bail reform efforts as well as reform measures relating to the discovery phase of a criminal investigation could have a negative impact on public safety unless each office is provided with additional resources.

(Originally airing Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019)

Patrick Swanson (left) and James Quattrone