The number of felonies prosecuted in Allegan County continues to rise.
Allegan County Prosecuting Attorney Roberts Kengis told county commissioners at their meeting Sept. 28 that felonies reached 1,097 in 2016.
“Our numbers are going up since 2014, about 10 percent every year,” Kengis said.
The category of felonies includes every case punishable by more than one year in county jail.
His 2016 report showed felonies at their highest level since at least 2007; that year, there were 1,032. The number of felonies stayed below 1,000 until 2013, when they spiked to 1,007; they fell to 910 in 2014, but have climbed ever since.
Kengis said much of the increase was likely due to cases involving drug abuse.
Nearly half of the cases were controlled substance violations, 498 in 2016, up from 391 in 2015.
Kengis said, “You can see a pretty big increase between 2015 and 2016. It’s a 27-percent increase.
“And we’re seeing a large increase in the number of cases we’re prosecuting for heroin and prescription drugs.
“The methamphetamine problem is not going away. It’s changed in the sense that we’re not seeing as many meth labs, which is a good thing—but we’re seeing a large influx of what we call crystal ice, meth that is manufactured more professionally and then imported into the United States, usually through Mexico.”
Felony criminal sexual conduct cases rose from 91 in 2015 to 117 in 2016.
Felony assaults rose from 181 in 2015 to 237 in 2016.
Outside of strictly felony cases, Kengis said the prosecutor’s office authorized 718 cases in 2016 that had various elements of domestic violence.
“Domestic violence cases comprise a large amount of the caseload that we deal with,” he said. “That works out to 59 a month and about two per day we are authorizing.”
He said he was proud of the office’s victim services unit, which made contact with victims in these cases 8,678 times through phone, email and mail.
Commissioner Jim Storey asked Kengis if there was a connection between the rise in substance abuse cases and the domestic violence cases.
“Absolutely,” Kengis said. “The driving factor in domestic violence cases is power and control issues. But with the rise in substance abuse cases, we see also a rise in domestic violence—and other crimes as well, assault outside of domestic violence, robberies. It influences everything.”
He said those sentenced for domestic violence frequently were assigned to batterers treatment as well as substance abuse treatment.
“That’s because the two really do go hand in hand,” he said.
Speaking more broadly, substance abuse plays a role in almost every case the office handles. He read from an unnamed presentence report for a 24-year-old charged with resisting arrest to provide an example.
“This is how it hits home for me,” Kengis said. “The defendant has used or abused just about every kind of substance. He reported first trying alcohol about age 9, marijuana at 13, meth at 15, cocaine at 20, heroine and prescription drugs by 21. The defendant reported he drank heavily until age 15 when he started abusing drugs.”
Kengis said the report went on to say the person had overdosed at least four times.
“When he was confronted by police, he ran because he had methamphetamine on his person, and he swallowed it,” Kengis said. “This just paints a little bit of a picture for you... in how substance abuse goes hand in hand with cases we deal with.”
He also said he hoped mental health could be a focus for his office.
“More and more we’re seeing people who are entering the criminal justice system because they’re not receiving the help they need,” he said. “Of course substance abuse frequently ties into that because they’re self-medicating through using illegal substances and that leads to more problems.”
He said he and the sheriff were interested in seeing what can be done to help these individuals before they run afoul of the law.
Contact Ryan Lewis at rmlewis@allegannews.com or (269) 673-5534.
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