A Life in the Law: Dennis LaBelle Wraps up 29 Years and a Safer Community in the Prosecutor‘s Office

Dennis LaBelle is retiring at the end of the month. In fact his last day at work is December 17. Alan Schneider will take over on January 3, 2005.
Wondering who these two are? Join the club. LaBelle, 62, has been in the Grand Traverse Prosecutor’s office since 1975 and has been the prosecutor since 1989. Alan Schneider has been in the office for 15 years as the chief assistant prosecutor. Both have served for the most part in relative anonymity. In an era where prosecutors chase headlines for political reasons, LaBelle and Schneider have been a refreshing change of pace.
Yet, Grand Traverse County has developed a reputation of being tough on crime -- one of the toughest in the state -- and LaBelle and his department have been at the nucleus of this. They have worked effectively with the courts and local law enforcement agencies in developing a shared vision of crime prevention. As a result, Grand Traverse County has been not only tough on crime, but also progressive and creative in its approach to dealing with criminals.
LEGAL LEGACY
When LaBelle walks out of his office for the last time this Friday and boards a plane with his wife for a two-week second honeymoon in Spain, he leaves behind a 29-year legacy of prosecutorial success. His administrative skills are what many feel have been his best contribution to the office. He took over at a time when the area was experiencing its greatest population growth and his vision of addressing the potential for increased criminal activity helped to keep crime rates down.
“When you become prosecuting attorney you have some choices. You can be just a trial attorney and leave the administration to a chief assistant. Or you can try to do both,” said LaBelle. “It’s not that I didn’t try cases when I was elected. I took on the high-profile ones like the John Clark case as I did with other murder cases. When I was elected in 1988 all signs pointed to the county experiencing unrivaled growth. I felt it was necessary to concentrate on the administrative end of this office in order to address growth and the potential of increased crime.”

CRIME IN CHECK
It worked, and LaBelle’s office has played a major role in keeping crime in check in the county. He attributes his success to a cooperative effort from both local judicial and law enforcement agencies.
“I think Ralph Soffredine was an excellent chief of police. We have had great judges, State Police Post commanders and sheriffs and I think Sheriff Weiler set the tone for this community during his tenure,” said LaBelle. “He was sheriff when I arrived in 1975 as the assistant prosecutor and his approach was that of public service. He was big on keeping egos checked at the door and turf wars have never been an issue.”
LaBelle has also looked at his job as a matter of public trust.
“Since I have been here I have not been interested in anyone’s ego, including my own. I am not interested in winning an argument for the sake of winning,” he said.
“I believe that we should go out of our way not to bring media attention onto ourselves in this or any other office here in the county. The office I occupy is a matter of public trust and the public wants to see this office operated in a fair and honest manner. The public doesn’t like to see controversy or fighting between departments. When that happens, time and energy is spent there and not doing our jobs and the community feels ill-served.”

MOVING NORTH
LaBelle was raised in Saginaw and attended the University of Detroit and Wayne State University Law School during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Having young children and no roots in Detroit, he and his wife sought a better environment to raise their children.”
“I was living in Detroit during the riots and I dreaded the long commute to work,” said LaBelle. “The opportunity in the Grand Traverse Prosecutor’s office came available so I took it. I think the toughest adjustment was my wife’s shopping habits were greatly curtailed when we moved north.”
When LaBelle arrived one area of great concern in the prosecutor’s office was drunk driving and the inability to convict most offenders.
“The police and the prosecutor’s office was well ahead of the public on this issue,” said LaBelle. “It was tough to get convictions as the community was behind on its perceptions of the seriousness of drunk driving. It wasn’t until some notable accidents and Mothers Against Drunk Driving came into play that the public’s position changed. Thirty years ago it was almost acceptable from public standards to drive drunk. Now it is totally unacceptable.”

DRUG COURT
The increase in drunk driving convictions has posed another issue within the county: jail overcrowding.
“It wasn’t until Judge Haley created the drug court that primarily deals with alcohol offenders, that we had some solution to the overcrowding issue,” said LaBelle. “I give Judge Haley a lot of credit. He took a major political risk and I am not sure the public appreciates the risk he took by creating this court and offering an alternative.”
LaBelle worries that if one person in Haley’s drug court fails and gets behind the wheel and kills someone, that would end the program.
“Judge Haley has a tremendous success rate. He is working with people who have identified that they have a problem with alcohol and want one more chance to get it right and need some help to accomplish that,” said LaBelle. “The alternative is to go back to the old method of throwing the book at them. This would require building a jail twice the size of what is currently being proposed. Also, there is no guarantee that if we put a second offense drunk driver in jail for one year that the day they get out they won’t go and get drunk and kill someone. The drug court is our best chance of reforming repeat offenders and lowering the risk of them getting behind the wheel drunk.”

DRUG TRAFFICKING
Another area where LaBelle has seen public perception change is with drug use.
“Drugs are one of those cyclical issues. When I arrived there was a public outcry in favor of prosecuting users. Now that has changed, especially with the use of marijuana. I think our community has spoken and they are not interested in our police departments busting down doors to arrest the casual user. Certainly this has been the case in the courts where I have lost some jury trials dealing with casual users. Now, drug trafficking is another issue, and that is where our energies are focused.”
LaBelle says that the marijuana issue is a double-edged sword, and while his office and local law enforcement agencies are not going after the casual user, they do have a message for them.
“I would say this: our office position is stay home and smoke your joint and drink your beer,” said LaBelle. “But unfortunately that is not what is happening. In 1996 I studied drunken driving arrests over a two-week period when 43 people were arrested and 21 of them had marijuana in their possession. Marijuana affects your fine motor skills and alcohol affects your major motor skills, so now we have a double disaster behind the wheel and that is the issue I take with marijuana use.”

OUTSIDE JURISDICTION
Marijuana use found LaBelle and his office at two ends of the spectrum recently. The much-publicized pot smoking incident of Judge Gilbert at a Rolling Stones concert and the arrest of MS patient Matthew Barber, who has been using marijuana for medical reasons.
“When the Record-Eagle wrote the critical editorial of my unwillingness to investigate and prosecute Judge Gilbert and then what they felt was a double standard with the Barber case, it was because they don’t understand the law and how the legal system works and in general neither does the public,” said LaBelle. “First, Judge Gilbert was spotted smoking pot in another county, which is outside of my jurisdiction.”
So if the concert had happened in Grand Traverse County, would you have prosecuted Judge Gilbert?
“Sure, you bet I would have,” said LaBelle. “I think the Record-Eagle understood that, but it came to the paper’s attention as it did mine that Gilbert admitted to smoking pot in Grand Traverse County. The problem here was the only way we knew he smoked marijuana in this county -- and I would like to clarify ‘if’ he smoked it in this county -- was by his own statement. The trouble is that the criminal law in the United States says I can’t convict Judge Gilbert or anybody solely based on his or her statement that ‘I smoked marijuana.’ I can’t even prosecute someone for murder who walks into my office and says I murdered someone simply based on his or her statement. I need a body and supporting evidence.”

SYMPATHETIC VIEW
As for Matthew Barber, there was evidence that supported Barber’s use and possession of marijuana. In fact LaBelle was pretty sympathetic in this case.
“This was a bizarre case because of public opinion versus the law,” said LaBelle. “Heck, I would smoke marijuana if I was in his position. After looking at the list of the 20 prescriptions he was taking and the fact that three of them are ones that we have prosecuted several people this past year for breaking into pharmacies to obtain, I can understand with the pain he is in and trying to function with all of those drugs his desire to smoke pot. I think the legislature is going to have to address this issue.”
LaBelle sees another drug being of far more concern for his successor and the community.
“The public has to concern itself with is methamphetamines coming into this area. We have recently arrested people who have actually had mobile labs making meth in their cars. I think the public needs to be educated on this issue that these labs are traveling bombs and if your neighbor has a lab in his or her home that is also a bomb waiting to go off.
“Until recently this has been a problem only in the UP and in lower Michigan, but it is here now. Also the public needs to know what meth does to a person. People become totally unpredictable and very violent. The Matthew Shepard case in Wyoming is a good example. The media portrayed this as a case of violence against homosexuality, but when you get into the case even the prosecutor has said it was more about meth-amphetamines than anything else. The big issue is going to be what our kids are going to do, especially those in our high schools.”

LESS TEEN CRIME
LaBelle is impressed with today’s teenagers from the area and thinks that most are smart enough to steer clear from drugs and other things that will lead to trouble.
“Our crime rate for juveniles has dropped tremendously. That has to do with a number of factors, one being our former assistant prosecutor Mike Stein who committed himself to this area,” said LaBelle. “He has since moved on to become Director of Court Services for Probate, including the juvenile court. When he went over there he carried on the same programs he started here.
“What we did was lean on juvenile offenders pretty heavily, holding them accountable for their actions and giving them an opportunity to reform their conduct and for the most part this approach has worked,” he added. “One kid who was 12 going on 13 was written off by everyone until Mike got a hold of him and now the kid has become a great student, plays on a local high school team. His mother got her act together and we have a number of these types of success stories.”

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CSI SYNDROME
As for the future, LaBelle sees computer crimes, especially those with minor children being on the Internet and being targeted by child pornographers as a major concern for the local community. Those crimes are currently being committed along computer financial crimes and identity theft. But overall he sees harder crimes becoming somewhat less prevalent and he attributes that to programs like “CSI” and the development of new technologies.
“I call it the CSI syndrome, because many common criminals watch these shows and I think they honestly believe that everything on these CSI shows are available to local police,” said LaBelle. “Now we have circuit court judges instructing juries that everything you see on CSI is not real life. The fear of detection and our technology has advanced to the point that it has helped to deter crime. While there are no studies and no way for me to prove it, the mandatory DNA testing of all felons has driven down the number of criminal sexual, murder and armed robbery cases. Now, some things shown on CSI do exist, like the fingerprinting system. So for the common criminal they don’t know what does or doesn’t exist and lets let them keep them guessing.”

PAT ON THE BACK
LaBelle’s 29-year journey in the prosecutor’s office has been shared with his wife of 36 years, Pat. In fact LaBelle believes his wife is better known in the community then he is.
“She organized my campaign and that eventually led to her chairing the local Republican Party. A lot of people came to her for advice for their campaigns,” said LaBelle. “She was also active in raising the funds to purchase the infrared goggles for the fire departments and then she raised $250,000 in six weeks to purchase mobile defibrillators to outfit every police car in the county. In fact, we were the first in the state to do this.”
While his career as a public servant is ending, LaBelle hopes to spend more time with his four children and his grand children. He feels fortunate to have all four through college along with the fact he and his wife escaped the teenage years without being embarrassed by their kids.
“Early on, we explained to our children that because of my position the whole family would be held to a different standard,” said LaBelle. “I really feel for parents, because as hard as parents try, there can be problems, and that is 98% of parents. And the more kids you have, the more likely one of them is going to embarrass you, especially if you are in the public spotlight.”
Dennis LaBelle has avoided both embarrassment and the spotlight. When LaBelle closes his office door for the final time on Friday he leaves behind a legacy of prosecutorial success, a community that is safer, and one that has been better off for his being a part of it.

The Changing of the Guard


When Alan Schneider, who ran unopposed, takes office as Grand Traverse County Prosecutor in January, he inherits a smooth-running operation. An expert in criminal law who was hired by Dennis LaBelle in 1989 from a prosecutor’s post in Muskegon County, Schneider, 55, is a key player in what is considered one of the best-run prosecutor’s offices in the state.
The judicial community sees the hiring of talented prosecutors like Schneider as one of LaBelle’s great contributions to the office.
“I think there is no question that Dennis LaBelle did a superb job in managing the prosecutor’s office,” said Judge Mike Haley. “One of the best things he did for the office was bring in top prosecutors like Alan Schneider.”
Schneider doesn’t expect any surprises when he takes over.
“Dennis and I come from the same school and I have been here for 16 years,” said Schneider. “I know Dennis quite well -- his character and integrity -- and when I move into his office and open the closet I won’t find any skeletons.”
In fact, Schneider is so respectful of LaBelle and the office he has refused to name his chief assistant prosecutor or discuss any operational changes. “Until January 3 I am still the assistant.”
But LaBelle knows there will need to be operational changes and it is one of the reasons he chose not to run for a sixth term.
“I have been in this office since 1975 and was elected prosecutor in 1988 and there is a point and time when there is a need for a change,” said LaBelle. “I am not tired of the work, but this office has to grow and there is a need for reorganization and that is something the prosecutor-elect will have to look at. The work here is getting more specialized and we have a need for more people doing specialized things.”
When not prosecuting criminals LaBelle spent time in his woodworking shop in the basement of his home. He is known in local woodworking circles as one of the best in the area, so speculation by many who know him is that his retirement will be spent in his shop.
“I plan to do a lot of woodworking when I retire,” said LaBelle. “But I think my wife Pat, who runs the local truancy program and is not retiring, has other plans as she continues to fill my woodworking shop with things, making it hard to find room to work. For my retirement she bought me two new suits and hinted that I should go find another job. Woodworking is great but I need interaction with people so I plan to continue some legal work, mostly in the area in governmental and civil work. I can’t do criminal defense work in this county for the first six months to a year, as I would be disqualified from just about every case.”
The interaction with people is what LaBelle will miss the most.
“I have been fortunate to have a wonderful staff. This is a people person job,” said LaBelle. “As for what I will miss the least, that is pretty easy -- all the paperwork that goes with the job.”


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