Harford County’s top prosecutor believes parenting is key to preventing crimes before they happen

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Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly says that lack of parenting leads to increased gang problems, drug use and violence and believes it is Harford’s location that has made it more susceptible to gang activity. — Examiner file photo

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Joseph I. Cassilly, 58, has been Harford County’s state’s attorney since 1982 and is serving his sixth consecutive term. A Harford County native, he served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and uses a wheelchair due to injuries he sustained there. After leaving the service, Cassilly attended the University of Arizona, then received his juris doctor from the University of Baltimore in 1977. Harford County is predicting a population boom of 20,000 in the next five years — the result of growth at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Cassilly’s office already deals with gang crimes and drug cases connected in part to the county’s position along the busy Interstate 95 corridor. He spoke with The Examiner about the area’s challenges and how his office can meet them.

How did you get started at the State’s Attorney’s Office?

I was an intern while in law school. My second summer, I got to go into court, and that’s what got me hooked. After law school, I told [former State’s Attorney Edwin Harlan] I’d love to come back if he had any spaces. In October 1977, he lost two assistants at the same time. Even now that would really be a hit, but then it was 25 percent of the staff. So my job interview with him was, “Are you still looking for a job here?” I said yes.

What kind of growth has your office seen during your tenure?

When I started, we had four judges between both courts and a part-time juvenile master. Now we’re up to nine judges and a full-time juvenile master. We had parts of a little building [at 110 S. Main St.], and there were maybe 16 employees, half of whom were part-time. Now we’re up to over 70 employees, and almost all of them are full-time. We’re in four locations, and we’re on our third computer system.

How have the crimes changed over the years?

A lot of the problems have always been there — domestic violence, child abuse and sexual child abuse. It’s just that the awareness of those types of things has gotten much, much higher. People may think it’s getting worse, but I think as a society we’re getting to where we’re not going to tolerate it anymore.

What else has changed in your years as a prosecutor?

Lack of parental involvement. You keep turning to the government and asking, “Why isn’t the school doing something?” or “Why isn’t the juvenile justice system doing something?” Nobody’s dragging these parents in and saying, “Listen, if you don’t want to have these kids and you don’t want to raise them, then go get fixed ... so the rest of us don’t have to figure out how we’re supposed to be responsible for raising your kids.” Now, drugs are available, gangs are present and the stuff kids see on TV is just appalling.

How important is parenting in keeping kids out of the justice system?

If you have children who are not disciplined in their formative years or given any values, all the government can do is kind of corral them until they end up in jail — or they get struck by lightning, in a philosophical sense, and realize “What am I doing here?” When you have a lack of parenting, that’s what leads to increased gang problems, increased drug use, increased violence. It all goes back to that.

What’s the state’s role in all of that?

My first priority as state’s attorney was to put together a domestic-violence unit. If you can interrupt the violence in a home and can clearly set forth other values and behaviors that are appropriate, then maybe you can change not only that family, but also all the successive generations that follow. That was a high priority, along with the child-support division. I look at it as a crime-prevention program. If custodial parents can raise their children without having to work two jobs or be under the constant stress of worrying about bills, they can put together some kind of a family and teach those kids some kind of values. If kids learn that it’s not OK to be a victim or a victimizer, it changes their attitude not only within their family, but also toward other people.

What has allowed gangs to become a problem in Harford?

Mobility. You can drive from Aberdeen to Philadelphia in an hour to pick up cocaine, or go into New Jersey to get it, and it doesn’t take you any time at all. You can be up and back in a day.

What kind of gang crimes affect your office the most?

We’re constantly charging — or investigating — witness intimidation, which makes all the investigations very difficult. They don’t want to cooperate, they just want to be left alone. We’ve had cases where the gangs had guys sit right in the courtroom, wearing gang colors and flashing gang signs, trying to intimidate anybody they could. The first time gang members pulled off their jackets to show gang T-shirts, it was a shock.

Is there an upside?

The gangs were stupid with that kind of stuff. Here we were as prosecutors trying to figure out how to prove to the jury that the defendant is a gang member and dangerous, and the jury sees this. We’re like, “OK, you just proved it for us.”

What has the county done to adapt?

We have a lot of planning meetings with courthouse security and judges, so we know what’s going on. We have undercover people in the courthouse, and we spend witness-protection money constantly on relocation and security. The expense gets paid for by the state, but we have people now who work on that all the time.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com

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