Accomplishments
As your County Prosecutor, Elliot Kolkovich has hit the ground running to keep Summit County safe with an effective and efficient Prosecutor's Office:
(1) Elliot has directed the first reorganization of the Criminal Division in decades to ensure that the Office's enforcement priorities are met while saving taxpayer dollars.
--By focusing on high-level offenders, convictions for first- and second-degree felonies are up 38%, meaning that more violent offenders and drug traffickers are off the streets.
--By reducing overburdened dockets, cases are now resolved 41 days more quickly, which reduces court costs and costs associated with pretrial detention to the tune of nearly $400,000.
--By assigning the most experienced prosecutors to exclusively handle the highest-level cases, the Office's guilty verdict rate at trial has improved to 93%.
(2) Elliot has renewed the Office's focus on efficiently rehabilitating deserving offenders into productive citizens.
--Elliot has hired the Office's first-ever Speciality Docket prosecutor who exclusively handles cases that are assigned to the Court's drug treatment, mental health, and re-entry courts.
--With a dedicated Speciality Dockets prosecutor, diversionary and intervention placements for deserving offenders has increased 48%.
--By placing more offenders into diversionary programs, the Office has reduced court and pretrial detention costs, saving nearly $80,000 for taxpayers.
(3) Elliot has committed the Office to proactively work in the community to prevent crime from ever happening in the first place.
--The Office has partnered with various County Agencies to conduct over 30 community events that educate Senior Citizens about how to avoid scams and elder abuse.
--The Office has worked with various school districts to provide Internet Safety presentations to students to keep them safe in our increasingly digital world.
--The Office collaborates with Sheriff Kandy Fatheree to provide CCW workshops to educate gun owners about gun safety.
--The Office continues to provide free women's self-defense classes throughout the County so that women learn techniques to avoid becoming the victim of violent crime.
Elliot is committed to relentlessly build on what he has already started in the Office. With another four years, Elliot will continue our progress and also focus on the following:
(1) Building a crime strategies unit to emphasize high-level investigations and prosecutions that get gangs and repeat violent offenders off our streets.
(2) Collaborating with the Court to improve the diversion and intervention screening process so that deserving offenders get into services more quickly.
(3) Using the Office's civil enforcement authority to protect workers' wages and to advance our communities' economic development.