William Wagstaff and Adeel Mirza face off at Mount Vernon Public Library, Cacace fails to appear.

On March 6, Black Westchester hosted a debate for the Democratic candidates for Westchester County District Attorney at the Mount Vernon Public Library.  Two of the three candidates, civil rights attorney William Wagstaff and former Assistant District Attorney Adeel Mirza, provided clear presentations of their backgrounds and their visions for the office.  The third candidate, longtime county judge, Susan Cacace, who has been endorsed by the Westchester County Democratic Party, did not appear.

Westchester DA candidates William Wagstaff (L) and Adeel Mirza

The moderator for the event, Dr. Robert Baskerville, called Cacace’s snub an affront, “to both the organizers of the event and the various constituencies that they represent.  When we are called before the bar, we have to acknowledge the authority of judges. So too, does anyone who seeks the nomination of the people need to stand before the people and recognize its authority. It is shameful that the Democratic nominee would not be here, especially at a moment in national history when we are crying out for unity around democratic ideals.”

“There is great concern,” he continued, “that too many communities’ support of the Democratic Party has been taken for granted. It calls into question not only the decision of the nominee, but also the commitment of the party itself to full-throated democratic participation for this absence to have occurred.”

Baskerville then questioned Mirza and Wagstaff about their respective biographies and platforms. Mirza presented himself as an insider, with 18 years of experience as an Assistant District Attorney in Westchester, followed by several years of work as a pro bono criminal defense attorney.  

“Eighteen years of experience, 18 years of learning what the office is about, 18 years of figuring out what works, what doesn’t work. … I know what’s happening in the criminal justice system. And the biggest problem, hands down, right now … is equity. … If you are poor and you end up in the criminal justice system, you are going to have a much harder time navigating that system than somebody with better means.”   Mirza said violent crimes and drug crimes, like selling fentanyl, should certainly be prosecuted.  “But if you’re there for a property crime, which the vast majority of people are right now,” he said, ”then you know you’re there because you’re poor.”

Wagstaff also spoke of his experience with the criminal justice system, but his first experience came as a defendant.  “Almost 20 years ago, when I started in law school at Pace, I started under federal house arrest. I walked into my second year evidence class and recognized that the judge who had sentenced me was my evidence professor. She not only taught me the law, she went on to write me letters of recommendation for my admissions to the bar in New York and New Jersey.  And I’m proud to say that today Judge Smith and I are still in contact.”  

William Wagstaff

Concerned that he might have difficulty being admitted to the bar, Wagstaff attended Fordham Business School after law school and earned an MBA degree, graduating second in his class.  He said his business training would allow him to “implement a data-driven approach to reducing gun violence, hate crimes, domestic violence and property crime” in Westchester.   “The people deserve someone with a unique perspective, a different background,” he said, “because that’s the only way that we’re going to reimagine the criminal justice system.”

Asked why they were running for DA, Mirza and Wagstaff expanded on their different perspectives.  “I’ve done the work,” Mirza said.  “I know what it entails. The DA’s office isn’t a place where you can go in and figure it out. You need to know what the ADA’s are doing. You need to know what their jobs are. You need to have done that work. I think when we … put an outsider in, you don’t get the best results.” 

Wagstaff, on the other hand, presented his outsider status as a strength.  “I recognize that the criminal legal system is broken and that it’s time for a reimagining of the system, and that in order to reimagine the system, it’s important that you don’t have somebody that’s been a cog in the wheel of injustice for the last couple of decades at the head of that office. That it is going to take somebody with vision, with courage and the resilience to overcome obstacles to resolve intractable problems. My life experiences, my educational experience, and my professional experiences qualify me to be that leader.”

Asked about their visions and priorities, Mirza and Wagstaff both stressed diversity in hiring, with increased efforts to attract attorneys reflecting the community.  “One of my goals is to … improve that metric of diversity in the office,” Mirza said, by incentivizing black and brown law students to come to Westchester. “You show them Westchester is the place you want to live, Westchester is the place you want to work, Westchester is the place you want to have kids,” he said.  And he advocated recruiting more senior attorneys from urban DA offices as they get older and want to move to the suburbs.  “Let’s choose those people accurately and wisely,” he said, “to improve the diversification of the office.” 

Adeel Mirza

Wagstaff envisioned, “an office that has ADAs that understand and have the cultural competence of the community that they are prosecuting,” with “at least one Spanish speaking ADA in all of the branches,” and “an executive team that has members that reflect the cross section of the community.”  Wagstaff also envisioned “a refocused idea of what justice looks like, doing away with the outmoded metrics of success, whether that’s conviction rate, how long the sentences are.”  “How do we measure our success?” he asked.  “It should be measured in reduction in rates of recidivism and looking at the individual. … How did you arrive here? And how do we stop you from being in the same circumstances again?”  And again he stressed the importance of data.  “We need to be utilizing data to make better decisions. The data should be driving the policies and the prosecutions, and it shouldn’t be the rhetoric of the moment of what the political conversations are.”

Both candidates were asked about their approaches to police accountability.  Mirza stressed the importance of the “public integrity units” that exist in every local DA’s office.  “You have to make sure that the people who are in that unit or prosecuting police officers are sufficiently firewalled away from prosecuting everyday crime where they need the police officers,” Mirza said.   He also advocated improved relationships between the community and police officers. “I’m not a fan of all this “defund the police” stuff,” he said.  “You want the police there when you call and when you need the police. … They are going to be significantly important when we are figuring out how to make a community safer, how to make sure that this is a place that we want to live.”

Wagstaff addressed the history of police abuses in communities of color.  “These relationships are strained,” he said.  “We know that they’re strained. So rather than act as if that’s not the reality and think we’re going to move forward, that’s fooling ourselves.”  In his role as special prosecutor for police discipline in Mount Vernon, he said, “When I’m talking to the Mount Vernon leadership, I encourage them to use the analogy of dating somebody that has been cheated on before or somebody that’s been the victim of domestic violence. The beginning of that relationship, even though you had nothing to do with that past trauma, you are going to have to endure a lot of false allegations and nurse that person back to who they were before they were traumatized if you care enough. The same is with the relationship between the community and the police. Especially communities of color, they’ve been victimized, they’ve been attacked. So the police are going to have to extend themselves a bit and understand that some of the reaction, even though it may be outlandish, the cursing, the yelling, it’s coming from a space of trauma. And you have to understand that trauma and hurt if you are going to serve. And that’s the only way that that relationship will heal so that there can be trust between the police and community.”

Mirza, Wagstaff, and Cacace submitted petitions this week seeking to appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary election scheduled for June 25.