When OCDA Todd Spitzer was a County Supervisor, he was a bad manager. He went through Chief-of-Staff hires in a Trump-like fashion. One employee sued and won for wrongful termination due to an email from Spitzer that all text messages must be returned within a 15 minute period or pay would be docked and the texts would come in very late at night sometimes.
So Buzzfeed just published an exhaustive expose’ on Spitzer’s management of the OCDA’s office and, what a surprise, his management skills have not improved.
Here’s the link: Orange County DA Todd Spitzer Faces Accusations Of Retaliation, Racism (buzzfeednews.com)
From the story, these gems:
The head of one of the largest district attorney’s offices in the US is tanking the local justice system with his ironfisted grip on the office, using fear and retaliation against subordinates and interfering in high-profile cases to boost his public image, according to internal documents and interviews with current and former employees.
Their accounts come as the district attorney for Orange County, California, Todd Spitzer, is facing a growing list of lawsuits and accusations of racism. More than 70 prosecutors — about a quarter of the office’s entire roster of attorneys — have left over the last three years. All of the alleged misconduct, current and former prosecutors and investigators who spoke to BuzzFeed News said, is to protect Spitzer’s public persona and political career, which they said has come at the cost of morale and the reputation of their office. Justice, they said, has come second to generating positive headlines and protecting the personal brand of the county’s top prosecutor.
…
- Spitzer launched internal investigations as payback against prosecutors and investigators who pursued cases that he wanted dropped or that posed a threat of revealing comments or decisions that he wanted hidden, according to three officials with direct knowledge.
- In spite of vowing to step back to protect the prosecution’s independence, Spitzer “shopped around” for a prosecutor who’d align with his personal view in the high-profile case of Grant Robicheaux, a wealthy surgeon accused of raping multiple women, according to two sources. At least one prosecutor refused to take it on because they felt Spitzer wanted charges reduced or dropped.
- Spitzer brought up race multiple times as he made decisions on criminal prosecutions and used Black prosecutors as the face of the office to deflect criticism of his record, former prosecutors said in interviews and documents.
- Two supervisors and an outside investigator have found the district attorney “not credible” when he was questioned in two separate investigations, according to reports obtained by BuzzFeed News. In one instance, Spitzer lied to his own homicide investigator, possibly obstructing justice and tainting two criminal cases, after having an “improper” conversation with the father of a young boy killed in a mass shooting, one former high-ranking prosecutor said in a legal claim.
- Though he touted himself as a victims advocate, some alleged victims have told BuzzFeed News they were publicly discredited, abandoned by Spitzer’s office, and verbally attacked by him behind closed doors.
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The district attorney was also critical of BuzzFeed News’ use of anonymous sources for this article, suggesting they were disgruntled employees looking for a payout.
“It is disingenuous to allow people speaking under the condition of anonymity to make allegations of this nature, especially when many of them have a vested financial interest in painting the office and the DA in the worst possible light,” he said in the statement. “There has not been a single sustained allegation of retaliation by the DA and to refuse to identify sources while they are allowed unfettered ability to make unsubstantiated and factually inaccurate statements is not only unfair, it is a disservice to the public we serve and the work that we do on a daily basis to pursue justice and give the voiceless a voice.”
Yet that daily work is now threatened by what insiders have called a mass exodus from the office. The office maintains a roster of about 300 attorneys on staff, and the district attorney’s office confirmed 73 prosecutors have left over a period of three years. (Fourteen returned to do part-time work on contract, the district attorney’s office added.)
But the result, sources said, has been a “brain drain” from the Orange County district attorney’s office of mid- and high-level prosecutors. Today, several officials said, prosecutors with less experience are handling bigger caseloads and more complicated cases than they would have before.
“Everybody is looking for an exit strategy because it’s just a rotten place to work,” one former prosecutor said. “That’s 100% Todd Spitzer’s fault.”
There’s more and it’s juicy. But it only reaffirms everything we’ve ever been told about Spitzer from former staffers. He’s a narcissist and a horrible manager.