RE: LeoThread 2024-11-06 13:57

#newfoundland

A senior Crown lawyer says provincial prosecutors in Newfoundland and Labrador are "suffocating" from overwhelming workloads — something he says is having an impact not just in the courtroom, but on the streets outside.

"You want to ensure that public safety is a priority," Shawn Patten, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Crown Attorneys Association, told CBC News.

"And right now our office is doing its best to make public safety a priority. But we're crumbling. Our foundation is crumbling."

Patten was reacting, in part, to a recent provincial report on crime in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Justice Minister Bernard Davis ordered the review this summer, after hundreds of people assembled at the town hall to voice frustrations over what the organizer called a "crisis."