The Cumberland County district attorney says her family is getting threats over the county’s relaxed policies on traffic stops.
Cumberland County District Attorney Jackie Sartoris said that under her temporary policy officers should only issue traffic infractions rather than criminal summonses for things like operating without a license, expired or no registration, or a suspended registration.
She says the goal is to free up the backlog in Maine’s court system.
But since she changed the policy, she said she, her office, and her family are getting threats and accusations that she only changed the policy to be soft on immigrants without licenses.
“It’s being picked up all over by really conservative media who are repeating this as if my desire was to secure some specific benefit to immigrants,” said Sartoris.
Sartoris says that’s not the case.
Sartoris says the county’s caseload is up 50 percent compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic and that her new policy keeps hundreds of those cases out of the court system.