Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson was sworn in last month, taking over for Jean Peters Baker, who spent 13 years at the helm. She's already dramatically increased the county's role in domestic violence cases.
Most of Kansas City's domestic violence cases are handled in municipal court, where the maximum sentence is six months in jail. Johnson told KCUR that she’s educated the county’s police departments on which domestic violence charges can qualify as felonies — like cases involving strangulation or incidents in view of a child — so that offenders face harsher consequences.
"(It gives) our law enforcement officers a clearly defined set of factors that would trigger them to understand that this needs to go to the Jackson County prosecutor's office, and not municipal."
Johnson has prosecutors assigned to each of the three assault squads in the Kansas City Police Department.
