When angry emails come from both ends of the political spectrum, that may be a sign you’re doing something right. In some jobs.
The thing is though, enforcing the law isn’t about politics.
Greg Banks has served Island County as Prosecuting Attorney since 1999. He first ran for office as a Democrat, with the party’s financial support. Eventually though, “I got disillusioned. So lately I claim no party preference.” He’s been elected seven straight times.
Banks says prosecutorial ethics override politics in his office. While he has his personal beliefs, they’re immaterial to his work. “We treat people with dignity. We uphold their constitutional rights, regardless of the crime they’re accused of. We call defendants ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ in court.” Banks reviews these commitments with every new deputy prosecutor on their first day on the job.
On the day we met, Banks had just returned from a statewide gathering of county prosecutors. He also serves on the board of the National District Attorneys Association and is currently its vice president. Banks believes Island County benefits from such “cross pollination.” In a small county, he says, “we’re in a bubble. Engaging with colleagues gives us a chance to share new methods, new crime trends, different approaches.”
One thing Banks doesn’t sense from his fellow prosecutors? Politics. “I don’t see a lot of partisan differences in how they do their jobs. Democrats might be a little more likely to recommend alternative sentencing, but then again, Republicans use drug courts too.” Overall, Banks says his colleagues are circumspect. Regardless of party, “our number one goal is the same: to prosecute crime and keep our communities safe.”
When we hear about a crime in our community, it’s natural to expect quick, simple answers. We demand law and order. We shout at the TV: Lock him up! Let him go! She’s guilty! That’s not fair! But the process is never easy, and rarely straightforward, even for an experienced prosecutor.
Banks winces as he tells of a murder on a Virginia military post, allegedly committed by a former Oak Harbor man who committed other crimes here as a juvenile. As reported in the News-Times last month, victim advocates now believe that more could have been done to punish the accused perp and keep him out of the military. Banks is deeply affected by the tragedy but says it isn’t that simple.
“If I had to do it over, with the same facts that were known to my office at the time, I’d still have to make the same decisions. We did not know about other, more serious allegations made by other local victims. In our case, the law required the murder suspect, who had only committed a misdemeanor, to be diverted from prosecution into a probation program.”
Banks acknowledges it’s easy to question things when looking back with 20/20 hindsight. But “we have to follow the law. And juveniles get treated differently.”
None of this changes the fact that a young woman’s life was taken. “The pain and grief of the murder victim’s family is unfathomable,” Banks says, “and my heart goes out to them.”
Banks dives deeper into painful moments that come with the territory.
He might choose not to prosecute an alleged perpetrator, even when he believes the victim’s story, because he knows a jury wouldn’t convict. There may be a flaw in the evidence or a loophole in the law. But he sits with victims and their families and walks them through their anger and frustration, with everyone in the room knowing who the guilty party is. He sees their tears and hears their pain.
“We signed up for it,” he says of prosecutors who live with that burden.
Banks signed up for it years ago, and has rarely regretted it. He grew up on the East Coast and laughs that he’d never been west of Buffalo when he finished his engineering degree at the University of Connecticut. He came west to visit a brother in Portland, fell in love with the coast and went to work at Boeing.
“I come from a family of lawyers. They were, let’s say, disappointed in my career choice,” he says with another chuckle. When he started law school at the University of Washington, he planned a career in tech law. But “I interned with the King County Prosecutor’s Office, and I got bitten by the bug. I worked for some great people there.”
Banks came to Whidbey as a Deputy Prosecutor in 1993, and ran for office five years later. In his last three elections he has been unopposed. I asked him why. If I expected a smug “because I’m the best,” there was no hint of that flex.
“Well, there’s a limited pool, to be honest,” Banks says. “You have to be an attorney to hold this office, and people in private practice can make a great career without the public oversight. As long as I’m not doing anything terrible…”
There are certainly a few around the county who think Banks is doing terrible things. When a citizen fired a shotgun in his own yard near an April protest event, organizers insisted he be arrested and charged. They came up empty when Banks determined no law had been broken, objectionable as the gunshots may have been. A string of passionate emails arrived from left-leaning citizens, baffled that Banks would not charge the man.
“It’s an example of how polarized we are. He didn’t have to fire that gun. He shouldn’t have fired it. But he was within his rights, and people on the ‘other side’ just couldn’t understand that.” Banks says a few of the protesters did write back in appreciation for his efforts to explain the law to them.
He received no such grace in a recent case involving a former Republican Party chair. He was charged with unauthorized access to a voting center, a felony. The man refused Banks’ offer to plead to a misdemeanor, and was convicted by a jury.
The angry emails this time came from the right. They accused Banks of political bias and brought up his old social media posts supporting liberal causes and candidates.
Some messages got pretty vile. “There were no direct threats,” he says, “but a few wished harm on my family and me.”
As he tells the story, just days after Charlie Kirk’s murder, words like those carry greater weight. The threat of political violence adds a dark undercurrent to public office, amped by social media’s cesspool of partisan insults and threats. Well before the recent accusations about his old Facebook posts, Banks says he left social media and all its mental hype behind. “And I feel healthier,” he admits.
Banks defends his ability to separate personal beliefs from his job. “If I had a case where my beliefs were an issue, I’d ask the deputies in my office for assistance. Or a judge would rule to remove me. There’s a process for all this, and in the end, the jury rules on the law, not on politics.”
Banks won’t say whether he’ll run for reelection. In 2014, he was unsure about staying here and nearly stepped away. But “I looked around at other jobs, and realized this was a pretty good gig.”
After 27 years, he finds he still enjoys the job, still has the energy, still has something to offer the citizens of Island County. “And I still look forward to coming to work every morning.”
It doesn’t get much better than that.
William Walker’s monthly “Take a Breath” column seeks paths to unity on Whidbey Island in polarized times. He blogs occasionally at https://www.playininthedirt.com/.
