Retired Durango Police Department Capt. Dale Smith spent 37 years interacting with people ticketed or arrested on suspicion of a crime. But for the last eight years, he has worked on the other end of the judicial spectrum – dealing with people who pleaded guilty and owe a debt to society.
Squeezed into a windowless office on the second floor of the La Plata County Courthouse, Smith meets with criminal defendants who have been ordered to pay fines or restitution, which can range from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the circumstances. Smith helps defendants establish a monthly payment plan that sometimes takes years to pay off.
“What I like is the interaction with people,” Smith said. “I’m a people person. I’ve been in the business for 37 years on the front side of the judicial system, and now I’m on the backside of it.”
His clients often have little money and are going through one of the worst experiences of their lives.
“They’re in a bad position in their own personal life,” Smith said. “But you have to keep things in perspective. In restitution cases, normally, we’ve got another real person on the other end who has been victimized, so they’re looking for some compensation for their losses.”
During his eight years as a collections investigator, Smith has handled 13,627 cases. Of those, 81 percent have paid in full, leaving 2,544 clients with an open balance. He has helped collect $4.5 million from people who owe money for misdemeanors or traffic offenses, including drunken driving.
Smith is one of two collections investigators who work in the 6th Judicial District, which includes Archuleta, San Juan and La Plata counties. The other is Chalyn Fitzgerald, who handles felony cases and collection cases in Archuleta and San Juan counties.
She marvels at Smith’s appreciation for people of all walks of life.
“He has good character, and he wants everyone else to have the same, and I think that’s why he is so suited to these kinds of positions,” Fitzgerald said.
Police officers and collections investigators have similarities, Smith said. Police tend to hear a lot of excuses from people stopped for a traffic offense or arrested for a crime. As a collections investigator, those same people use him as a sounding board if they’re upset about a ticket, arrest or the judicial process, he said.
“I don’t take anything personal; sometimes people just want to vent,” Smith said. “But I would say 99.9 percent of the people who come in here are good people; they erred so we try to work with them so they can fulfill their obligation to what the court placed on them.”
Police are trained to de-escalate situations, and sometimes Smith has to do the same thing if people get overly emotional.
Most defendants are shocked by the number of fines they must pay upon pleading guilty to a crime, he said. They don’t understand why they have to pay money for genetic testing ($2.50), victim compensation ($33) and a fund that pays for police officers to work overtime to patrol for DUIs ($90), especially if their case didn’t require DNA testing or there was no victim or it didn’t involve drunken driving.
Smith explains the fines and why some are assessed across the board. And while defendants may not agree with it, they are more accepting, he said.
Smith is in a unique position to interact with a segment of the population that is barely scraping by. When the recession hit, “it was super obvious who was really getting hit the hardest,” he said.
And while he empathizes with clients, one of the most rewarding parts of the job is to notify victims that a restitution check is available to compensate them for a crime.
“Oftentimes, the victims get forgotten,” he said, “and we try not to do that.”
shane@durangoherald.com
