‘Critical’ prosecutor shortage at Shasta DA’s Office leads to temporary reduction in case filings
Amid an ongoing shortage of prosecutors, four of the county’s current prosecutors will leave by the end of May, the office said.
The Shasta County District Attorney’s Office is facing a “critical” prosecutor shortage. In response, the office will be temporarily reducing the number of cases it files.
The announcement came late last week in a press release from the office. According to the release, the office has already been facing prosecutor shortages, and four additional prosecutors are leaving by the end of this month.
The office is funded for 28 prosecutor positions, but about five positions on average have been vacant for years. Since three positions primarily handle administrative duties and post-conviction work, the office will operate with only 16 deputy district attorney positions once the four prosecutors leave at the end of May.
Last year, local law enforcement agencies submitted more than 11,700 cases to the DA’s Office, and almost 6,000 of those were filed, the release said. It added that with the office’s current staffing levels, that would mean that each deputy district attorney would need to review more than 700 cases a year and move about 370 forward through the court system for prosecution.
“This workload is not sustainable,” the release said.
The office explained that the reasons for the staffing shortage include noncompetitive compensation, voluminous caseloads and persistent recruitment challenges that are also connected to compensation issues. The office will now prioritize cases that involve significant public safety threats, such as violent crimes, sex crimes, physical and sexual abuse of children, domestic violence, elder abuse and DUIs. Less serious cases will be delayed or backlogged until staffing levels improve, the release said.
“This is not a philosophical shift; it is a math problem,” District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said in the release. “We simply do not have the number of prosecutors required to keep pace with the volume of cases being referred.”
Last year, Bridgett presented at two Shasta Board of Supervisors meetings about the office’s prosecutor shortages. She said that due to the high number of cases being submitted to her office from local law enforcement, a lack of funding to the office for additional positions and noncompetitive pay to recruit and retain prosecutors, the community was already facing impacts to services.
The office’s press release reminded the community of Bridgett’s warning last year.
“DA Bridgett advised that if these issues continued or got worse, the office would be forced to stop filing certain cases,” the release said. “We are at that point.”
The office emphasized that the reduction in case filings is temporary and reflects the DA’s priority to effectively and ethically focus on cases with significant public safety threats.
“Our commitment to public safety has not changed,” Bridgett said in the release. “What has changed is our capacity.”
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I will offer my perspective along with an example of where the DA’s office gets into political conflict.
Yes, there are many cases that are referred to the office for review that don’t meet any charging standard and/ or lack sufficient evidence to prosecute. Happens in almost every county and jurisdiction, and it is part of the process that most, if not all victims of crime demand. So, in essence the Deputy DA assigned to review these matters is a clearing house and little justice is served, (think of all the petty theft, misdemeanor assaults and hit/ run types of cases).
Burglaries and grand theft often fall into this review and those tend to have more sentiment because they usually involve a sense of being personally violated.
To me, the quality of life issues like litter dumps, vandalism and abandoned cars/ homes require a consequence just to deter future transgressions.
Where the review and subsequent charging of political implications gets problematic, I offer the example of the Terminal Auction involving the goat from 3-4 years ago. That investigation and charging was costly, involving a lot of resources to get the case to a complaint filing because it appeared to have involved a politician. The case was eventually dropped and the fall out of a 600k lawsuit was paid out. And, it has not been revealed what actually happened to the goat, just an assumption it was barbecued and devoured by a select few.
We all make mistakes, but when decisions are made that require some courage and the lack thereof, then it’s time to elect or appoint someone who will have a backbone.
To conclude, and get back on the main point, the staffing at the DAs office has been critical for years and it was pointed last year by the Deputy DAs that can’t afford a home along with paying bills/ loans. Supervisor Crye questioned their loyalty and said something to the effect that they should have an obligation based on doing the greater type of work. That was insensitive and stolid and the fact that someone chooses public service over private law immediately puts those attorneys behind their private counterparts.
Well Bridgett already thinks she is above the law and I have proof of that boy do I and now a public defender is also involved in this corruption he says he’s working for you but he’s really working for the DA sharing crucial information to them to help them win their case if you want more info please reach out to me for the whole story.
Ok GJ I’m reaching out to you like you asked. How can I get your story with your proof? Can I have an email or phone number?
Of course, DA Bridgett is underfunded. It’s part of the Crye, Jones, Curtis, and Kelstrom consolidated effort to attack and cripel Shasta County. In fact, Kelstorm even called, notably comparing the DA’s funding requests to a “Toys-R-Us catalog” in June 2025. Crye has openly attacked and pushed for investigations into Bridgett’s office, even using his position to allege that Bridgett used her office for campaigning (all of which were found to be unfounded by investigations, of course). You see, their political party and their supporters, all hard-core MAGA election liars, Curtis supporters were very upset the DA didn’t prosecute their nemesis, ROV Darling Allen, for misconduct tied to election administration, Dominion voting systems, ballot handling, MAGA, make no bones about their disdain for Bridget; she’s a RINO (right Kelstorm) and won’t bend to their extremist agenda.
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But, we know the Crye, Jones, and Kelstrom are MAGA extremists and are full-on hypocrites who snivel about law and order but do little or nothing to protect the safety of our elections and Shasta County employees from people like Clint Curtis, who has been found by two independent investigations to be a danger to both. Law and order? Right. In reality, they are distructive Captains of Chaos, just like their avatar, a court-adjudicated rapist, 34-count convicted felon.
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And besides, why fund the DA office when there’s an opportunity to fund the Les Baugh Ninja group home, or give Simpson 10 million for a school, give people like Chriss Street 40 K for a PowerPoint, or try to give Crye’s good buddy Nigel Skeet a cool 1 million annually for a tourism website. And all that’s after the extremists’ supervisors spent millions replacing perfectly good voting machines because of lies and hour after hour promoting election denial, COVID-19 vaccine lies, and chemtrail propaganda in supervisors’ meetings.
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It’s time to vote the Clint Curtis protecting supervisors, promoters of lies, division, and chaos out of office and protect our elections, fix our infrastructure, suport L.E., pay our workers a fair wage, and promote a nonpartisan governance for a change!
The report reads less like a staffing crisis and more like a system overwhelmed by too many weak or low-value referrals. Local law enforcement submitted more than 11,700 cases last year, yet the DA only filed about 6,000, meaning roughly half were rejected or never prosecuted, suggesting prosecutors are already spending enormous time reviewing cases that may lack sufficient evidence, involve minor offenses, or never should have entered the criminal pipeline in the first place. Even declined cases consume substantial resources through report review, evidence evaluation, and legal analysis. From this perspective, police departments can offload the burden of filtering questionable cases onto the DA’s office with little institutional downside, while prosecutors frame the resulting overload strictly as a staffing and funding problem. The DA’s decision to prioritize violent crimes, child abuse, sex crimes, domestic violence, and DUIs also indirectly implies that many lower-level cases are nonessential enough to delay, raising the question of whether aggressive case volume, rather than insufficient prosecutorial capacity alone, is the deeper structural problem in Shasta County.
I understand your argument, but do you really think the answer is for RPD and the Sheriff’s Office to ignore petty crimes? Should porch pirates plunder freely, knowing that they’re on the “not a priority” list? What about vandals? Shoplifters? Where do you draw the line?
It’s really quite simple. RPD routinely send low-level offences for prosecution that do little or nothing to improve public safety. These cases consume massive amounts of court time, taxpayer money, and police resources while contributing little to preventing violence or protecting the public. Offences like simple drug possession, homelessness-related violations, loitering, sleeping outside, technical vehicle infractions, public intoxication, and other “quality of life” crimes are often victimless or rooted in poverty, addiction, racism, or administrative noncompliance rather than genuine threats. These offences should not be aggressively enforced because they clog the justice system, damage community trust, and distract police and prosecutors from serious crimes that actually endanger people.
Specifically, greater scrutiny should be applied to any law enforcement referral that lacks sufficient evidence to realistically meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have observed instances in which the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office appears to file or maintain elevated charges despite evidentiary weaknesses, seemingly to increase leverage during plea negotiations. In many such cases, there appears to be substantial doubt as to whether the evidence would support a conviction at trial. Rather than declining or reducing unsupported charges, the practice can incentivize overcharging, perpetuating a cycle in which plea pressure substitutes for prosecutorial confidence in the underlying case.
How much money will the County spend if Measure B passes? It violates State law and will be thrown out. How much money to investigate the misbehavior of Clerk Curtis. If the Board majority knew what they were doing when appointing a new Clerk, they could have saved a bunch of tax dollars. And helped out the DA’s office.
“DA Bridgett advised that if these issues continued or got worse, the office would be forced to stop filing certain cases,” the release said. “We are at that point.”
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The office emphasized that the reduction in case filings is temporary…
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If the staffing problem is getting worse and there’s no reasonable remedy on the table, how is it temporary? Sounds more like the new normal.