Reuel Sample: This is the Wilmington Standard. I'm Reuel Sample. I am happy to be joined by District Attorney Jason Smith.

Jason Smith: Thank you for having me.

Reuel Sample: It is so great to have you here, sir. We got to know each other a little bit over the last, uh, last set of elections, and now you're getting to do it again.

Jason Smith: All over again. Um, I just got out of one and going back into it.

Reuel Sample: So, um, uh, I'm going to ask you to tell me a little bit more about yourself. But why are you running again so soon?

Jason Smith: Well, uh, I know, you know, we'll tell the audience this last, uh, the last time we ran, which was 20, 24, we ran because Ben David stepped down in the midterm. So he had two years left on his term. So. And he stepped down at a time where we could hold an election. Sometimes if you step down, um, the governor can appoint and they'll just run out the rest of the term. But he stepped down before that time and allowed us to have an election. So that's what we did. The last election in 24 was to run out the remaining part of his term, which ends at the end of 26, and then we have an election in November of 26.

Reuel Sample: So you get to do it all over again, right? Right. Tell people about yourself.

Jason Smith: Jason Smith I'm I've been a prosecutor now for 15 years. I've been an attorney for 24 years. Wow. So I was in private practice beforehand here in Wilmington, uh, doing, uh, tax work tax, uh, tax controversy, uh, business and estate planning. And, and that's what I did for a number of years and decided, I think there's a higher calling. And, uh, I went to the DA's office and started prosecuting and started at the bottom prosecuting. So, uh, when you say start at the bottom, it means you start in district court prosecuting small misdemeanors and work your way up. And before I ran, I ran. I was, uh, running Pender County for, you know, ten years.

Reuel Sample: You were the Ada for for district for for Pender County. Yep. And so you had that for ten years, and then you stood up to run for district attorney last year. That's correct. It's a tough race.

Jason Smith: Tough race.

Reuel Sample: It's tough race. But, uh, you were out there. And one of the things that I noticed all the time is that you had not only support from Republicans, you had support from Democrats as well. Right? Which was very interesting.

Jason Smith: Just people were amazed and they were like, really? Um, you get support. Here's here's why I think I received support. And you would have to ask them personally, but we ran a, a campaign based upon leadership and experience. Right? Based upon, um, you know, fairness and fairness doesn't mean every let everybody out of jail. It's just are we treating people fairly? Um, I believe that most people, most people, Democrats, Republicans, just most people in general care about their personal safety and their community safety right. They want to be able to feel safe in their homes. They want to be able to feel safe walking down the streets. They want to be. They want their kids to be able to walk down the street, go to the park, go shopping and feel safe. And when we ran last year, we we talked about my leadership because it takes a leader to run an office, right. It's not just one. You know, I am the district attorney, but it's not just me. I have 53 employees. Wow. To this day, I have 53 employees. So it takes a leader to to set the tone, sets the leader. It takes a leader to, um, to come up with priorities. And how do you, you know, how do you prosecute and what are you focusing on and how do you do it efficiently? So we ran our campaign last year on that. We also ran it on experience. I again, I started at the bottom, but for a lot of my career, I was prosecuting some of the worst things in this district. And our district is New Hanover. Pender and I spent most of that in Pender handling child, uh, Crimes against children, homicides, you name it. I've probably handled it.

Reuel Sample: Things that tear your very soul.

Jason Smith: Right? Right. So, you know, people look at you and say, oh, you're a Republican, and, you know, you should be this way or this way, or, oh, you're a Republican. I'm not going to vote for you because a Republican. And I didn't find that, yes, there are people that had that for the vast majority. As you saw from the election results, the vast majority trusted my leadership and my experience. Now, it wasn't just me. I had a whole, you know, my if you remember what happened at the end of the end of the race last year, a lot of my office came out and said, and a lot of a lot of them were staunch Democrats. Right. And they said, no, we trust Jason in the way he, you know, he prosecutes. We trust the way that he is a leader in this office.

Reuel Sample: It was interesting to see the wide variety of people that you had out for your campaigns. Right. It was fantastic.

Jason Smith: It was incredible. And I and I really give credit to a lot of those people that really could have sat on the sidelines, kept their mouths shut, but they didn't. They went out there and said, hey, look, this is who he is. Wow. Um, and we trust him and you should trust him. And that's. And we had the backing of our community.

Reuel Sample: Fantastic. Well, let's talk about that year. Uh, it's, uh, you stepped into office. Does your, uh, does your term go from December to or does it start in January when you're sworn in?

Jason Smith: I was sworn in December 2nd. Which is that today?

Reuel Sample: That's today.

Jason Smith: Today. One year.

Reuel Sample: Today. Happy anniversary.

Jason Smith: Thank you. One year today I swore in. And it normally is a January 1st to December 31st term. Okay. Right. Um, you know, it's a four year term, but it goes from January 1st to the December 31st. However, since it was a, um, an election to finish out the term I was allowed to swear in as soon as they certified the election. December 2nd of last year.

Reuel Sample: How's that been? How's this year been? What are some of the things that you're proud of?

Jason Smith: It's been incredible. Um, look, people ask me, is it everything you thought it would be? Yeah. Yes, but more right. Um, I feel at times that I'm a manager of personalities because we have 53 people in the in, in our office, but you're managing kind of the, the core process from the prosecutor's perspective. Now, look, there's judges, there's the defense attorneys. We all have to work together. I think we're going to talk about that here later. But we all work together. But from you, again, you set the tone. And so I went in December 2nd of last year. And. We we'd had a day for 20 years. Right. Then David set the tone for he was an institution. He was an institution. So you're going in and going, all right, what do I want to continue to do? Because I was I grew up under Ben. Right. I prosecuted 14 years under Ben. So, uh, what do we want to continue? What kind of ideas do I have that I want to, uh, you know, to implement and go, you know, that's how it was December 2nd, I swear in go, you know, December 3rd, if you don't remember, we had, um, a homicide the night of December 2nd. And what was crazy is I was the only one sworn in in the whole district because I swore in late that afternoon. We didn't swear in the assistant DA's until the next morning. So. Yeah, it was so.

Reuel Sample: So the Adas can't get sworn in until there's a D.A., right?

Jason Smith: The D.A. so they. The D.A. swears in, and then the assistant DA's swearing after that. So we didn't swear them in until the next morning just because of the time crunch. And we were like, you know, cross our fingers. Are we going to have anything, uh, go crazy that night? We did.

Reuel Sample: So you were it for 18 hours or so?

Jason Smith: No. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. It's okay. It is. And it's okay. Um, I've been in that, you know, been the the assistant D.A. in charge of Pender. That was. You were kind of on an island. You had Ben as a backup. Ben. But for the most part, I received the call, so it wasn't. It wasn't unusual. And it didn't. I didn't freak out. But December 3rd comes in. We swear, everybody in. We have to have goals, right? You as a leader, you want to set goals. You want to set goals for yourself. Set goals for your office. So one of them was a we need to stabilize the office. We need to find out. You know what? We had open positions, which a lot of DA's offices do. I mean, you have turnover and but we had open positions. How do we fill them? Right. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the people that you have under you now. And how do we how do we expand on their strengths. How do we limit weaknesses and how do we, you know, make better prosecutors? And that's what we did. So that's so I looked and said, all right, we'll stabilize the office. We're fully staffed as of today. We're fully staffed.

Reuel Sample: Fantastic.

Jason Smith: Right. We've had some turnover. You know, we've hired some people in. We've had people retire. Um, that's normal, normal business. But we have a full staff now. Um, so one to stabilize the office, right. Set your goals. Right. So and you heard when I, when I was running last year, we're going to focus on the worst worst crimes, the worst people that do the worst things right. And that's that was not just made up. That's what we'd been doing for at least most of my career. And that's what we continue to do. So it wasn't a oh, this is his new idea. People want people want the DA's office to focus on people who murder people. People that, um, you know, sexually assault kids and adults. You drug traffickers, um, you know, drunk drivers. These things are put all of our community at risk, right? So that's what we were going to continue to do. And that was a goal was like, we're going to continue to focus on those worst people that do the worst things. Um, and you heard it ad nauseam. I mean that because that's leadership experience. And we're going to focus on the worst. Exactly. You would have people during the campaign going, I want everybody locked up. And you would always say, really? So if you you want that underage drinking ticket them to go to jail. Yeah. And they're like, oh no, no. Um, they, they would say, oh no no not that okay. So there's always and I knew this, you go into it and I spend a lot of last year educating community. We hadn't had a contested DA's race in 20 years. Right.

Reuel Sample: Yeah. Yeah. Because Ben David was an institution, right?

Jason Smith: Yeah. So you found that had to educate people on what we did and the realities of things like structured sentencing and things like that. So I'm not going to go into the weeds on that. But when you're setting your goals, you have to you have to have a focus. You have to have what are we going to focus on? That doesn't mean we ignore everything else. But when we spend our assets, our people. Right, and say, because my next goal was try your cases, meaning try your cases in front of juries and move your caseload. So when you say this, we're going to focus on the worst people. But I want you trying cases and moving your caseload. Because if we don't move our caseload then we're our jail is filled. We're backlogged. Inefficient justice. Yes. So you You go to your people and your in your prosecutors. And that's what I did at day one. I said, here's what I expect. Try your cases, move your caseloads, and and focus on the worst people that do the worst things. So that's what we did. That's what we did. We this year and I don't like to get into stats. Stats for people. They eyes glaze over. But I want to give you the stat right. There's a we are close to finishing up the year right now, and we have resolved 32 cases this year that involved either first degree, second degree murder Manslaughters death by distribution meaning the new laws. Talking about if you deal drugs and results in overdose you can charge the drugs.

Reuel Sample: Those would be called major cases.

Jason Smith: Major cases okay. If you notice the theme in this first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter or voluntary manslaughter, death by distribution. Wow. Yeah. Um, felony death by motor vehicle, drunk drivers, killing people. Um, misdemeanor death by motor vehicles. Every one of those cases that I just mentioned involved somebody that's lost a life. That's what our.

Reuel Sample: That's what your goal.

Jason Smith: Was. That's what our goal was. So 32 of them and people say is that good. Well yeah. 19 uh 19 first degree or second degree murder cases that we handled this year. And there's a murder trial going on right now. Um, we've tried as of a couple of weeks ago now, I think it's right now as we're trying this 143 jury trials this year.

Reuel Sample: Wow. Wow.

Reuel Sample: That is a lot.

Jason Smith: Well, it is a lot. And my my staff and my prosecutors and their legal assistants are working hard. Yeah, I mean, they are working hard and they're having fun doing it, I believe.

Reuel Sample: Are you in the court often or not?

Jason Smith: Often. So I swore in in December and I believe it was January or February. I went into a first degree murder trial up in Pender for five weeks. I'm in the middle of that one. And it was I was the lead, obviously the lead prosecutor on it. And I was there for five weeks and my staff said, you just got here, You're up in Pindar for five weeks in a in a courtroom, eight hours a day, and we need you, not in the courtroom. So here's what I've tried to do is limit, you know, 1 to 2 big cases a year. I was supposed to handle a first degree murder case this later this year, and it got continued to next year. Fine, but limit myself to 1 to 2 big cases a year. And and and try those.

Reuel Sample: Because part of your job, it sounds like, uh, because you talked about Ben David being your mentor is mentoring young and inexperienced prosecuting attorneys to to take the reins.

Jason Smith: Yeah. Right, right. We have a very good staff, especially older prosecutors, um, that that are very good at mentoring. But they also want to see their boss mentor others. Right. So I try to mentor young, uh, young prosecutors. You. I'm a I was in the military. So you know, this and my my philosophy in Military was lead from the front. Yeah, well, that's my philosophy as the Das lead from the front. Show them that you can step in. When I ask you to step into a courtroom and try your cases and move your cases. I want to be able to say I can do that, too, and have done it, and I have. And that's really that's I lead from the front doing that. But you're not just mentoring through that, you know, you have I have prosecutors come to me daily with questions, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this experience? Prosecutors going, hey, I've got this plea offer. What do you think about this? Should we take it? You know, should we take, um, should we reduce this first degree murder down to second degree murder? And he takes 35 or 40 or 40 years and you're like, mm. You way you weigh the strength of your case, you weigh your evidence, you weigh who your witnesses are. You, you weigh your likelihood of success. You weigh the appellate issues that may come up and you go, mm, 40 something years of pretty good, pretty good thing that it's a long time in prison.

Reuel Sample: So it's a collaborative issue with you and your attorneys and your staff.

Jason Smith: Yes. They don't bring everything. I'm not a micromanager. Yeah. But you, when we talk about leadership and experience, you have to. You're the one sitting at your desk and they come in. Hey, boss, I've got this. Should I do this? Should I not do this? Hey, I'm just running this past you. Are you going to, you know. Are you okay or are you not okay? Or. Or. We really have some issues that man, we need to we need to roundtable this. And we do a lot of roundtable round round round tabling. Excuse me, round tabling of issues and cases. Because, you know, I find we find that sometimes you get you get blinded by your case and, and you're like, oh I think it's good, but you're not seeing the pitfalls. And so we do a lot.

Reuel Sample: Of that tunnel vision that will take people down.

Jason Smith: And it does it in every career that you that's that's out there. So your day leads from the front. I lead from the front by being in the courtroom when I can, but also being able to answer the questions, make the tough decisions. Yeah, really, the buck stops with me. So I have to make the tough decisions. And that's what why they elected me. So.

Reuel Sample: Uh, talked about your successes a little bit. What are some of the challenges from this last year? Things that you could have done better.

Jason Smith: Look, um, obviously, we want to try more cases and and move more cases. So let me tell you the challenge that we none of us really realized it was going to happen. Uh, the public, if you've been to court, you understand the difference. Um, we went paperless. When I say we the court system went paperless. And it's been doing, you know, progressing over the years. Okay. Um, and finally hit us. New Hanover and Pender County back in February. And they said, all right, paper, paper files are no longer everything's going digital. It's, um, so we call it e-courts.

Reuel Sample: Interesting.

Jason Smith: And we said, oh, we got this. My friend, my friend, it is. It did not realize the the depth of what we were getting into. And you set priorities and you're like, all right, now I've got to I've got to change some of this because it changes. I found that Ecourts has been labor intensive, especially in our district courts, where, oh, I could use two people in two different district courts. Now, I may need three. Maybe I need for traffic court. You need used to be five, maybe 8 or 9. It's just it's it's very labor intensive. It's supposed to be more efficient. This year. It has not been. But I think over time it will, you know, it will be more efficient. Let's hope.

Reuel Sample: Um, I was in the military when we switched over to electronic stuff. It basically tripled our work.

Jason Smith: It tripled our work. And hopefully in five years it will. We'll look back and laugh and go, ha ha ha! It's better now. I'm hoping that's the case. But that was a challenge that really, when I ran, I wasn't thinking about Ecourts, but it spent. I spent a lot of time having to make decisions about X, Y, and Z dealing with escorts and personnel decisions and you're like, oh my goodness, can we just go back to the old thing where I know that I, I know I can do it and I know it's easier to manage, but that was a that was a challenge. That was a challenge. Um, you know, Ben told me you'd be ready for the personnel stuff and that's you've had to always deal with. If you have an office, you have to deal with personnel stuff. It's you deal with it in any business, but you just learn. You're like, all right, I've got to deal with that. And it's just something every day and it's okay. That's part of the job. But that's something as a as a career prosecutor, you're in the courtroom and you're not dealing with personnel. You're letting the big boss do it. Now you're the big boss and you're like, oh man, I've got to deal with this. So that was just something to get used to. Not it was challenging, yes, but not not like oh my goodness.

Reuel Sample: You got to move forward. You got to move forward. It's Ben David on your speed dial.

Jason Smith: Um, you look he's right across the street at the Community Justice Center. He's not on my speed. Yes, he is actually, do I we he and I talk, uh, you know, frequently because of this Community Justice Center. But, you know, you always bounce. Hey, did you run into this back in the day or did you. You know, but that's. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm a kind of an independent person too. So let me, let me, let me deal with it. And you know, you learn from your mistakes, right. But yes, I've called him at times going, hey, what about this or what about this?

Reuel Sample: And okay, at the end of your first term, what's the state of crime here?

Jason Smith: Look, I wish I could say that what we do maybe affects the crime rate. We hope so. People talk about, you know, the theories of punishment. You go through law school and they talk about the theories of punishment. We have punishment for us to punish, right? We have punish. We have punishment to rehab. We have, uh, we have punishment to, um, as a deterrent. Right. And we hope oh, what we're doing is a deterrence. Uh, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know if there's even a study going on, so to say. Oh, look, everything that we've done, The crime rate is down because of what we're doing. I don't know if I don't, I can't say that. I look at it and go, by the grace of God, we haven't had more homicides or we haven't had more of these. I, I believe and I don't I don't have the end of the year stats, but I believe that just seeing and feeling the pulse of my office and that our violent crimes in the two counties have gone down somewhat. That's what it feels like to us. Uh, just based upon new cases. Feels like our homicides are down. So I believe that our violent crimes are going down. Doesn't mean, you know, people look at me and go, no, you know, it's up, it's up.

Jason Smith: Well, let's wait till the stats come out. Yeah. Property crimes, you know, we have thieves, right? And thieves are going to thief, right? And we're always going to have those types of crimes and we you know, it's almost like plugging the hole and you have another one. You plug the hole and you have the other one. So we're continuing to work those cases. I really believe and we're talking about the violent stuff. I believe our violent crime has been going down. Doesn't mean it will tonight. It won't go back up. You know, look, I talked to people and say, hey, look, one shooting could lead to one shooting. That is gang involved or youth involved. Could, you know, open it back up and we have retribution and, you know, you know, shooting because you shot at me. I'm shooting at you. And it's just a it's just like never ending. Right until it does end. Right now we're not there. And hopefully, hopefully we're it will continue to to drop. Now let me tell you what hasn't dropped and what bothers me a lot. And this goes into what do you want to do in 26. Yeah our youth are our youth firearms charges. When I say that juvenile firearm related charges, the possession of the theft of the use of a firearm has gone up dramatically.

Reuel Sample: Now in North Carolina, the the the minimum age to own a firearm is 1818. Right. And so you're talking about.

Jason Smith: I'm talking about underage. Underage I'm talking when I say juvenile 17 and unders. That's when I look at. Those types of stats. Those are the the juveniles not the 18 year olds that are. You know, either illegally having a gun or carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Uh, stealing, you know, fire. And I'm not talking about I'm talking really 17 and unders. That that those charges have have skyrocketed.

Reuel Sample: Really?

Jason Smith: Yes. Skyrocketed. Now, not all of them lead to. Not all. You know, some of them will pull a gun off a kid. Right. Doesn't mean he's used it yet, but we've pulled it off. He's still in possession of that.

Reuel Sample: He still has it.

Jason Smith: Yeah. So those a lot of those are are handled in our juvenile system. Some are handled in our adult system um due to the juvenile transfer uh, laws. But that is one stat that really has me, um, Bothered, right? How do we reduce our youth violence? How do we. And a lot of a lot of gang related stuff. Is youth right? Yes. And I say youth juveniles, but doesn't mean you have to be in a gang and not I mean, not everybody is gang validated when they're possessing guns or shooting guns, right? But how do you reduce this, this youth violence issue that I think we have?

Reuel Sample: Is that something that you're the D.A., you're the prosecutor. You get them. But is that something that your office can? Is that a preventive thing that you're.

Jason Smith: Let me. You'll hear this again. And a lot of people have probably. Man, I've heard that from you, Jason. We have two mandated duties by the Constitution of North Carolina. Right to advise law enforcement to prosecute cases. Right. That's our mandated that's our job prosecute cases and advise law enforcement. So I've Ben had this non-mandated, um, duty of crime prevention. I have also have have this burden of non-mandated crime prevention. For instance, over the course of my career, I've gone and talked to young people about the dangers of the internet. Why? Because it leads to crime, usually crimes against them, right? So I've done some of that crime prevention we for this last year. I've, I've been really going and talking to some of our community leaders. Come some of them are community partners. Some of them we didn't even know that were that were out there. But now they're our community partner. And we go and talk to these partners because they're on the they're on the they're on the ground dealing with some of these issues. And we talked to them about juvenile crime prevention. What can we do. So we are working and this is we're going to roll it out in 26 a way of, you know, a crime prevention measure that reduces hopefully youth or juvenile, you know, related charges or any really juvenile, uh, violence. Right. And we talk We're talking really mainly, um, acts of violence, not crimes against children as much as acts of violence. And we're working on a, a, an initiative and have been for the last year. First it was gather intelligence. Yeah. Second is all right, come up with a plan and we're working on coming up. We've come up with a plan now we're working on how do you refine the plan? What are the processes? And it's really a crime prevention measure. Um, not some people say, oh, it's a soft on crime. It's. No, I'm talking about getting in front of juveniles as young as ten, 11, 12, 13.

Reuel Sample: Ten, 11 and 12 with gun crimes.

Jason Smith: 12, 13, 14. It starts though. It starts.

Reuel Sample: It starts earlier.

Jason Smith: We all. I have four kids. How many do you have? Kids?

Reuel Sample: I've got kids.

Jason Smith: Yeah. You start talking to them about the do's and the don'ts of the world. Not when they're 14. They're not going to listen to you when they're 14, right? Yeah, right. You talk to them when they're nine, ten, 11, 12, 13. And that's what I'm talking about, is getting in and really getting in with some of these kids that, you know, they don't have what we have, like some they don't have. Sometimes they don't have the family structure. Sometimes they don't have the community structure. Sometimes they don't have the educational structure. Sometimes they don't have, you know, the, um, the income structure.

Reuel Sample: Yeah.

Jason Smith: We're talking about poverty. We're talking about, um, um, not good in school. We're talking about family. Life is not very good. Their community is dangerous. And they you know, we're talking those types of kids. And how do we help those kids at nine, ten, 11, 12? So they're not getting into the game when they're 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Reuel Sample: Because by that time it's part of their survival. Yes.

Jason Smith: And it's too late. Yeah, it's too late. Now can some is it do we throw away the key on those people? Absolutely not. My kids. I've got a kid that's 16. Do I want if he messes up? Do I want somebody to throw away the key? Absolutely not.

Reuel Sample: All the time.

Jason Smith: Not all the time. Not all the time. Not all the time. No, not at all. No, but he's going to mess up. Why? We all did. We're 16 years old. You're going to mess up. Do we want somebody throwing away the key? Absolutely not. So we're not giving up on that. But when we're talking about crime prevention, it's changing a mindset, giving these kids hopes of hope, giving these kids hope and purpose so they don't want to go down the life of crime or the life of drug dealing or the life of, you know, having to beg, borrow and steal and do crime just to get a meal, just to feel safe. So that's kind of what we're working on. That's a rollout in 26.

Reuel Sample: I think that should actually be a mandated part of your, of your, your of your office.

Jason Smith: I'm glad you do. And I've made it a mandate. Honestly, my staff's probably sick and tired of me talking about this is what we're going to do. They're like, boss, we are we're we're trying cases. We're moving our cases. But that is what I've personally taken on is going all right. I can't tell you how many meetings, one on one I've had with community partners in this in in this community and great people, great people I didn't even know that. We're doing things. And you sit down and you're like, man, where have you been? How come we haven't been able to work with you in the past? And now we're trying to build those relationships with our community because we need the trust of the community. We need the community help. It's not one person or 53 people that are able to do this. It's going to take the whole community to change the mindset, because if not, we're going to continue to have kids that grow up going to prison or getting killed. It's sad.

Reuel Sample: It's sad. You need to break the cycle and break.

Jason Smith: And that's what we're trying to.

Reuel Sample: Do. So in order to get things like that done, and also in order to get your prosecuting done, you need to be in partnership and cooperation with local police departments, sheriff's departments, judges, prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys.

Jason Smith: Every. I find that we have to partner with everybody.

Reuel Sample: Yeah.

Jason Smith: And that's okay. That's what we do.

Reuel Sample: How's that been?

Jason Smith: Very good, very good. Look, the sheriff and I have known each other for years. It's not like I came from out of town, not a prosecutor, and came here and said, oh, you know, hey, Sheriff, I'm Jason Smith. He knew who I was and we had worked together in his. I've worked with his staff. What's sad is many of his staff that are now higher level staff. We grew up together kind of in the district courts and I'm and or when I was prosecuting drug cases or whatever. Okay. And now I'm seeing them in their majors and captains. You're like, ah, so you already they already know who you are and you already know who they are. Okay. Right. We're just in different positions doing, you know.

Reuel Sample: Now, do you interact with local police departments?

Jason Smith: Yes, absolutely. So you have oh, let me give you this number. This is going to this is going to kind of blow your mind. All right. So in the two county region. Right. I told you my mandated job, one of them was to advise law enforcement. We have. Local and state. We have 18 local or state organizations or law enforcement agencies. We advise 1818. Um, if you count some of the task force, like sometimes we'll have FBI task force cases. We'll have ATF task force cases, uh, Homeland Security Investigations, Hpsci and some of those Secret Service. We've worked together. Really, you know, just on different things. It's not like every day, but, you know, add those in. And we have 28 organizations that sometimes we are are working with. But any given day we have 18 really local and state law enforcement agencies. We advise. So we have to work with a lot of people. So yeah, we work with the new chief at WPD. Yeah. Um, Carolina Beach, Curry Beach, you name it. I can run up the run up the coast and then run into Pender. But yes, I've, you know, Alan Cutler is the sheriff in Pender County. I have worked with him for a number of years. He was when he first got elected. I was the assistant D.A. up there. So we. Yes.

Reuel Sample: And outside of that, you, as you said, you are developing relationships with a whole bunch of other organizations outside of law Yes.

Jason Smith: Yes.

Reuel Sample: Wow.

Jason Smith: Yes. And it. Some would say, well, why crime prevention? But not everybody goes to prison. Not everybody can. Structured sentencing doesn't allow everybody to go to prison. Not everybody needs to go to prison. I'll be honest with you.

Reuel Sample: Oftentimes they go to prison. They come out better criminals.

Jason Smith: That's right. I call it, um, what did I call it?

Reuel Sample: On the job training?

Jason Smith: Yeah. Prison. College, you know, but but, you know, sometimes they do.

Reuel Sample: Yeah.

Jason Smith: But a lot of times the majority are not going. They're going on probation. Well, you need they need support services here. Why? Because we're trying to break the cycle, right? You know, we're trying to. How about jobs? You know, thieves usually don't usually don't thieve if they have a job. Some do. But usually if you can break that cycle. Right. So there's there's ways that education always helps. Right. Education jobs. So we're working with people all the time going hey what can we work better with this or that to to help this, you know, this criminal will work with defense attorneys and say, hey, tell me his plan, his rehab plan. Tell me his his is he, you know, his education plan. His job plan. Because we're trying to we're trying to kill the cycle. We don't want to see him back. We want to reduce our recidivism.

Reuel Sample: All right. So we've talked a lot about what you've done. Yep. You are running.

Jason Smith: Yep. Filed yesterday.

Reuel Sample: Congratulations.

Jason Smith: Thank you. Thank you.

Reuel Sample: This is this is Tuesday that we're recording. Monday was the first day to file. You were.

Jason Smith: In I was in. Well, I had to go to. Raleigh. You had to go to Raleigh. Okay. A little wait there, but, yeah, it was good.

Reuel Sample: What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish next? So this is for a four year term. Yeah. So we're going to see you for two years - for four years.

Jason Smith: Yes. So what we want to accomplish is to continue to do the good work we're doing now, which is maintain a stable, um, office. Right. We want to make sure that we the it's the six prosecutorial district. That's a mouthful, but six prosecutorial district of Pender and New Hanover County. We want to be we want we want other prosecutors and other law students to say, I want to go there and I want to prosecute.

Reuel Sample: Wow.

Jason Smith: That's what we want to do. We want to be the best office in the state. And, you know, I think we are pretty doggone good. So we want to continue to keep an office stabilized. Why? Because you if you're if you're down manpower, it reduces your efficiency. It reduces your ability to to move cases. Right. So we want to make sure we keep a stable office. We want to make sure it's a good place to work. Right. Um we have to. You want people to like coming to work.

Reuel Sample: Because you want to attract the best.

Jason Smith: Right? Yeah. Right. And I think we do. Um, so that's keep our office stabilized. Continue to focus on the worst people that do the worst things. Really, the people that are focused on taking lives or their actions will result in somebody's life being taken. Right. And we want to continue to focus on those because that's what affects us, you know, walking down the street or a lot of people walking down the street. That's what we've seen too. I didn't tell you. I didn't talk to you about vehicles versus pedestrians. Okay. But that if you look at the news this last year, we've had a lot of vehicle versus pedestrians.

Jason Smith: We have it's a lot um, more of those than probably homicides, right. Um, so we want to make sure that we're focusing on the right things, not ignoring the others, but focusing on going after those people and making sure those people stay in the prison system or, um, you know, are not being a menace to our, our community. Those are the those are the two. We continue to do those. And you will ask me every year, what's your goal? Those are always going to be our goal, right? Because that's part of our mandate. I really, really want to tackle this youth violence problem in 2026. Come up. We've come up with a good plan. We're I'm not going to roll it out yet to you because it's it's still we're still working on processes and procedures.

Reuel Sample: I'd much rather see a finished plan.

Jason Smith: I want to I want to make sure that that is, uh, we're working on that, and we get that implemented in 26.

Reuel Sample: We'll have you back on when you have that, when you roll that out.

Jason Smith: Good. Yeah. I want to continue and do a better job about getting in front of the public, talking about, you know, public service announcements. We did some on, on, uh, hot cars. We did some on, uh, safe boating. We want to continue to do that, educate our public in some of these public safety areas. Yeah. Um, safe storage of your firearms, safe use of a firearm. Those are things that, if you noticed, every one of those, those can take a life. So we want to continue to do that on the on the violence prevention. And we have done that. We did that this year. We're going to continue to do it next year. I want to actually do more of it next year, because I feel like education is key when you're talking about things like that. Education, I think it helps.

Reuel Sample: Yeah, well, you want to prosecute, but if you can avoid prosecuting.

Jason Smith: I would love to do so much prevention. It takes away my job. It will never happen. But that's what I'd like to do. Why? Because we would all enjoy being able to walk down the street feeling safe. Right. That would be great. You know, that's the utopia that we always think of. So that's what we're going to try to work towards, of reducing our crime and then going after those that choose to continue to do the crime.

Reuel Sample: And figuring out Ecourts at the same time.

Jason Smith: We're working on it. We're working on that. Ecourts is challenging.

Reuel Sample: How can they get in touch with you to support you?

Jason Smith: Look, you can uh oh for for the campaign. Um, obviously, I've elect Jason Smith. Com, um, that's a web page. We we're still. We haven't, we haven't. Um, it's very early on. We haven't changed it to reflect, you know, the new reelection coming up this year. Um, look, we'll set everything up, and you start giving through there. It has been one day. We haven't, you know, one day. One day, one day. Come on, one day.

Jason Smith: So, um, we'll have our web page. We'll do so you'll see stuff through social media that we're working on. Get out there and talk to people. That's really what I focused on this year, is getting out to talk to people for doing my job, but educating people, and through that, you, you find supporters, you you'll be surprised. You don't focus. Look what we represent. Our I represent everybody in two counties. It doesn't matter if you like politics, love politics, hate politics, ours, D's eyes or whatever. We represent the whole community. So I go out and I talk to the whole community, and, you know, that's what I'm going to continue to do.

Reuel Sample: I got to tell you, Mr. District Attorney, I thankfully I've never been down to the the prosecuting, the district attorney's office for one. But if you bring the same kind of excitement and energy and, uh, diverse approach to your office that I saw out on the campaign trail, I can't tell you folks, the the folks that were wearing your t shirts. T-shirts. Yeah. We're folks that I never thought would be wearing your T-shirts. Never.

Jason Smith: But those are the. That's who we represent, who we work with.

Reuel Sample: Preventing crime. Prosecuting crime goes across party lines.

Jason Smith: That's what I tell people. They're like, you know, you're just a Republican. No, I represent everybody and nobody cares. Once you got in the office, nobody cares what your political affiliation is. We prosecute cases because what's right and what's wrong? Right. And that's we try to keep everybody safe. And that's what I kept trying to tell people on the campaign trail. And they want to pull you in these in these, uh, these directions, you know, the political directions. And I'm like, no, let me we we stand for more than politics, right? We stand for what's right and wrong, and we stand for, you know, you know, protecting people from crime. That's terrible.

Reuel Sample: So, Mr. District Attorney, thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you. And you've been listening to the Wilmington Standard. I'm Reuel Sample thanks for listening.

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