Christina has a plan to make Macomb County safer.

“I will continue to listen to residents across Macomb County about the issues that our communities face. I will bring a team mindset to the issues that we face so that all voices can be heard and ensure that everyone has a seat at the table.”

Core Priorities

  • As a career prosecutor who handled hundreds of sexual assault and child abuse cases, Christina understands the harm that these offenses have on survivors and their communities. Too often, these crimes do not receive adequate investigation or prosecution resources. Christina will be steadfast in keeping the community safe and will allocate prosecutorial resources appropriately - working to ensure that survivors are treated with the respect and compassion that they deserve. While prosecutor’s must maintain their role in holding those who commit crimes accountable, prosecutors must engage directly with communities by stepping out of the courtroom to support victims of crime, embracing community partnerships, building community trust, developing expertise on the impacts of trauma to expand recovery, employing alternatives to traditional prosecution, and utilizing the prosecutor’s voice to garner broad public support for change. Christina is committed to:

    • Training the attorneys and staff in the Prosecutor’s Office to engage in best practices for investigation, prosecution, wrap-around support services for all parties involved, and supporting community partners in doing the same.

    • Working alongside important community partners such as law enforcement, and Carehouse and Turning Point, to ensure survivors feel safe coming forward by promoting a gradual process of disclosure and reporting rather than traditional “all or nothing” or “now or never” approaches.

    • Supporting a trauma-informed, evidence-based approach to cases and maintaining an open line of communication to victims and their family members.

  • The current criminal legal system is ill-equipped to respond to substance use disorders, homelessness, mental illness, and many crimes of poverty. Well-designed programs that divert people from jail or prison, or deflect them from the criminal legal system entirely, can conserve resources, reduce reoffending, and help stabilize families.

    Substance Abuse

    Drug overdose deaths have reached record levels in our country - over 100,000 people died of a drug overdose in 2021, a 50% increase over the past two years. It is time to move toward addressing drug addiction. Christina will work with the courts, police departments, rehabilitation centers, and other stakeholders to treat drug addiction as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. Christina is committed to:

    • Decriminalizing drug addiction by deflecting people with substance use disorders into treatment and rehabilitation options, and refocusing our efforts and resources into investigating and prosecuting drug traffickers.

    • Working alongside community partners to increase treatment service options and K-12 education, and working with courts to expand sobriety court, drug diversion, and pre-arrest diversion programs.

    • Expunging (or seeking sentencing reductions for) past convictions that would be treated differently today.

    Mental Illness

    People with mental illness wind up in the criminal legal system more than they should. As a result, America’s largest psychiatric facilities are not hospitals, but jails and prisons. These folks end up released and sent back into the community without a treatment plan or the prospect of good health care and then commit crimes and end up right back in the same place. Christina will encourage the use of public health models as a starting point for developing responses to individuals in crisis and promote community-based services to stabilize people who otherwise end up in jail. Christina is committed to:

    • Supporting law enforcement by advocating for additional funding for social workers and mental health experts to work alongside police officers and crisis-intervention training of law enforcement to de-escalate situations involving individuals with mental illness and reduce the likelihood of use of force or arrest as a response.

    • Working with correctional and mental health staff to reinstate public benefits, such as Medicaid, at the time of release from custody.

    • Bringing together stakeholders to collaborate on data-sharing, developing exit ramps from the criminal legal system, and filling gaps in community services and support.

    Crimes of Poverty

    Prosecutors must also work to combat the exploitation of those in poverty, which exacerbates their financial situation, by aggressively targeting those who take advantage of the vulnerable. Poverty is linked to contact with the criminal legal system and it is incumbent upon prosecutors to ensure communities do not enter cycles of poverty due to corporate greed. Fees in criminal court often shift the cost of the court system to the people who appear in court, and are often levied without regard to a person’s ability to pay, which traps poor people in a cycle of incarceration and debt, which actually increases a person's likelihood to engage in criminal activity. Christina is committed to:

    • Using civil enforcement powers to address corporate wage theft and consumer protection violations.

    • Working to end the poverty trap of fines and fees.

    • Speaking out about the injustices of fines and costs, and advocating for models that assess fees and fines on a sliding scale or waive fines and fees altogether based on indigency.

  • As a career prosecutor, I have seen firsthand how budget cuts to law enforcement have made it harder for police officers to do their jobs, and have made our communities less safe for police and citizens. Police departments are struggling to find qualified applicants, and as a result, many positions have gone unfilled or to folks with little experience. What’s more, police officers are being asked to respond to more calls than ever before, including to handle issues that we have refused to address as a society, and that are outside of their training and expertise, such as severe mental illness and drug-use issues. This creates a dangerous situation for police and community members.

    To make our communities safer and create a future with less crime, we must protect, invest, and expand life-saving services like police, firefighters, and EMS. At the same time, we need to engage in common sense improvements that will make policing safer for our officers and our community. Christina is committed to:

    • Advocating for adequate funding for police departments and supporting officers’ mental, physical, and emotional well-being.

    • Advocating for co-response of police officers and community mental health experts on calls involving mental illness to better protect and serve our community members.

    • Providing training for police officers on best practices and trauma-informed techniques.

    • Working to build and strengthen the bonds of trust between police officers and the communities they serve by hosting community events that bring these groups together.

  • Macomb County is special. We have 32 miles of Lake St. Clair shoreline - stretching from Grosse Pointe Shores in the south to New Baltimore in the north. Christina wants to ensure that our Lake - and all of our waterways, shoreline, land, and air - will be clean and safe for generations to come.

    But that means we need to hold polluters accountable and protect our important wetlands from being developed. For too long, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office has ignored it’s responsibility to protect our envionment. Christina will adequately staff the Environmental Protection Unit and work alongside law enforcement to ensure our children and grandchildren can enjoy the natural resources Macomb County has to offer.

 Additional Issues

  • For too long, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office has been operating under a “pay-to-play” system. Christina is dedicated to pursuing justice and holding offenders accountable for the crimes they committed. She will ensure prosecutors focus on fairness and keeping the public safe rather than raising money for the next election.

    Prosecutors will receive adequate training in the specific subject matter related to the cases they handle, as well as on implicit bias, debunked science, false confessions, and witness identifications. Prosecutors will also have the discretion to handle their own cases on charging, plea bargaining, and dismissing cases.

    Public institutions work best when they are informed by people’s lived experience, and Christina would like to help the Prosecutor’s Office look more like the county it serves.

    The Prosecutor’s Office will host community events where they can seek input from our partners and stakeholders in the community, as well as gauge community satisfaction and identify concerns. Christina will work to establish more community prosecution models within the office so that community members get to know the prosecutor handling cases for their area.

    Data will be available to the public so that the Prosecutor can be held accountable for the performance of the office.

  • Everyone deserves to keep their money safe against financial crimes and scams. Christina will work with law enforcement to inform the community about financial crimes so that Macomb County residents do not fall victim to these scammers.

    Too frequently, corporations short workers the money or benefits they are owed. Christina will work to address wage theft, to protect the rights of workers in Macomb County to their hard-earned wages, to promote safe working conditions, and to speak out about retaliation or other abusive employer practices. Christina will prosecute companies who intentionally steal from their workers and hold them accountable.

  • As any parent or teacher can tell you, kids are not just small adults. Young people have a great capacity for change, and we should dedicate our resources to helping them understand responsibility and accountability. We can do this by supporting parents and teachers, and ensuring our criminal legal system uses best practices to get kids on the right track.

    But too often, the criminal legal system imposes adult consequences on children. Children may be separated from their families, detained for long periods of time, and teenagers may even be housed with adults who have been convicted of violent crimes. That is unsafe, unjust, and unwise.

    When our legal system treats children as adults, it diminishes their opportunity for rehabilitation, and ultimately makes them more likely to engage in criminal activity. That makes our community less safe. Christina will prioritize rehabilitation for young people and work to keep families together.

  • For centuries, minority communities have been treated unfairly in our criminal legal system. Extensive evidence shows that racial disparities still exist at every stage of the justice system. Prosecutors must confront these issues head-on by using data to promote equity and fairness. In turn, this will foster a healthier, more cooperative relationship with the communities they serve, which makes all of us safer.

    Christina is committed to reducing racial and ethnic disparities that arise from prosecutorial practices. This starts by increasing transparency, accountability, and integrity within the Prosecutor’s Office. Christina is committed to:

    Tracking and publishing race and gender data for bond requests, charging decisions, plea bargains and sentencing recommendations. Beyond that, Christina will permit an outside, non-partisan source to review the data, evaluate disparities, and make recommendations to reduce them.

    Ensuring that no one is above the law by creating a Public Corruption Unit to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by public officials and employees. 

    Expanding diversion and deflection programs, and promoting restorative justice practices in the Prosecutor’s Office. Punishing criminals and holding them accountable is only part of a government’s proper response to crime. It is also important to ensure that crime survivors are made whole, treating victims and survivors with respect, making sure they are aware of available services and opportunities for involvement, and reconciling victims with offenders where possible.

  • Christina has worked with police officers her entire career. She knows that most police officers take great care to protect and respect the communities they serve. But when they do not, their actions taint their departments and the entire criminal legal system, and our community suffers.

    Christina will work to reduce racial disparities that arise from police practices. Working with police and other law enforcement agencies to meaningfully compare and address racial disparity at different points in the system will be an important priority. Christina will decline to proceed with cases if they are clouded by a pattern of racist conduct.

    Christina will create an independent unit for internal investigations staffed with senior prosecutors and experienced investigators. The unit should report directly to the district attorney or her chief deputy. The investigators should have no daily contact with, or reliance on, the local law enforcement agency under investigation.

  • It is easier and cheaper to prevent crime than it is to stop it. Once the damage is done, once the police get involved, once the person is assaulted, once the children are taken away from their parents, it takes resources from partners across the community to support and rehabilitate everyone who has been harmed by the situation. Yet, many of the factors that go into crime prevention are not in the hands of the prosecutor - they are in the hands of the legislature, county commissioners, and city governments.

    Christina will collaborate with other government officials, and advocate for changes in the law that will make a difference in crime reduction: affordable housing, guaranteed maternity and paternity leave, affordable child care, good schools, access to mental health treatment, and treatment for addiction.

  • Prosecutors are the gatekeepers of America’s criminal legal system. The folks that work at Prosecutor’s Offices, including victim advocates, legal assistants, paralegals, investigators, and attorneys should always strive to ensure that survivors of crime have their needs met, that people charged with crimes have their rights upheld, and that the community is safe.

    Those that work to keep our community safe should be treated with respect and feel safe in their office to be able to best do their job. Christina will always strive to ensure that employees at the Prosecutor’s Office are able to work without political strife and retaliation. On day one, Christina will make sure that the office knows that sexual harassment and retaliation will NOT be tolerated.

    Furthermore, employees will not be expected or encouraged to attend political fundraisers in order to get promotions. Instead, performance standards will reflect our office values, such as working diligently, reducing recidivism, ensuring victims and defendant’s rights are upheld, and treating everyone with fairness and dignity.