York County District Attorney Dave Sunday, candidate for attorney general, answers questions at a candidates forum in Pittsburgh Oct. 23, 2024 (Photo by Abigail Hakas for the Capital-Star)
York County District Attorney Dave Sunday said Monday that his work to stem the opioid overdose epidemic as a prosecutor a decade ago changed his life.
Speaking to an audience at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg, Sunday said that while working on the effort that became the York County Opioid Collective, he attended hundreds of meetings and met with people directly impacted by the opioid epidemic before it made many headlines.
“We sat in living rooms with parents who’ve lost their children, and we did everything in between, really, to understand what was going on,” Sunday said.
It became clear that not only was there an epidemic of addiction killing people, but there was a severe mental health crisis in Pennsylvania, Sunday said. And a majority of crime in Pennsylvania, he said, was related directly or tangentially to addiction, mental illness or a combination of the two.
“So, not only if we want to make our community safer, we have to impact that, but at the same time, I feel that we have a moral responsibility to help people with mental illness get treatment,” Sunday said.
York County became a leader in changing the approach to mental health and policing, pairing police officers with social workers to respond to mental health emergencies. The goal, Sunday said, was not to let criminals get away with crime, but to ensure that the person is safe and is quickly connected to the treatment they need.
“This can be done all over Pennsylvania, and as attorney general, I will do everything I can to make sure that these happen,” Sunday said.
Sunday, a Republican serving his second term as district attorney, is running against Democratic former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale for Pennsylvania’s open attorney general seat. Attorney General Michelle Henry, who was appointed by Gov. Josh Shapiro to finish his term as the commonwealth’s top prosecutor, is not running for election.
DePasquale invokes Shapiro in Pennsylvania AG race
In his talk at the Press Club lunch, Sunday told the audience about his service in the U.S. Navy, deployed aboard a guided missile frigate to the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Strike and to Central and South America in counter-drug operations.
“There was no rank lower than me … so I swabbed decks and I chipped paint, and I did all that type of work. And to be honest, I really, really needed it, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, was joining the military,” Sunday said.
After returning to Pennsylvania, Sunday said he worked his way through college and law school, taking classes by day and working at a UPS facility at night. His first job as a lawyer, Sunday said, was in the York County District Attorney’s Office and he stayed there for 15 years becoming a major crimes prosecutor and trying more than 20 murder cases.
The Office of the Attorney General is Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement authority with statewide jurisdiction to investigate a range of crimes from public corruption to child abuse. The office also investigates fraud and enforces consumer protection laws.
Asked by an audience member whether he would enforce a law that prohibits abortion if Pennsylvania’s law changes, repeated his statement from an Oct. 4 debate with DePasquale that he would not prosecute any woman for having an abortion. But he added that he can’t see a scenario in which Pennsylvania voters would allow abortion to become illegal.
“I can tell you right now, very simply, that there is no world that exists that I could ever see where that would happen. And I can tell you that as a prosecutor, there’s no way that would prosecute a woman for having an abortion,” Sunday said.
Sunday passed on a question about whether local law enforcement should have radar, which is used exclusively by state police in Pennsylvania, to enforce speed limits.
But he spoke at length on the legalization of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania and the calls to expunge the criminal records of those convicted of possessing cannabis.
Sunday noted that seeking a pardon is already a way for those with criminal convictions to have their records restored and his office was among the first, he said, to participate in the Pardons Project , which assists those seeking a pardon. Sunday also said that as a member of the state Sentencing Commission, he was involved in the creation of guidelines that take into account the age and severity of past convictions.
‘Pardon Me’ documentary aims to raise awareness about Pennsylvania’s pardon process
But Sunday said he would need to see proposed legislation before he would comment on it. “But fundamentally, I believe that once people are held accountable, it’s important to put them in a position where they can live their life and be safe and be thriving members of society,” Sunday said.
Asked the biggest difference between himself and DePasquale, Sunday turned to a comparison between DePasquale’s lack of prosecutorial experience and his own as a career prosecutor. DePasquale spent much of his career in elected office, first as a state representative, then as auditor general.
“It’s like a tale of two lawyers, and so you have one who came through the courthouse to get here, and the other who came through Harrisburg at a lot of different places,” Sunday said.
Sunday said the complexity of the attorney general’s office requires an experienced lawyer, but that nothing matters more than keeping communities safe.
“Public safety, it impacts our schools. It impacts the business community, it impacts our economic environment. It impacts the way we treat each other. It impacts just the entire world around us, and I think that we’re at a place where we need a prosecutor to do that job,” Sunday said.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Local News