Dennis Burke, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona

A noteworthy opinion piece in the Arizona Daily Sun nearly slipped past me unnoticed. But it is a hopeful sign for a chronic Arizona—and national—problem.

In the op-ed, Dennis K. Burke, the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, says that prosecutions are up on Indian reservations.

Depending on whom you ask, low prosecution rates on the reservation has been either a national embarrassment or a misunderstanding about the way things really work.

This “declination rate” (named for the fact the federal prosecutors often decline to prosecute) is being reversed, Burke said. But not before adding, right up in the second graf, “Disturbingly, this recent news coverage [on declinations] distracts from the most important public safety metric—more violent criminals are being prosecuted in Arizona Indian Country than ever before.”

Hmmm—“distracts”? The U.S. Attorney’s Office may be understandably thin-skinned about the issue. They have been hammered pretty hard on it. In fact, in January I wrote about the proliferation of stories on the topic.

I leave it to others to determine whether the heightened news coverage had any impact on shifting priorities in the prosecutor’s office. Maybe not. Of course, that would be the first time in history that the light of day hadn’t been persuasive.

Nonetheless, the list of accomplishments and initiatives Burke lists are impressive. As I did in January, I cheer those efforts, and we look forward to continued successes.

Read Dennis Burke’s complete message here.