Local attorney Christopher Desrochers has 30+ years of Law Practice and Business Management under his belt. Here’s three reasons why he feels best suited to be the new public defender.
Christopher Desrochers has visited and toured the Public Defender’s Office in Bartow twice. During both trips, he noticed various issues in the office.
One major issue: none of the senior support staff working there apparently had an understudy or assistant. Not a single one. Compounding matters even further, many of these senior support staff members were close to retirement. So, there was no one to immediately take their place when they stepped down.
Aside from his 31 years of experience as a practicing civil and criminal defense attorney, Desrochers also has extensive experience in managing several corporations through their revitalization and transition processes.
As someone with such extensive experience running several businesses, he knew that how the public defender’s office was currently being managed was not how a proper business was run. In fact, such shoddy management was a recipe for disaster, he said.
“Apparently, the overall plan was that if someone were to retire, they were going [to give someone] a list of instructions and tell them to have a nice day,” Desrochers said. “That is not a transition plan. That is the plot of Night of the Museum.”
For that and many other reasons, Desrochers has decided to not only utilize his experience in civil and criminal law, but also in managing businesses big and small, to run for Public Defender of the 10th Judicial Circuit.
A Winter Haven native, Desrochers graduated from Winter Haven High School in 1985. He graduated from law school at the University of Florida. He has since gained more than 31 years of practicing law.
While his career focused mostly on civil law, he also has experience in criminal law, often representing people in criminal cases who have either been detained or have received court-appointed counsel under the Criminal Justice Act.
Desrochers also has extensive experience running his own law firm and several other companies, especially those going through reorganization or transition. As someone with such managerial and corporate experience coupled with his experience practicing law, he considers himself the best candidate to become a public defender.
Having visited the public defender’s office at least twice, he has not only seen the problems firsthand for himself, but he has analyzed these problems with potential solutions he could easily implement in his position.
One issue of which he had been informed was that attorneys had been discharged “squirreling”, where cases are often hoarded away out of sight rather than being worked on. He blames this problem on both the lack of oversight and the overall office being understaffed, to the point where too many cases are being appointed to too few attorneys.
“No one has been managing the store, and it has been running on autopilot,” he said. “So, there are certainly issues in the public defender’s office. I spotted a bunch of them in 20 minutes. At this point, I can see why the office is having issues, and why the court system is backed up.”
Desrochers has proposed three reasons why he is the most suited to address these problems:
#1: He has the experience to identify these problems and address them promptly:
“This all comes back to my experience. “[Someone else may] look at this issue and ask, ‘Where do we start?’ I look at these issues and say, ‘I handled these before.’ I have been in places where firms are being run on autopilot with absentee supervisors and managers so to speak.”
#2: He considers himself to be the most “intellectually honest” person for the position. He contrasts himself with his opponent, whom he claims has only been repeating the problems that are plaguing the public defender’s office.
“She has not planned anything,” he said. “There is no plan on the other side. Her intention is to work on autopilot like Rex did, and it will be the same old thing with the same old results but worse.”
#3: He has effortlessly handled similar issues in other companies that he has managed that are currently plaguing the public defender’s office.
“I have managed and help manage a business that is bigger than the public defender office,” he said. “It is something that unfortunately my opponent has no experience in. She has worked at the office but as a line worker…which is great, we need line workers, but eventually, we need a CEO, and I have those skills point blank.”
For more information, visit his campaign website at: https://cadforpd.com/
