News Article

Courts Some find drug court sentences inadequate

Backers say alternative to prison can stop cycle


Sunday, June 12, 2016

by The Toledo Blade

Dawn Ohms can’t forget the Sunday afternoon in March when a robber walked into the convenience store where she works and ordered her to the floor. “All I could think of was, I have a 6-month-old grandson, and I’m not going to see him again,” Ms. Ohms recalled. At 52, she has bad knees and wasn’t getting down fast enough for the robber, who pushed her to the floor, jumped the counter, and demanded to know how to open the cash register. She told him. He took the cash drawer and fled.

The robber, Bradley Buck, didn’t have a gun, but Ms. Ohms said he kept his hand on something in his pocket to make her think he did. It turned out to be a rock with a pointed end. Buck, 40, was soon caught and confessed to committing four other holdups. None of the other victims was physically injured or threatened with a weapon, but Ms. Ohms said she was disappointed to learn that Buck was not sent to a state prison.

He pleaded guilty in Lucas County Common Pleas Court to four counts of robbery, and Judge Ian English ordered him to spend a year in local jails with drug treatment followed by participation in the county’s new drug court.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Courts/2016/06/12/Some-find-drug-court-sentences-inadequate.html