Los Banos Fire Chief apologizes to D.A.’s office

Los Banos Fire Chief Tim Marrison apologized this week for comments he made in a newspaper article stating the Merced County District Attorney’s Office has declined to prosecute some homeless arrested for starting structure fires.

The Los Banos Enterprise published an article Aug. 14 about three fires occurring within three days, all of which fire officials believe were started by homeless people. In the article Marrison states “Arrests are being made. The problem is the district attorney does not follow through, so they end up back on the streets.”

The article goes on to paraphrase the fire chief, “because he is not in the courtroom he does not know why the D.A.’s office chooses to prosecute one case over another, Marrison added.”

Marrison said he was not directed by his superiors to apologize.

Marrison said he thought the context of his quote was unclear. He said he decided on Monday to write a letter of clarification to the D. A.’s office.

“I want to prevent there being any hard feelings,” Marrison told the Enterprise on Wednesday.

The letter was posted on the Los Banos Fire Department Facebook page, emailed to the D.A.’s office and given to the Enterprise.

The letter states, “The printed content made it appear that the District Attorney’s office was not following through with filing charges on these crimes and therefore the suspects were being released. This statement is not correct and I wanted to clarify and apologize for any misunderstandings.”

Merced County District Attorney Larry Morse II said the apology was “gratefully accepted.”

Morse said the newspaper article was brought to his office’s management meeting on Monday. He said it is upsetting when something isn’t accurate and Marrison’s original statement was not.

“Most of the cases of this ilk come over as misdemeanors. I personally supervise our misdemeanor unit. We aggressively prosecute them. We file roughly 5,000 misdemeanors a year,” Morse said.

He said his office has prosecuted every Los Banos case in the past year except for one that was sent back for further investigation.

Morse said his office will not hold a grudge against Marrison or the city of Los Banos.

“He immediately apologized,” Morse said. “We’re all working together.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2015 at 11:19 AM with the headline "Los Banos Fire Chief apologizes to D.A.’s office."