Running on a criminal justice reform platform in 2016, former federal prosecutor Andrew Warren took aim at Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober’s policies on juvenile justice and in handling death penalty cases. In the end, the Democrat narrowly defeated the 16-year GOP incumbent in what was described at the time as a stunning upset.

Four years later, Warren is now the incumbent defending some of his policies against his new Republican opponent, Mike Perotti, who currently serves as the legal counsel for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

“What you’re looking at right now is an office that’s being poorly led by somebody who’s not from the community, who doesn’t understand all the needs and interests of our community,” Perotti tells Spectrum Bay News 9 in explaining why he’s challenging Warren.

Perotti says that while he wants to maintain Warren’s policy of diverting juveniles from the criminal justice system, he says that there needs to be more “robust” diversion programs so that released youth don’t begin reoffending again.

Warren is running on a reelection platform that boasts about how he’s been able to implement criminal justice reform programs while maintaining low crime rates, citing a reduction of crime in Hillsborough County from 2016 to 2019 of 22 percent.

“This community has strongly supported a vision of criminal justice reform that I laid out four years ago: one of public safety, of fairness and of justice,” he says. “We’ve had tremendous success. Our neighborhoods are safer, reform is up, we’re standing up for victims and we are making Hillsborough County a shining example of what a modern, 21st century prosecutor’s office looks like.”

However, some crime statistics are up in Tampa in 2020 (as they are in many major U.S. cities). Perotti attributes some of that increase directly to Warren’s policies, saying that in his job with the Sheriff’s Office he recently looked at more than half a dozen different homicides this year “and every single of one those individuals has had recent contact with the justice system.”

Warren says Perotti doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“There has been a slight increase (in crime) across the country dealing with Covid,” he says. “So criticize, pulling out those numbers, is cherry picking stats, and frankly, it means you don’t understand the larger issues of what’s going on.”

Warren cites his work on juvenile justice, as well as his office’s emphasis on providing treatment for people who suffer from substance abuse and mental illness as some of his proudest accomplishments during his first term in office. He also touts the creation of a Conviction Review Unit (CRU) in 2018 to investigate and remedy wrongful convictions.  

Working with the New York-based Innocence Project, the CRU announced in late August that newly unearthed DNA evidence proved that Robert Duboise, a man who had been incarcerated for 37 years for a 1983 rape and murder, was likely not guilty in the case.

Warren has also been in the news often this past summer as demonstrations for racial equality and police accountability led to large numbers of arrests by the Tampa Police Department. 

Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan recently told the Tampa Bay Times that he has some concerns about Warren’s decisions to drop charges against some protestors. But Warren says that there is a natural tension between the two agencies, and that he’ll never be a “rubber stamp” for the TPD.

“I’m an independent objective check on what happens, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to promote public safety, to make sure that we’re standing up for victims, to make sure that we’re enforcing the law, in a fair and objective manner,” he says. “We are a different organization, with different legal standards and different objectives on law enforcement.”

Perotti says his past experiences as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney has given him a “unique perspective” to lead the State Attorney’s Office. And whether he or not he’s actually campaigning on a criminal justice reform platform, he believes that the system still needs changes.

“If you ask me, ‘Mike, are their problems in our criminal justice system that create racially disparate outcomes?’ I say absolutely yes. There’s clear evidence of that,” he says.

Perotti is a third-generation Tampa native who often notes that Warren isn’t from the region (he was born and raised in Gainesville), and has questioned whether he’ll be here for the long haul.  

“My focus from the day that I announced my election in 2016 as state attorney was to make Hillsborough County a model of what a prosecutor’s office should look like around the country. In four years, we have accomplished tremendous change here,” Warren says in response. “I’m excited about the next four.”

There’s just three weeks left for both candidates to make their case to Hillsborough voters.