Robert P. McCulloch
Except for a cruel twist of fate, Bob McCulloch conceivably could have been St. Louis police chief and possibly even president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), instead of prosecuting attorney of St. Louis County, Missouri, and the new president of NDAA.
The police professions loss is NDAA’s gain.
McCulloch, who assumed the presidency of NDAA during the association’s summer conference in Snowmass, Colorado, originally wanted to be a St. Louis police officer, like his father, who died in an exchange of gunfire with a kidnapping suspect. There’s little doubt that with McCulloch’s drive and abilities, he would have been a fine police officer and would have risen to the top of that profession, as he has in prosecution.
But as a profile in the March/April 2000 issue of The Prosecutor noted, fate intervened in an ironic way. While in high school, where he was an outstanding distance runner, he was diagnosed with bone cancer and lost his left leg. This ended his running career and any chance of becoming a police officer.
Wanting to remain in law enforcement, he attended St. Louis University and its law school, where he received his law degree in 1977, served as an assistant prosecutor in St. Louis County for seven years, went into private practice for five years and in 1990 ran successfully for prosecuting attorney, succeeding his former boss, who became county executive.
Eleven days after he took office, fate stepped in again with an unusual twist, bringing back a grim reminder of his father’s death. A county police officer was shot to death and the suspect was the son of a police captain. Although he had barely moved into his office, McCulloch decided to prosecute this case himself. “The death of my father is never far from the front of my mind,” he says “and that case took on proportions beyond the event itself. It had special meaning for me.” The defendant was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Today, as prosecuting attorney of Missouri’s largest county, President McCulloch heads a staff of 110, including 53 prosecutors. The jurisdiction, which surrounds the city of St. Louis -- a separate jurisdiction -- has a population of more than one million and includes 91 municipalities and 65 police departments.
In NDAA, President McCulloch has been a leader and a thoughtful source of innovative ideas. These qualities served him well in his roles as chair of the Crime Control Committee and chair of the NDAA National Advocacy Center Advisory Committee. Under McCulloch’s leadership, the latter committee established procedures and protocol for training at the center during the planning stages and provided guidance and oversight after the center opened.
Bob McCulloch concedes that a year is a relatively brief time in which to achieve a major goal, such as a passage of major legislation or a critical policy change. He believes that NDAA presidents not only bring their own initiatives, but also provide continuity by building on the foundations established their predecessors and leave a legacy of accomplishment for their successors.
Thus, one of his prime goals will be to help bring about congressional passage of loan forgiveness legislation that hopefully will enable prosecutors to retain talented young assistants through federal reimbursement of their law school expenses. McCulloch noted that his predecessor, Dan Alsobrooks, “did an outstanding job in getting this started and we’re now at a point where legislation has been introduced and we’re on our way, but it’s going to take another year of work to make it a reality.”
He also inherits the ongoing Prosecutors Memorial project, initiated during the presidency of Robert M. A. Johnson, county attorney of Anoka County Minnesota.
President McCulloch’s primary goal will be to become more aggressive in raising the level of public awareness of what prosecutors do to protect the public.” He added, “We just don’t do enough to let people know that. We have just sat back and assumed that it’s part of our job to let the defense bar and the media define us and abuse us. We’ve started to react to that with an excellent media relations program, and I want us to become incredibly active in making the public aware all the good things that we do and the intensive training that we provide, at the advocacy center, APRI and the National College of District Attorneys.
“Most people don’t know,” President McCulloch continues, “that we’re at the forefront of promoting elder abuse policies, child abuse policies and are the premier training organization for prosecutors in how to handle cases properly, so that we not only get the right people into prison, but also keep the innocent out of prison. As (NDAA Executive Director) Newman Flanagan says, we are the peoples’ lawyers. We need to do more to emphasize that.
“For example,” he continues, “I’m getting tired of seeing law professors and former federal prosecutors who probably have never tried a local murder case appear on media programs pontificating about situations in which they have little or no experience. Our prosecutor members should be on those programs. Our board includes some of the country’s top experts in virtually every type of local crime and I plan to call upon them to help us tell our story.”
President McCulloch’s other goals include pressing for more federal funding for DNA labs, which are handicapped by backlogs that are delaying resolution of cases, and expanding NDAA’s contacts with members of Congress. On the latter goal, he says, “I think we have a tremendous amount of influence and potential that we don’t recognize. We’re the only organization in the country whose members have personal relationships, not just professional relationship’s with every member of Congress. This is a unique and powerful asset that we should use more effectively.”
President McCulloch says he intends not only to spend more time in Washington, DC, and other places around the nation pursuing the “awareness” goal, but also plans to have other NDAA members heavily involved, because “it’s important to membership, and like anything else, there’s strength in numbers.
“If we’re going to be the voice of America’s prosecutors,” he concludes, “we have to have America’s prosecutors in our association.”
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