Halvorsen Launches Bid For Merrimack County Attorney

CONCORD, NH — One of Concord’s city prosecutors hopes to bring his decade and a half of experience at Concord District Court to the Merrimack County Attorney’s Office. Paul Halvorsen, a former Concord city councilor from the South End, launched a bid to replace Scott Murray as the chief county prosecutor earlier this year. Murray was recently appointed by President Donald Trump to be U.S. Attorney in New Hampshire.

The city Republican commended Murray for his time in office and said he performed a lot of great work. Halvorsen said he did not have a grand plan, if elected, to go into the county attorney’s office and make extensive changes. The staff, he said, was professional, with a lot of experience, and they know what they are doing.

“They have a real good core there,” Halvorsen said. “You don’t go into an office like that and make sweeping changes. (I’ll) look at how things are going with a fresh set of eyes and see if you need to make any changes … tweaking something … ‘Can we try this? Can we try that?’”

The big goals are still prosecuting serious drug cases, he said. That’s “the big thing, it’s a real problem,” he added. Methamphetamine growth in the state – including places like Franklin – Halvorsen said, was worrisome, while ebbs and flows of outbreaks of usage of fentanyl and carfentanil have blanketed the state. Overdoses are now growing in many of the outlying communities outside of Concord, he noted, with drug crimes often mixed firearms. School zone drug cases also continue to be a problem.

Halvorsen, who is originally from New Jersey, was in the Air Force for two decades before moving to New Hampshire. He first worked as a military police officer and was hoping to eventually become a state trooper in his home state. But he continued to receive good opportunities in the USAF, including flying helicopters and working in Central America – focusing on drug interdiction missions in the Bahamas and Panama – so he stayed in the service. At one point, toward the end of his USAF career, he was the administrator for a unit of close to 200 people with pilots, airplanes, and professional staff. During his military service, Halvorsen also earned two masters degrees – in public administration and forensic science.

As he neared military retirement, he decided to pursue law. Halvorsen took the LSAT in Vermont and later, applied to law school at Franklin Pierce (now UNH Law) and graduated in 2000. After school, he took a job as a public defender for a few years – a learning experience that he likened to “drinking from a fire hose” – and then, was named a prosecutor in Concord in 2003.

“I have a pretty good amount of experience in that 18 years,” he said.

For most of that time, about 13 years, Halvorsen has focused on juvenile prosecution – cases involving, at first, suspects that were 17 and younger. A few years ago, the state changed the juvenile crime law to be 18 and younger. With juvenile cases, the biggest takeaway, he said, was how involved parents are in their children’s lives, especially with serious cases. Parental involvement is often the solution, he noted.

“If I see a juvenile come into court and they have … one parent or both parents involved in the kid’s life, I usually see that kid in court once,” Halvorsen said. “If the parents are not invested in the development of their kid, then odds are I might see the kid a second time (or) third time.”

Halvorsen said the county diversion organization does “an excellent job” with children that are first time offenders saying that the recidivism rate is low, especially with teens that can focus on changing and have parents involved in their lives.

Halvorsen said there has been an uptick in juvenile sexual assault cases – teen on teen – with social media playing a larger role than ever before. He said many cases were mostly due to young people being careless and not thinking decisions through. But the growth in cases was a bit unnerving, too.

Like any new job, there’s a learning curve – only because it’s a new job, Halvorsen said, adding that whether he was elected or someone else wins, it would still be a learning curve for them because it’s Merrimack County which has its own unique problems compared to other counties. If elected though, he didn’t have any worries about taking the position and felt he would perform well.

“Worries? No,” he said. “I think it will be a fun job ... I like Merrimack County, I like Concord, I like the people, I like working with the police departments ... there’s a lot of dedicated people in this county. All you have to do is provide leadership and direction and things happen. I think that my background is such that I can go into the job and I think I could do a good job at it. That’s something I hope to be able to accomplish.”

The Republican primary for the county attorney seat will be held on Sept. 11, 2018. The general election is Nov. 6, 2018.

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