District Attorney Paul Tucker said his mission has always been to find proactive ways to help people rather than trying to address issues – particularly systemic ones – as they arise. He called it work that “may not necessarily get the headlines.”

“I look at it as an overall strategy, community safety,” Tucker said. “We try to be thoughtful about the approach that we take.”

After graduating from Salem High School in 1976, Tucker attended Salem State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He later earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College. Tucker then attended night classes at the Massachusetts School of Law, and he later taught criminal justice courses at Endicott College and Salem State University, which he called “one of the most satisfying parts of my professional career.”

After a brief period with the Nashua, New Hampshire Police Department, Tucker joined the Salem Police Department as a patrol officer. Over time, he held multiple positions, including detective, chief of detectives and chief of police.

As a young detective, Tucker said his team averaged nearly one drug arrest a day.

“We’re thinking we’re doing a great job. We’re looking for sentences. We’re looking to hold these people accountable,” Tucker said. “We missed that a lot of these people had substance use issues. They weren’t selling drugs. They weren’t members of a cartel. What we missed – and it took a while to get there – we missed the rehabilitation piece. We missed the treatment piece. We missed a little bit of the education piece.”

As chief of detectives, Tucker oversaw criminal investigations and began making changes within the system.

“For half of my career, I had the position called chief of detectives, and I oversaw all of the criminal investigations: everything from any type of death investigation to robbery, sexual assaults. It ran the gamut of serious crimes,” Tucker said. “During that time, we also created something we were very proud of in Salem, called the community impact unit.”

The community impact unit focused on addressing gaps in services for “people with mental health issues, substance use issues, and housing insecurity” whose situations were not suited for a detective’s long-term investigation or a patrol officer’s call-to-call response.

“What we found was a lot of these folks simply needed services, not jail. We disrupted that cycle,” Tucker said. “If someone gets arrested for drinking in public, urinating in public, graffiti, things like that, they would get arrested. They’d miss a court date and miss another court date. They’d end up in Middleton for months at a time, not getting any help, coming back on the street with the exact same issues they had. It was just the rinse, wash, repeat cycle.”

Tucker said he believes Salem became the first department in eastern Massachusetts, if not the Commonwealth, to “actually hire a civilian clinician to work alongside police officers.”

“Under my watch, we had two part-timers. I’m happy to say the next chief brought in full-time folks. They were able to develop it even further, and it’s a model for other departments trying to do it now,” Tucker said. 

In 2014, after five years as police chief, Tucker was elected with 84% of the vote to serve as the state representative for Massachusetts’ 7th Essex District, which includes Salem. He was later re-elected in 2016, 2018 and 2020.

Tucker served as vice chair of the Joint Committee on Marijuana Policy and sat on several others, including the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery.

“I was the vice chair of the Education Committee, working on something called the Student Opportunity Act, which was actually my bill,” Tucker said. “It drove unprecedented amounts of funding into the education area, and it just got refunded again years later.”

During his time in the state legislature, former District Attorney John Blodgett told Tucker he would not be seeking re-election.

“So I decided to run,” Tucker said. “I gave up my seat in the House. I ran for this. There’s 34 cities and towns in Essex County. It’s a large county. I campaigned for a full year.”

Now Tucker serves as the district attorney for all of Essex County, including not only Salem but also Swampscott, North Andover, Gloucester, Danvers, Lynn, Beverly and 27 other communities.

“It’s been an honor to serve in this position: the people I get to work with and the work that we get to do,” Tucker said. “It’s not all about prosecution. Certainly that’s a big part of it, but we do so many community programs.”

The district attorney’s office is responsible for prosecuting criminal offenses on behalf of the state. The office reviews evidence, determines charges, handles court trials and supports victims. In the past five months alone, Tucker’s team has prosecuted cases ranging from drug charges and hit-and-runs to murder-suicides. There have also been particularly difficult cases, such as convicting John Carey in a 40-year-old murder case and investigating the murder of Swampscott teen Henry Bedard.

“We’re working really hard on that case,” Tucker said, noting that he met with Henry’s father just a few months ago. 

Tucker said his office also runs programs focused on young people, including sports programs, summer camps and swimming lessons.

“We try to be sensitive to what’s happening in the community. We’ve had some terrible tragedies of drowning, and many victims were first generation immigrants,” Tucker said. “We ran a water safety program. I thought we might get 20 or 30 kids. We ended up getting hundreds. It was incredibly successful.”

The office tends to focus on “preventative programs,” Tucker said.

“Just this week, I spoke with the Peabody Council on Aging on some of the typical scams and fraud that we’re seeing targeting senior citizens,” Tucker said. “It’s those kinds of things, the proactive mission that we’ve had.”

Tucker has served on the Governor’s Commission on Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking, as well as the Governor’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism. He also serves on the advisory board of the Anti-Defamation League.

“I always want to get involved,” Tucker said. “When I first announced for this job, I got a call from The (Boston) Globe. They were doing a story, and they asked ‘Are you going to be a typical prosecutor?’ That was the question. I said, ‘I’m not sure what a typical prosecutor is, but it’s not always about putting people in jail.’ People do things and they have to face consequences, but a lot of it is giving people second chances. It’s realizing what the root cause of crime is. If someone has a substance issue or mental health issue, we need to address that. Some behavior that’s caused by that may not need punishment. It just might need services.”

While Tucker acknowledged that it is “hard to measure something that’s not taking place” because of those additional services, he said he believes crime has generally been declining. In 2025, there were 11 homicides, but all were solved by arrests, he said.

“One thing I worry about is I still think we’re seeing some post-COVID mental health issues, and we’re seeing this particularly among adolescents and young adults,” Tucker said. “I worry that the need to address this is outpacing the services.”

Tucker said the district attorney’s office has made strides in its juvenile justice division.

“If somebody commits an offense, a juvenile, and they’re involved in what the law calls ‘delinquent behavior’ we do a really good job here with our juvenile justice coordinators and giving somebody a second chance and making it meaningful,” Tucker said. “One of the things in our juvenile diversion program is a mental health component.”

Tucker also commended his predecessors for laying the groundwork before him.

“With Kevin Burke: one of the biggest changes I’d say in the last 40 years in state law enforcement and prosecutions is the emergence of victims’ rights. Up until Kevin Burke, victims were an afterthought. They were not for Burke…Kevin Burke wrote the book on victims’ rights literally and figuratively,” Tucker said. “John Blodgett, I think, did tremendous work in the area of juvenile diversion and working with folks and handling juveniles in a way that looks for opportunities to help. What I’ve tried to do with the work that Kevin and John did is to build upon them.”

Looking ahead, Tucker is up for re-election this year. He said he hopes to continue the programs the district attorney’s office currently runs while expanding efforts focused on juveniles. Tucker also said he wants to continue recruiting talented people for the office while diversifying the workforce.

“I think the job we do here, it’s important,” Tucker said. “Nothing should take a back seat to public safety. That’s a lot of what we do here.”