Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has been accused of mistreating the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community by veteran prosecutor Rebecca Warren, who resigned after 17 years of service.
Warren, who is of Chinese descent, is the second experienced attorney to leave Prices administration in two weeks, following Danielle Hilton.
Warren criticized Price for being condescending and disrespectful to the AAPI community in her resignation letter. Price, elected in November, promised to disrupt the offices prosecutorial conventions and rely on probation for most crimes, including felonies. However, critics have accused her of blurring the line between victim and criminal.
Price has come under fire for refusing to commit to sentencing enhancements in the case of slain 2-year-old Jasper Wu, who was killed by a stray bullet while riding in a car with his mother in Oakland in 2021.
Former Alameda County DA Nancy OMalley applied several criminal enhancements to maximize the potential jail terms of the three gang members arrested in the case, who are now facing murder charges. However, Price has not pledged to keep them. In a leaked internal memo, Price instructed staffers to avoid criminal enhancements to bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism.
In a subsequent message addressed to the Asian communities, Price said her office remained undecided about the Wu case enhancements and scolded unnamed parties for spreading misinformation.
Warren argued that Prices tone was inappropriate while discussing one of the most horrific and tragic murder cases ever and that the AAPI community was not the only community angered and traumatized by the staggering number of innocent children murdered by gun violence in the county.
Enhancements to murder charges can mean between 15 to 25 years in prison and life without parole. Warren also stated that Prices second-in-command remarked to an Asian prosecutor that Samoans are prone to drinking and fighting.
Another veteran Alameda County prosecutor, Danielle Hilton, submitted her resignation last week, arguing that Price was neglecting crime victims and quashing internal dissent. In her resignation letter, Hilton wrote that Prices radically progressive agenda has tipped the scales away from providing justice to those devastated by violent crime. Price, who is
Alameda Countys first African-American DA has dismissed critiques of her brief but turbulent reign as motivated by racism and an old-fashioned approach to prosecution.
She has also declined thus far to submit criminal enhancements in another case involving a murdered child. Eliyanah Crisostomo, 5, was killed by three gang members who shot at her car last month. Veteran prosecutors called the move an extreme departure from previous charges in the state.
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