California District Attorney Pamela Price slammed as ‘disrespectful’ to Asians as another prosecutor resigns
The exodus continues.
A California prosecutor ripped hyper-woke Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price as “condescending and disrespectful” to the Asian community in her resignation letter this week.
Veteran prosecutor Rebecca Warren, who served in the office for over 17 years, is the second shellshocked staffer to flee Price’s administration in two weeks, following another highly experienced attorney, Danielle Hilton.
“I can no longer tolerate this mistreatment of the AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community by leaders of our office,” wrote Warren, who is of Chinese descent and will officially exit later this month.
Elected in November, Price emphatically vowed to “disrupt” the office’s prosecutorial conventions and rely on probation for most crimes, including felonies.
But a growing number of critics have accused the Yale and U.C. Berkeley Law School graduate of blurring the line between victim and criminal.
Price infuriated Alameda County’s sizable Asian community after she refused to commit to sentencing enhancements in the case of slain 2-year-old Jasper Wu.
The tot was killed by a stray bullet while riding in a car with his mother in Oakland in 2021.
Three gang members were arrested in the case and are now facing murder charges.
Former Alameda County DA Nancy O’Malley applied several criminal enhancements to maximize their potential jail terms — but Price has not pledged to keep them.
In a leaked internal memo obtained by the Berkeley Scanner, Price instructed staffers to avoid criminal enhancements — which lengthen jail stints — to “bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism.”
In a subsequent message addressed to “the Asian communities,” Price said her office remains undecided about the enhancements in the Wu case — and scolded unnamed parties for spreading “misinformation.”
She also stated that her office is working with an Asian law group to “support AAPI victims of violence in ways that open up broader possibilities of healing and non-carceral forms of accountability.”
In her resignation letter, Warren argued that Price’s tone was inappropriate “while discussing one of the most horrific and tragic murder cases ever.”
“The AAPI community is not the only community angered and traumatized by the staggering number of innocent children being murdered by gun violence in our county,” she wrote. “The entire community is affected.”
Enhancements to murder charges can mean the difference between a term of 15 to 25 years in prison and life without a chance at parole.
Warren also stated Price’s second in command remarked to an Asian prosecutor that Samoans are prone to drinking and fighting.
“We deserve better,” Warren wrote.
Another veteran Alameda County prosecutor, Danielle Hilton, submitted her resignation last week, arguing that Price was neglecting crime victims and quashing internal dissent.
“I am not leaving because I want to,” Hilton wrote in her resignation letter, which she posted on social media.
“In fact, I want nothing more than to be an African American woman continuing to serve the citizens of Alameda County in a fair, unbiased and professional manner.”
“Victims deserve better,” Hilton added, asserting Price’s radically progressive agenda has tipped the scales away from providing justice to those “devastated by violent crime.”
Price, who is Alameda County’s first African-American DA, has dismissed critiques of her brief but turbulent reign as being motivated by racism and an outmoded 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.
