OAKLAND — Ursula Jones Dickson took the oath of workplace Tuesday to turn into Alameda County’s subsequent district legal professional, promising quite a few adjustments and declaring that “we need to get back to business” after the historic recall of her successor, Pamela Worth.
A former Alameda County prosecutor who spent the previous 11 years as a superior court docket choose, Jones Dickson vowed to “do work on behalf of everybody” after being sworn in because the county’s prime prosecutor. Though her appointment to the seat by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is non permanent, she confused she’s “in this for the long haul” and plans to hunt election in 2026 — when Worth’s time period was supposed to finish — and once more 2028 and 2032.
Moments after taking the oath, Jones Dickson requested for endurance from residents to “get it right.” Even so, she used a press convention earlier than the swearing in to announce fast adjustments, together with an finish to one among Worth’s hallmark insurance policies that restricted most jail sentences.
“Things are out of whack, but I’m going to tell you, I’m going to fix it,” Jones Dickson stated.
Jones Dickson acquired a rousing applause from a standing-room-only ceremony, which included former Alameda County district attorneys Nancy O’Malley, Tom Orloff and D. Lowell Jensen, in addition to San Francisco District Lawyer Brooke Jenkins and Oakland police Chief Floyd Mitchell. Fellow former Alameda County Superior Court docket Choose Charles Smiley, now an affiliate justice on California’s First District Court docket of Attraction, administered the oath of workplace.
Jones Dickson solid herself as a stark departure from her predecessor.
She vowed to offer line-level prosecutors extra discretion in prosecuting crimes and submitting sentencing enhancements. On her first day in workplace, Jones Dickson stated she deliberate to rescind a coverage requiring prosecutors to hunt approval from the workplace’s leaders earlier than submitting such enhancements, which may add a long time to a defendant’s potential jail sentence for varied aggravating elements, similar to utilizing a gun or inflicting critical damage in sure crimes
The coverage was carried out simply months after Worth took workplace in January 2023 as a way of reforming the East Bay’s justice system and pushing again towards the nation’s legacy of mass incarceration, which disproportionately affected Black folks and different communities of shade. Organizers of the profitable November recall towards Worth typically cited the coverage as one among their chief issues, calling it emblematic of an strategy to crime that appeared too lenient.
“The expectation is the people we have charging cases know how to charge a case,” Jones Dickson stated. “They shouldn’t have to go through three levels of supervisors to determine whether or not an enhancement should be charged.”
Jones Dickson introduced longtime native prosecutor Annie Esposito would return to Alameda County as her chief assistant, a task Esposito held with O’Malley and, most lately, Contra Costa County District Lawyer Diana Becton. Jones Dickson declined to call some other members of her incoming command employees, saying some had but to inform their present bosses they have been in consideration.
And in a transfer rife with symbolism, Jones Dickson stated that her workplace’s headquarters can be returning to the ninth ground of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse — a homecoming of types, after Worth moved her workplace and her command employees to an East Oakland workplace close to the airport.
Jones Dickson’s arrival comes barely two years after Worth took her oath of workplace as the primary Black girl to be sworn in because the county’s district legal professional, in what the longtime civil rights legal professional known as “an exclamation point in history.”
Worth received election in November 2022 in search of to upend and reimagine the East Bay’s felony justice system, touting a extra progressive imaginative and prescient that included prioritizing shorter jail sentences and beefing up options to jail, whereas in search of extra lenient prosecutions of defendants below the age of 25. She subsequently made scores of hires throughout her two-year tenure, lots of them former public defenders and personal attorneys who touted backgrounds in felony justice reform, however little in the way in which of prosecutorial expertise.
New Alameda County District Lawyer Ursula Jones Dickson, proper, reacts after sworn-in earlier than Alameda County Choose Charles Smiley in the course of the swearing-in ceremony on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. Jones Dickson replaces Pamela Worth who was recalled final Nov.. (Ray Chavez/Bay Space Information Group)
On Wednesday, Jones Dickson voiced uncertainty over whether or not she’d have the ability to “keep every single DA that we hired, because I don’t know that we have the funding to do so.” She has repeatedly promised an audit of the workplace’s funds, whereas suggesting attorneys employed below Worth might face further coaching.
“We need to go back to some training, so if people are willing to do the job of a district attorney, I’m happy to facilitate that for them,” stated Jones Dickson, including that “if that’s something that they don’t want to do because they came to this office under a different administration, that’s a conversation we should have, and there are other places for them to be.”
Moments after Jones Dickson was sworn in, Jenkins, the SF DA, voiced pleasure at working with the judge-turned-district legal professional throughout the Bay Bridge. Jenkins was additionally appointed to interchange a recalled DA, following the ouster of Chesa Boudin in June 2022. The problem for Jones Dickson, she stated, can be to handle a stressed citizens longing for faster outcomes.
“They want to see change immediately, and that’s a lot of pressure,” Jenkins stated.
Initially Revealed: February 18, 2025 at 6:31 PM PST
