ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) — In lower than two weeks, Alameda County may have a brand new district legal professional, following the recall of Pamela Value. Final month, the board of supervisors chosen Alameda Superior Court docket Choose Ursula Jones Dickson to fill the spot.
Jones Dickson to debate her plan for her first days in workplace.
“I’m ready. I’m excited to get started,” she mentioned.
Jones Dickson is lower than two weeks away from taking cost of the Alameda County District Lawyer’s Workplace position after being chosen by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to exchange Value.
Tony’s Pizza, different San Francisco staples to open new places at SFO
“My mother used to always say if you are going to complain about something you had better be willing to do something about it,” Jones Dickson mentioned. “That’s how I got here. My mom’s gone now, but I had some real concerns about what I was seeing at the DA’s office. Not that people didn’t have good intentions, but that in practice, things were not filtering such that victims voices were being lifted up and that they felt heard in this process.”
As a former Alameda County prosecutor, Jones Dickson says one among her prime priorities as DA might be to reverse worth charging directives.
“I know Ms. Price had a directive that no enhancements could be charged without certain levels of approvement of people approving of that,” Jones Dickson mentioned. “I want to remove that because I trust that the charging DAs know what they’re doing, and they can charge the cases appropriately.”
Value campaigned and was elected on a platform of prison justice reform, but it’s the dearth of enhancements and prices of being gentle on crime and never holding criminals accountable that helped gas her recall
“I think people are begging with this recall for reasonable prosecution, reasonable policing, reasonable criminal justice system,” Jones Dickson mentioned. “They don’t want us to cut the switch off altogether and not do anything. I also don’t think everybody should be in prison.”
Jones Dickson views the job of district legal professional not as an activist or a politician.
“As the DA, I’m still a public safety officer, and actually the top public safety officer in this county, so I have to be concerned about that first, which means I have to be concerned about what’s happening to victims in the community.”
Jones Dickson says it is her prosecutors who’re accountable for these victims and that’s why one other precedence of hers might be to guage her staff as quickly as she takes workplace.
“This is the DA’s office. Here’s the work we do here. If you want to do that work, we will train you up and help you to get the best you can possibly be doing it,” Jones Dickson mentioned. “If you don’t, we’re going to find somebody else who can, because people are dependent on us to know what our jobs are and to do them as well as we can.”
Jones Dickson righting the ship and regaining individuals’s belief within the workplace gained’t occur in a single day, however she’s assured she’ll get there.
ICE brokers perform operation in Harmony, police say
“I think it’ll take some time, but we really have some, still some really good people at the DA’s office who know their stuff. And the hope is to get more back and just just watch us work. So all we can do is work, watch us work,” Jones Dickson mentioned.
Jones Dickson will proceed her work as a choose on the Juvenile Justice Heart in San Leandro till Feb. 11. She’s anticipated to be sworn in as district legal professional on Feb. 18.
