Alameda County District Attorney
Pamela Price assumed office on Jan. 2, 2023, after running on a pledge to seek shorter sentences for criminals, to reduce incarceration, and to hound police about the execution of their duties.
Price, whom George Soros
reportedly funded in a previous run for the DA’s office, began to made good on her soft-on-crime promises right away. A leaked memo revealed in March 2023 that barring “extraordinary circumstances” and Price’s approval, most crimes would be met with probation or the lowest-level prison term, reported the Berkeley Scanner.
Having faced the fallout of Price’s apparent deference to criminals, concerned citizens mounted a recall campaign. The group spearheading that initiative, Save Alameda For Everyone,
secured enough valid signatures in April, meaning Price now faces a potential ouster in November.
Price’s political vulnerability has evidently not led to greater caution or care on her part.
This week, she planned on smoothing over her rocky relationship with the Asian community. When that proved to be a failure, she released a defensive video, reassuring the Asian community she once had an office near Chinatown.
Digging a hole
Price’s relationship became especially strained last year when she decided to drop sentencing enhancements against thugs charged in connection with the 2021 murder of 1-year-old Jasper Wu in Oakland.
Two gang members were initially charged with the boy’s slaying and with other felonies related to their alleged “gun battle” on the freeway,
reported the Berkeley Scanner. The thugs had pursued a rival gang member onto the freeway, where Trevor Green allegedly fired wildly into traffic, striking Wu as he slept in his car seat several lanes over.
Wu’s parents, Xiao Xiao An and An Wu, wanted the harshest possible penalty for Green, Ivory Bivens, and a third man connected with the murder of their son. Price’s predecessor, former DA Nancy O’Malley, had applied criminal enhancements to ensure the alleged killers would face the prospect of life in prison without parole; however, Price
stepped in and made it possible for the duo to walk the streets in under three decades’ time if convicted.
The Wu case hurt Price’s reputation with the Asian community. Then came the resignation of veteran prosecutor Rebecca Warren, part of the “Asian American and Pacific Islander” community, who
accused the Democratic DA of mistreating and disrespecting the “AAPI community.”
Another prosecutor, Danielle Hilton, resigned shortly thereafter, stating, “Victims deserve better,”
reported the New York Post.
Digging deeper
KGO-TV reporter Dion Lim
indicated Monday that Price was planning to hold a press conference at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center this week to announce her Chinese name to celebrate so-called AAPI Heritage Month.
“Someone messaged me to ask if this was an April Fool’s joke,”
tweeted Lim. “I then sent this person the press release that came from the DA’s office!”
Charles Huang, head of the local National Asian Pacific Islanders Prosecutors Association, told KGO, “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s cultural appropriation and pandering at the highest level.”
After facing ruthless ridicule online, the DA’s office
informed KGO Tuesday that the press conference had been canceled.
Price did, however, share a defensive
video to social media, closed to public comment, wherein she claims: to have a good relationship with the Asian community; to have once had an office next to Chinatown; to have a Chinese name that she would not state outright; and that the thugs charged with Wu’s murder face the possibility of hundreds of years in jail if convicted.
It remains unclear from Price’s remarks whether she ultimately embraced the same Chinese name she previously assigned herself in her full-page ad in the Chinese-language American paper World Journal, which the Daily Mail
indicated translates to “nice virgin bureaucrat.”
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