Bay Area families rallied Saturday for the recall effort targeting Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, whose policy of seeking lighter sentences for violent offenders is blamed for stoking the area’s crime wave.
Relatives of seven homicide victims were part of the gathering outside an Oakland courthouse where family members accused Ms. Price of malfeasance, according to local CBS affiliate KPIX-TV.
Their rally came days after a group called Save Alameda For Everyone, or SAFE, filed paperwork to recall Ms. Price. The district attorney only took office in January.
Violent crime is up 18% so far this year in Oakland, according to police data, with aggravated assaults (12%), rapes (6%) and robberies (27%) all showing year-over-year increases.
Anna Tolentino skewered the county’s top prosecutor during the weekend rally for securing what she characterized as a meager plea deal against her son’s convicted killer, Sergio Morales-Jacquez.
Moralez-Jacquez opened fire on Ms. Tolentino’s adult son during a road rage incident last September in San Lorenzo. The shooter was 17 at the time.
He was given a seven-year sentence in June and will be released when he turns 25 — the maximum age juvenile offenders can be kept behind bars in the county. The defendant could be out of jail sooner on good behavior.
That sentence came in spite of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office saying it had petitioned Ms. Price’s office to charge the juvenile as an adult given his “extensive and violent criminal history.” The DA’s office denied the petition, the sheriff’s office said, and charged Morales-Jacquez as a juvenile in March.
“They say he’s a juvenile but he’s [linked to] three murders,” Ms. Tolentino told KPIX.
Morales-Jacquez is a suspect in the fatal shootings of high school-age brothers Jazy and Angel Sotelo Garcia in Oakland last October, according to court papers. He has not been charged in the incident.
The now 18-year-old is also a person of interest in a homicide in Fremont, according to the Berkeley Scanner.
“That’s one of our fears, that the suspect will get seven years as well when we believe this is not a 7-year sentence. This should be life,” Erika Galavis, the aunt of Jazy and Angel Sotelo Garcia, told KPIX.
Once the county registrar approves the recall paperwork, the SAFE group will have 160 days to get signatures from 10% of registered voters in Alameda County — or about 98,000 people — in order to put their recall vote on a ballot.
Ms. Price’s campaign called the recall effort “a page out of the January 6th playbook” last month, and said it is being promoted by non-locals in an effort to remove the prosecutor for political reasons.
“Outside special interest groups, supported by the Republican Party, are trying to seize control from local voters because they refuse to accept the results of a legitimate, democratic election to remove the status quo,” Ms. Price’s campaign wrote in July.
The statement ended with “DA Price is the People’s DA. She remains undeterred by this undemocratic effort and will continue to focus on enacting the reforms county voters mandated.”
Ms. Price has been adamant about pursuing lighter sentences for criminals. She circulated an internal memo earlier this year urging prosecutors not to seek sentence enhancements and to treat probation as a “presumptive offer” when negotiating plea deals.
The Bay Area is no stranger to controversy over its prosecutors.
Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled by city residents last year after the prosecutor was accused of being soft on criminals. Data showed Mr. Boudin sent a greater share of his cases to pretrial diversion than previous prosecutors.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.