Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced plans for military prosecutors to team up with the California Department of Justice on certain East Bay cases, just weeks after a similar deal with Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s office fell through amid a rare public spat between the two Democrats.
Newsom said attorneys with the CalGuard’s Counterdrug Task Force will begin working with Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office on state cases originating out of Alameda County. Among the entities not involved will be the county’s top prosecutor, Price, whose tiff with the governor earlier this month left both sides feeling “disappointed” with the other.
In a statement announcing the move, Newsom framed it as a chance to “help secure justice for the people of the Bay Area.”
“Today we’re advancing accountability and justice for East Bay communities, by quickly securing an agreement to provide additional resources to prosecute criminal behavior,” Newsom’s statement said.
In a statement of her own, Price voiced her approval for the move.
“We hope the swift agreement reached between the DOJ and CalGuard yields equally swift results, and my office is willing to assist in that effort in any way possible,” Price’s statement said.
She also appeared to question the results of Newsom’s highly-touted surge in California Highway Patrol officers to the East Bay. Price instead suggested that her office had only received a small fraction of the hundreds of cases that highway patrol officers had opened as part of their operations this year in the Oakland area.
The reshuffling of state and military prosecutors marked the latest twist in a monthslong saga that took a bitter turn in mid-July.
In February, Newsom announced plans to send state and military prosecutors to work directly with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office as part of a larger bid to reign in crime across the East Bay. The effort was modeled after a similar agreement with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, and it came amid a swell of state troopers to the Oakland area to combat a broad range of crimes, including retail theft and auto burglary cases.
But the move faltered amid a series of delays, with Newsom and Price blaming the other for being unable to agree on terms for the partnership.
One of Newsom’s cabinet secretaries suggested in a letter to Price last month that the district attorney’s office took too long to agree to a memorandum of understanding that would have paved the way for the prosecutors’ arrival. The letter claimed that the DA’s office had not taken “initial” steps to finalize such an agreement or to deputize National Guard attorneys to work in her office. That’s despite the fact Newsom’s office fulfilled requests by Price’s team for resumes and interviews, it said.
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“It was clear to me … there wasn’t a sincere commitment to follow through on the offer,” Newsom said last month, adding that “we talked about the urgency of now, this moment we’re living in. Enough. We all have to step up, we all have to be accountable. All of us.”
Yet Price said the governor’s office didn’t even begin that process until April. She also said an initial plan to send three prosecutors to Alameda County was scaled back to one, and that the lone remaining prosecutor would not be available after mid-August due to “another commitment.”
The issue culminated in dueling press conferences on July 12, when Newsom publicly withdrew his offer for help.
“(The governor) is entitled to do whatever he feels is appropriate,” said Price at the time, adding that her office “received mixed messages on what (the governor) was going to do” and that she was “disappointed” the governor’s office did not reach out to her directly to voice his concerns.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
