On June 2, Alameda County voters will get to make a high-stakes choice for district attorney. Will they stick with the incumbent, reverse the recall they embraced a little over a year ago, or go in a whole new direction?
As the county’s public prosecutor, the DA has extraordinary discretion in whether and how to charge criminal cases that are investigated by the police. They manage an office with 368 staff and a budget of $111 million. And the candidates each have dramatically different approaches, experience, and priorities.
Currently, the DA is Ursula Jones Dickson, a former superior court judge who was appointed by the county Board of Supervisors after her predecessor, Pamela Price, was recalled in November 2024. Price is now vying to get her old job back. Gopal Krishan, a family law attorney with a Milpitas-based firm, is also in the race.
The Oaklandside and Berkeleyside have joined forces to host a forum with all three DA candidates on Wednesday, April 29, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Oakstop (2323 Broadway, Oakland).
The free tickets are sold out, but the event will be livestreamed on Zoom.
Got questions for the candidates? You can submit them here, and they’ll inform the questions we ask during the forum.
The candidates
The incumbent: Ursula Jones Dickson: Jones Dickson was appointed by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in January 2025, among more than two dozen applicants for the job, and took office in February. Upon taking office, she said one of her priorities would be supporting crime victims and making sure they receive resources. Another was to reorganize the DA’s office to address what she called inefficiencies. She brought back some of the senior attorneys who had left while Price ran the office.
Notably, Jones Dickson reversed several of the biggest reforms Price had implemented, including a policy that barred prosecutors from using sentencing enhancements, basically additional charges that can add more time to a defendant’s prison or jail sentence, and a policy that prevented most juvenile cases from being transferred to adult criminal court. Jones Dickson also reinstated a policy of seeking mandatory minimum sentences for people charged with illegal gun possession. Jones Dickson also reversed course on resentencing efforts that Price had launched to address past prosecutorial misconduct.
Ursula Jones Dickson. Credit: Darwin BondGraham
She recently toured stores to learn about organized retail theft and worked with law enforcement to combat the problem, including the launch of a new county-wide task force led by her office. According to Jones Dickson, her office significantly increased the number of property crime cases filed, from 3,600 in 2024 to 4,600 in 2025.
Some of the police officers charged with crimes under Price and her predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, have seen their cases dropped by Jones Dickson. Last year, Jones Dickson dropped manslaughter charges against a San Leandro officer who shot and killed a man inside a Walmart in 2020, saying she didn’t think her prosecutors could prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. She also dropped charges against two sheriff’s deputies accused of lying about how often they checked up on a suicidal woman who ended her life while held in the county jail awaiting trial, and dropped charges against eight of the 11 sheriff’s deputies and other jail staff charged in relation to another person’s death in the Santa Rita Jail.
But she hasn’t declined to bring charges against law enforcement officials on other matters. Earlier this year, Jones Dickson announced charges against a Hayward police officer for bribery and exploiting sex workers.
Jones Dickson served as an Alameda County Superior Court Judge from 2013 to 2025. Prior to that, she was a prosecutor in the DA’s office. As a judge, she primarily heard juvenile dependency cases and, from 2019 to 2022, served as presiding judge of the court’s juvenile dependency division.
The recalled reformer: Pamela Price: A civil rights attorney, Price founded her own law firm in 1991 and represented victims of retaliation, discrimination, wrongful termination, and other civil matters. A longtime Democratic Party member and activist, she ran unsuccessfully for state assembly in 2014, district attorney in 2018, and Oakland mayor that same year.
In 2022, Price joined a wave of progressive reformers elected as district attorneys in different parts of the country, including Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, who was also recalled, and Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s current DA. She quickly drew the ire of some career prosecutors in the DA’s office, police unions, and anti-crime activists over her efforts to remake the office.
Price tried to fundamentally change how the DA’s office prosecuted cases by issuing a series of directives, including orders to not use sentencing enhancements. Price allowed their use only in extraordinary cases and only with a supervisor’s sign-off. She also ordered that children charged with crimes, as a general rule, would no longer have their cases transferred to criminal court, even for charges of murder and other violent crimes, where this had been the past practice. She said she wanted to stop “over-criminalizing youth.”
Pamela Price. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez
Price emphasized public accountability cases, including charging police officers for controversial in-custody deaths and shootings. For example, she charged three Alameda police officers with manslaughter for the death of 26-year-old Oakland resident Mario Gonzalez in 2021.
Some of Price’s critics accused her of mismanaging the office, and some of her high-profile cases suffered from prosecutorial errors, including the Gonzalez case, which saw charges dismissed against two of the officers due to what a judge characterized as a “rushed and careless” case.
Price launched a historic review of death penalty cases that turned up evidence from prior decades showing that multiple prosecutors in the DA’s office had illegally discriminated against Black and Jewish prospective jurors. These claims of prosecutorial misconduct have led to several men being freed from prison, and others seeking resentencing.
Price came under fire for hiring her boyfriend for a role in the DA’s office without properly disclosing their relationship. Some of the prosecutors in her office, according to the Berkeley Scanner, also accused her of creating a toxic workplace that resulted in seasoned lawyers leaving.
Her critics eventually mounted a recall campaign, arguing that Price was too soft on crime and not properly managing the DA’s office. Price defended herself, arguing that when she took over, the DA’s office was in disarray, lacked good record-keeping systems, and was plagued by low morale among staff. Voters recalled her in 2024.
The newcomer: Gopal Krishan: A lawyer with 16 years of experience, Krishan works for a Milpitas law firm where he practices family law, including cases involving divorce, parental rights, property division, and more. He describes himself as a neighbor, father, community member, and immigrant.
Krishan hasn’t held elected office before. But at a recent candidates’ forum, he said running his own law office has provided him with relevant experience. He appears to have jumped into the race in response to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that has shaken Bay Area communities.
Gopal Krishan. Credit: courtesy of candidate
According to his campaign website, as DA his priority would be to ensure that local law enforcement do not cooperate with ICE. He would also institute a “zero tolerance” policy for hate crimes and get tough on organized crime, which, he argues, Jones Dickson has not done enough to combat.
At the recent candidates forum, Krishan noted that one in three Alameda County residents is an immigrant. He said many people in the county are living in fear of ICE, but he hasn’t seen any policies to address this from the DA’s office.
The moderators
Roselyn Romero: Romero covers public safety for The Oaklandside, where she has written about police, courts, gun violence, human trafficking, and violence prevention. She was previously The Oaklandside’s small business reporter as a 2023-24 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism Fellow. Before joining the team, she was an investigative intern at NBC Bay Area and the inaugural intern for the Global Investigations team of The Associated Press through a partnership with the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting. She is a proud daughter of Filipino immigrants and was born and raised in Oxnard, California.
Alex Gecan: Alex joined Berkeleyside in 2023 as a senior reporter covering public safety, where he’s written on gun violence, police accountability, surveillance, and other issues. He has covered criminal justice, courts and breaking and local news for The Middletown Press, Stamford Advocate and Connecticut Post in Connecticut, Asbury Park Press on the Jersey Shore and the Marin Independent Journal.
How to watch
In-person registration is full, but we’ll post a link to a livestream on this page closer to the date of the event.
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