{"id":508832,"date":"2026-10-26T22:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/508832\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T22:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:34:09","slug":"oakland-detective-facing-bribery-charges-accuses-former-da-of-anti-asian-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/508832\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland detective facing bribery charges accuses former DA of anti-Asian bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

An OPD homicide investigator facing perjury and bribery charges<\/a> over his handling of a 15-year-old Oakland murder case has accused former District Attorney Pamela Price of racial bias.<\/p>\n

Late last month, Phong Tran\u2019s attorney, Andrew Ganz, filed a court motion in Tran\u2019s criminal case, alleging that Price\u2019s decision to prosecute him may have been racially motivated. Ganz is asking a state judge to order the DA\u2019s office \u2014 now run by Ursula Jones Dickson \u2014 to hand over a range of records and data that he argues could show that Tran was singled out because he is Asian.<\/p>\n

A veteran Oakland homicide investigator, Tran was charged in 2023 with perjury and bribery after the star witness in a 2016 murder trial recanted<\/a>, saying Tran had paid her thousands of dollars before she gave court testimony identifying two men who were then convicted in the killing. Her admission, in 2021, that she had not testified truthfully helped set both men free from prison the next year. Since then, other homicide cases investigated by Tran have been reexamined, and at least one other man\u2019s conviction has been overturned<\/a> because of the detective\u2019s misconduct<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Price ran for DA in 2022 on a platform that emphasized police accountability, and deputies in her Public Accountability Unit filed charges against Tran in April 2023, two months after she took office. Tran has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n

The criminal case has faced delays over the past three years due to Price\u2019s recall<\/a> in 2024, the change in DA leadership, and the refusal of the witness whom Tran paid \u2014 an Oakland woman named Aisha Weber<\/a> \u2014 to cooperate.<\/p>\n

The accusations of racial bias introduce a new wrinkle, which prosecutors argue could risk delaying trial until next year.<\/p>\n

Judge Scott Patton will decide soon whether Tran\u2019s accusations are supported by enough evidence for him to order the DA\u2019s office to hand over relevant data and records.<\/p>\n

Tran says charges against him were influenced by racial animus<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s attorney laid out the new allegations in a court filing known as a Racial Justice Act<\/a> motion for discovery, which was presented to Judge Patton during a closed court hearing on Oct. 2. Patton, who is overseeing Tran\u2019s case, sealed the motion and related filings, so many of the details of what Tran is alleging are not yet public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s attorney, Ganz, did not respond to interview requests from The Oaklandside. The DA\u2019s office declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Some of Tran\u2019s accusations are described in a recent court filing<\/a> by Darby Williams, the deputy district attorney who has been prosecuting Tran\u2019s case since December.<\/p>\n

Williams quoted sections of Tran\u2019s motion which ask for court-ordered disclosure of \u201cdata relevant to prior accusations of anti-Asian discrimination by former District Attorney Pamela Price\u201d and \u201cdata pertaining to how the Price administration approached individuals of other racial and ethnic groups who may have committed crimes similar to the ones for which Tran currently stands accused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s motion, Williams wrote, also mentioned \u201callegations made by others that the Price administration discriminated against them as employees or hired others that were not Asian and were believed inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

This appears to be a reference to lawsuits filed by two Asian American former employees of the DA\u2019s office. The first was a lawsuit filed by Patricia Lee, who worked as a public information officer in Price\u2019s office until she was terminated in 2024. Her lawsuit, filed that June<\/a> against the county, alleged<\/a> that Price fired her in part because she was Asian. Lee accused Price of having \u201cracial animus toward people of East Asian descent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second was a lawsuit filed against the county in October 2024 by Craig Chew, who worked as chief inspector in the DA\u2019s office under Nancy O\u2019Malley and was replaced by Price when she took over in early 2023. Chew alleged<\/a> that Price \u201cdemonstrated stereotypical thinking in regard to race\u201d and fired him because he was Asian, replacing him with an African American candidate.<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s motion, according to Williams\u2019 filing, also refers to an incident in which \u201can infant of Asian heritage was murdered by two young Black defendants and the Price administration decided to strike special allegations that would have, if imposed, made the two twenty-something defendants ineligible for parole.\u201d<\/p>\n

That appears to be a reference to the Jasper Wu case. Wu, a 23-month-old toddler, was killed in Oakland by a stray bullet on I-880 in 2021. The next year, the Alameda County prosecutor\u2019s office, then under the leadership of O\u2019Malley, charged two San Francisco men, Trevor Green, 22, and Ivory Bivens, 24, with Wu\u2019s murder. Added to the charges were special circumstances<\/a> that would have sent Green and Bivens to prison for life without the chance of parole, if convicted.<\/p>\n

When Price assumed leadership of the DA\u2019s office in 2023, she issued a policy<\/a> barring prosecutors from alleging special circumstances or seeking sentence enhancements<\/a> without approval from supervisors.<\/p>\n

That policy infuriated some veteran prosecutors, and speculation that it would influence charging decisions in the Jasper Wu case ignited a firestorm of media coverage<\/a>. In June 2023, Price did drop the special circumstance allegations<\/a> against Green and Bivens, meaning they would face up to 25 years in prison but be eligible for parole after that, if convicted.<\/p>\n

Price says her entire career is about racial justice<\/p>\n

Former DA Price told The Oaklandside last week that her office\u2019s decision to charge Tran was based on strong evidence of wrongdoing, and that the charging decision was a fulfillment of her campaign promises to voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was elected on a platform of holding police officers accountable,\u201d Price said. \u201cMy team looked at the evidence and made a recommendation, and I approved the prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

She dismissed Tran\u2019s claim that she and her administration were biased against Asians. \u201cI\u2019ve been an advocate for racial justice all of my life,\u201d Price said.<\/p>\n

Price said Tran\u2019s misconduct first emerged in 2022 \u2014 before she was DA \u2014 when the murder convictions of Giovanni Douglas and Cartier Hunter were overturned by a state judge. (Both men are currently suing<\/a> the Oakland Police Department for civil rights violations.) Then-DA O\u2019Malley and her deputies alerted the Oakland Police Department to that development, which sparked an internal affairs investigation of Tran. After the allegations that Tran had bribed a witness were first reported<\/a> in the press<\/a> in early 2023, Price\u2019s office decided to investigate and charge him.<\/p>\n

Price also defended the way her office handled the Jasper Wu case, saying it was in line with new policies she had rolled out to reduce racial disparities in charging across the board. Enhancements and special circumstance allegations like the ones the defendants in the Wu case initially faced, Price said, had been used<\/a> by prosecutors in thousands of cases in Alameda County, but they hadn\u2019t been neutrally applied. Studies have found<\/a> that California prosecutors were much more likely to use enhancements and special circumstances against Black defendants than defendants of other races.<\/p>\n

Regarding Chew and Lee\u2019s lawsuits against her and the county, Price said they were each settled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to public records, the county agreed to pay Lee $368,000 in compensation, $92,000 for lost wages and $338,000 to cover her attorney\u2019s fees. The county paid Chew $133,000 in compensation, $14,000 for lost wages and $101,000 for attorney\u2019s fees. In both cases, the county did not admit that Price or any county official was at fault.<\/p>\n

The DA\u2019s office says Tran has offered only \u2018loose conjecture\u2019<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s accusation that Price had a \u201cfixation with race, ethnicity, and nationality,\u201d Williams argued in the court brief, is not supported by the \u201cspeculation fueled anecdotes\u201d in his motion.<\/p>\n

According to Williams, the more obvious answer to why Price charged Tran with felony perjury and bribery charges is that Price was motivated \u201cto keep a campaign promise to investigate and charge police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams wrote that Tran hasn\u2019t explained how his race was specifically considered by prosecutors when he was charged with perjury. And Williams said in her filing that Tran\u2019s sealed pleadings to the court haven\u2019t shown that Price\u2019s administration disproportionately charged Asian people with crimes, including perjury.<\/p>\n

She summed up Tran\u2019s requests as \u201cfishing expeditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s latest motion stands to cause further delays, Williams wrote. According to Williams, the defense had said in January that it was considering a Racial Justice Act motion, and the prosecution urged Ganz to file it. By March, the defense hadn\u2019t filed the motion or formally notified the court that it intended to, and the case was set to go to trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis eleventh-hour filing will now build in a delay of potentially months depending on the scope of the Court\u2019s grant for discovery,\u201d Williams wrote.<\/p>\n

The next hearing in the case is Oct. 29.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\trelated stories<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"DA\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tDA may drop most charges in bribery and perjury case against Oakland police detective<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tMarch 2, 2026March 2, 2026, 3:50 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"In\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tIn Oakland police bribery case, an internal investigation revealed more troubling practices at OPD<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tJune 13, 2023June 16, 2023, 5:25 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\u2018I\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\u2018I was not truthful\u2019: Murder conviction overturned after witness says Oakland police officer paid for her testimony<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tMarch 27, 2023March 27, 2023, 5:38 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

“*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An OPD homicide investigator facing perjury and bribery charges over his handling of a 15-year-old Oakland murder case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,19907,93472,408],"class_list":["post-508832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-pamela-price","tag-phong-tran","tag-police-accountability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}