Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans Friday for military prosecutors to work with the California Department of Justice on certain East Bay cases, just weeks after an analogous agreement with Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price's office fell apart amid a rare public spat between the 2 Democrats.
Newsom said attorneys from CalGuard's Counterdrug Task Force would work with Attorney General Rob Bonta's office on Alameda County cases. Among those not involved is the county's top prosecutor, Price, whose dispute with the governor earlier this month resulted in “disappointment” on either side.
In an announcement announcing the move, Newsom portrayed it as a possibility to “help bring justice to the people of the Bay Area.”
“Today, we are strengthening accountability and justice for East Bay communities by quickly reaching an agreement to provide additional resources to prosecute criminal behavior,” Newsom's statement said.
In a separate statement, Price expressed her approval of this move.
“We hope that the swift agreement between the Department of Justice and CalGuard will produce equally swift results, and my office stands ready to support that effort in any way possible,” Price said within the statement.
She also appeared to query the outcomes of Newsom's much-vaunted increase within the variety of California Highway Patrol officers within the East Bay. Price as an alternative suggested that her office had received only a small fraction of the a whole lot of cases Highway Patrol officers have opened as a part of their deployments within the Oakland area this yr.
The reshuffle of state and military prosecutors was the newest twist in a months-long saga that took a bitter turn in mid-July.
In February, Newsom announced plans to send prosecutors and military prosecutors to work directly with the Alameda County District Attorney's Office as part of a bigger effort to curb crime across the East Bay. The effort was modeled on an analogous agreement with the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and got here amid a surge of state troopers within the Oakland area to combat a wide selection of crimes, including shoplifting and automotive break-ins.
However, the move failed as a result of a series of delays, with Newsom and Price blaming one another for failing to agree on the terms of the partnership.
One of Newsom's Cabinet secretaries identified to Price in a letter last month that the Attorney General's Office took too long to conform to a memorandum of understanding that might have paved the way in which for the prosecutors' arrival. The letter claimed the Attorney General's Office had not taken “initial” steps to finalize such an agreement or appoint National Guard lawyers to work in its office, regardless that Newsom's office had complied with Price's team's requests for resumes and interviews, it said.
But Price said the governor's office didn’t begin that process until April. She also said the unique plan to send three prosecutors to Alameda County has been reduced to at least one, and the one remaining prosecutor is not going to be available after mid-August as a result of “another commitment.”
The issue culminated in competing press conferences on July 12, when Newsom publicly withdrew his offer of aid.
“(The governor) has the right to do whatever he deems appropriate,” Price said on the time, adding that her office had received “mixed messages about what (the governor) would do” and that she was “disappointed” the governor's office had not reached out to her on to share its concerns.
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