OAKLAND — If the Alameda County District Attorney gets her way, first time gun possession offenders will go to jail.
A new policy enacted by DA Ursula Jones Dickson will require prosecutors to seek “mandatory minimum” sentences of jail or prison for all gun charges, from first-time arrestees charged with a misdemeanor to repeat felons caught with a gun. Prosecutors were notified of the policy change on Monday, an office spokesman said.
At a news conference Monday, Jones Dickson announced the policy change in the wake of last week’s slaying of Laney College football Coach John Beam, whose suspected killer went onto the Oakland campus on Thursday with a gun he legally owned and allegedly shot Beam in the head. Beam, who was Laney’s athletics director, was pronounced dead Friday morning.
“There must be more accountability,” Jones Dickson said in a written statement. “Our schools, students and teachers need to thrive in a safe gun-free environment. I believe that this will be an important step in that direction to make Oakland and Alameda County safer.”
The new policy is a stark shift from Jones Dickson’s predecessor, Pamela Price, who in 2023 circulated a memo instructing her prosecutors to use probation terms as the “presumptive offer” in all cases where the defendant was legally eligible for them, and to seek “low end” sentences when probation wasn’t on the table. Price, recalled in 2024 and replaced by county supervisors with Jones Dickson, used that policy as part of broader efforts to reduce incarceration and implement progressive justice reform.
Jones Dickson said that moving forward, her office will week 90-day jail sentence for misdemeanor gun cases, 180-day sentences for felony possession charges, and 16 months in prison for people with felony convictions who are caught with guns. She vowed to seek “further mandatory jail time” for people caught with unregistered guns, commonly known as “ghost guns.”
Prosecutors have significant influence over a defendant’s sentence, with one obvious caveat: any outcome they seek must first be approved by a judge.
The Alameda County Public Defender’s Office didn’t immediately issue a response to the new policy.