Alameda County Public Accountability Unit: What Happened to It?

Voters rejected the DA who built it — twice. As the unit that promised to hold police accountable gets quietly dismantled, Alameda County residents are asking what, if anything, is left of the reckoning they were promised.

Voters spoke twice. Both times, the answer was no.

In January 2023, then-District Attorney Pamela Price launched a Public Accountability Unit to reopen eight officer-involved death cases, calling it a “reckoning” for Alameda County. Less than two years later, voters recalled her by a 63 to 37 percent margin. In June 2026, when Price tried to reclaim the office outright, voters rejected her again — this time by a landslide of roughly 40 points. The unit she built has been renamed, restructured, and stripped of the cases that made it famous.

What Did Price’s Public Accountability Unit Actually Do?

The unit’s mandate was specific: review eight officer-involved fatal shootings and in-custody deaths, including the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez, an unarmed Oakland man pinned to the ground by Alameda police, and the 2021 death of Vinetta Martin at Santa Rita Jail [Alameda County DA’s office statement, 2023]. Under Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, none of those cases had resulted in charges.

Price’s office reopened them and, in early 2023, charged three Alameda police officers with involuntary manslaughter in the Gonzalez case — filed, notably, just days after the recall campaign against her had qualified for the ballot. That timing became part of the story almost immediately.

Why Did the Gonzalez Case Collapse in Court?

A district attorney charged three officers with manslaughter — and still couldn’t get the case past a judge. In 2024, a judge dismissed the charges against two of the three officers, ruling that prosecutors had missed the three-year statute of limitations to file. A judge characterized the case as “rushed and careless.” The third officer’s case was later dropped as well.

That outcome did lasting damage to the unit’s credibility, even among residents who supported the goal of reviewing police-involved deaths. A case built to demonstrate accountability instead became a case study in prosecutorial error — the kind of outcome that gives ammunition to critics who argue reform-minded prosecutors sacrifice competence for ideology.

What Happened After Voters Recalled Price?

Voters removed Price from office in November 2024, and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors appointed retired Superior Court Judge Ursula Jones Dickson to replace her in January 2025. Jones Dickson moved fast. Within months, her office renamed the Public Accountability Unit the Public Integrity Division and restructured its procedures to more closely resemble the traditional prosecutorial approach used under O’Malley [spokesperson statement to Mercury News].

$0. That is how many of the eight originally reopened cases have resulted in a standing conviction of a law enforcement officer to date — the question Alameda County has never gotten a straight answer to is why a unit built around accountability produced none.

Did the New DA Just Undo Everything, Or Fix Real Mistakes?

This is where the fairest reading of events matters most. In one case involving Santa Rita Jail deputies, originally charged by Price’s office in 2023 over allegedly falsified jail logs, Jones Dickson’s office reexamined the evidence and concluded the fault lay with a flawed logging system, not the deputies themselves — dropping the charges entirely [reporting via California County News, KTVU]. It was reportedly the third instance in roughly a year of law enforcement charges filed under Price being dropped under her successor.

Is it accountability if the cases collapse in court, or just the appearance of accountability until someone checks the paperwork?

Supporters of Jones Dickson’s approach argue this proves the system working as intended — bad cases get corrected, regardless of who filed them. Critics counter that a pattern of dismissed law-enforcement cases, however each one is individually justified, still adds up to the same result: a unit built to hold police accountable that has yet to produce a single lasting conviction.

Why Did Voters Reject Price a Second Time?

The June 2026 primary was framed by nearly every outlet covering it as a referendum on Price’s entire approach to criminal justice. Jones Dickson won roughly 65 percent of the vote to Price’s 25 percent, a margin large enough to avoid a November runoff entirely. Trial attorney Gopal Krishan took the remaining votes.

Two elections, one verdict: Alameda County voters said no to Pamela Price by a landslide both times she was on the ballot. That is not a narrow, contestable result. It is one of the more decisive repudiations of a sitting or former prosecutor in recent California history, and it happened twice in eighteen months.

What Do Supporters of Price’s Original Reforms Actually Believe?

Price’s remaining supporters make an argument worth taking seriously rather than dismissing outright. They contend that police-involved deaths went uncharged for years under prior administrations, that reviewing them at all was overdue regardless of how any single case turned out, and that dismantling the unit’s independence risks returning Alameda County to a system where law enforcement effectively investigates itself. Some also argue Jones Dickson’s rapid reversals — including withdrawing death-row resentencing efforts for people her predecessor’s office found were sentenced under prosecutorial bias — reflect institutional caution dressed up as reform.

That argument has a real point buried in it: accountability mechanisms that only exist when a particular prosecutor is in office are not durable accountability at all. But it does not answer the core problem voters kept citing at the ballot box — that Price’s execution, not her stated goals, was what failed. Charging officers is not the same as convicting them, and a unit that produced procedural dismissals rather than verdicts gave critics exactly the evidence they needed. Wanting police accountability and getting competent prosecution to deliver it turned out to be two very different things in Alameda County.

Key Questions This Story Raises:

• If none of the original eight reopened cases produced a standing conviction, did the unit fail on the merits, on execution, or both?
• Should police accountability review functions be structurally independent of whichever DA currently holds office, so results don’t reverse with every election?
• What does it say about a reform agenda when the same electorate rejects it decisively in both a recall and the next scheduled election?

Is This Really About Police Accountability, Or About Competent Prosecution?

Strip away the politics, and the real question left standing is uncomfortable for both sides of this debate. Reviewing police-involved deaths was not, on its own, the controversial part — even Jones Dickson’s office has not proposed simply ignoring future cases. What collapsed was the execution: charges filed against a deadline the office itself missed, a “rushed and careless” case a judge openly criticized, and a pattern of reversals once new leadership examined the same files.

Alameda County voters did not vote against accountability twice. They voted against a specific prosecutor’s ability to deliver it. The real question isn’t whether police accountability matters to Alameda County residents — it’s whether anyone in county government can build a version of it that survives contact with an actual courtroom.

Still have questions about how your county prosecutes police misconduct cases? Stay informed — subscribe for daily coverage of Alameda County accountability and justice issues. Think your neighbors need to see how this played out? Share this article. Want your voice to count? Contact the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and ask for a public accounting of what happened to each of the original eight Public Accountability Unit cases.