Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price Announces The Fix and Facts for a Backlog of Misdemeanor Cases
October 16, 2024
Oakland, CA—Today, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced the fix and facts for a backlog of misdemeanor cases recently reported at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland.
When DA Price hired Senior Assistant District Attorney Evanthia Pappas as the new branch head at the Family Justice Center in early 2023, the team discovered significant backlogs in domestic violence cases, which pose the highest risk of lethality if left unaddressed as well as U-Visa applications. The new team addressed the problem at the FJC, and since August of this year, the same model used to clear the backlog of these domestic violence cases has been replicated to clear the backlog of misdemeanor cases discovered in July at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse.
Case filing backlogs have been a longstanding problem within the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Police reports are received from 22 law enforcement agencies, including at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse, which receives as many as 70 to 100 police reports every day for both felony and misdemeanor incidents from the Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Albany, Piedmont and Emeryville police departments, the Oakland Housing Authority, BART, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol.
“What we learned is that the processing of misdemeanor cases at Wiley Manuel has always been done manually, but the current case management system adopted by District Attorney O’Malley does not allow the staff to put the date of the alleged incident in the system. Without a data box that does not require or even allow the date of the incident to be noted, there is no way for the case management system to track the statute of limitations,” explained DA Price. “The fix includes reassigning staff to clean up the backlog and working with the County’s IT department to require the date of the incident to be included in the intake process, and adding a tickler system to track the time limits for the judicial process.”
Pending the necessary upgrades to the system, the DA’s office will continue manually tracking the incident dates for any new reports reviewed. DA Price announced that she will deploy a team of additional staff to the Wiley Manuel Courthouse unit to fix this longstanding problem starting on Monday, October 21, 2024.
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Contact: damedia@acgov.org
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office (DAO) is one of California’s largest prosecutors’ offices and is led by Alameda County’s first Black woman District Attorney Pamela Y. Price. Price brings her vision to this office to fairly administer justice in the pursuit of thriving, healthy, and safe communities for every person who steps foot in Alameda County, no matter their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, income, or zip code. Price has been recognized as one of the most progressive prosecutors through her forward-thinking, innovative strategies to interrupt cycles of violence and crime and bring change to a criminal justice system rooted in systemic racism. Follow Madam DA on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and @AlamedaCountyda on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.