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Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson shared misdemeanor and felony referrals data, initiatives her office is focusing on implementing to better support victims and many other things they’ve been working on since she first took over in February 2025 during the Pleasanton City Council’s regular meeting earlier this month.
During the presentation, Jones Dickson also made it clear to the dais and members of the public who were in the room that she is committed to hearing from them during the course of her tenure so that her office can address and focus on things that matter for Tri-Valley and Pleasanton residents.
“I want to know what the community has an appetite for and then we can start moving our resources in those directions,” she said during the March 3 meeting. “So keep us aware of what’s going on here so that we can work with your police chief to figure out ways to try to curb any crimes that are coming up that are unusual or things that have come up again.”
Jones Dickson was first appointed as the county’s new DA following the recall of former district attorney Pamela Price, who was ousted in late 2024 after a two-year tenure. Jones Dickson had spent several years as an Alameda County deputy district attorney before being appointed to the Superior Court, which she left in order to take the DA job.
During her council presentation, Jones Dickson went over several key highlights of what she and her team has been doing since she took office, most of which had to do with rebuilding community trust.
She first noted how the office launched a countywide Organized Retail Theft Task Force to address repeat, organized offenders and said the DA’s office restructured the Organized Retail Theft Vertical Prosecution Unit to improve results.
“Clearly retail theft has been a huge issue in Alameda County and across the nation,” Jones Dickson said.
Regarding theft-related property crimes, she said that the number of those cases filed with the DA’s office in 2025 was just over 4,600 — a significant increase from years prior. That number was closer to 3,600 in 2024 and a little over 3,000 in 2023.
However, she also highlighted a decrease in the number of times stores were being hit per day.
“I have had so many meetings with business owners … across the county about how they’re getting hit with the retail theft,” she said. “We are trying very hard to remind people … the four times a day that they were being hit. Now it’s down to maybe four times a month.”
Jones Dickson discussed some of the other data regarding misdemeanor and felony case referrals that her office received from police departments. A referral is a police report that is reviewed by prosecutors and, if they determine they can prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, they then charge the suspects.
According to the data she presented, in 2025 the DA’s office reviewed nearly 13,000 misdemeanors and almost 5,900 felonies; 12,000 misdemeanors and just over 5,300 felonies in 2024; 11,650 misdemeanors and a little under 5,200 felonies in 2023; and about 12,500 misdemeanors and nearly 5,200 felonies in 2022.
The number of misdemeanor cases that ended up being charged in 2025 was about 7,000 — just under 5,000 were not charged. That ratio was more or less the same over the last four years, according to Jones Dickson.
She also noted a number of cases that were given an alternative action, which includes diversion.
For felony referrals, in 2025 there were just over 4,200 police reports that were charged and 980 police reports that were not charged.
Jones Dickson said the number of cases have gone up compared to previous years and that she expects that number to continue to rise mostly because when her team first started, they had a long backlog of cases that have not been charged
“I think, to some extent, police were a little upset about that,” she said.
Jones Dickson also spent some time discussing internal changes at the DA’s office and what her team has been doing to bolster its operations by filling up leadership positions, relaunching grant and consumer protection initiatives, and beginning a “top-to-bottom fiscal review.”
“Those actions create more transparency as well as accountability for our office,” she said.
She added that the office removed internal bottlenecks and restored prosecutorial capacity, meaning prosecutors were able to review and process cases more efficiently and were able to increase the amount of felony filings, and were able to secure funding to protect victims and support the Alameda County Family Justice Center and the Trauma Recovery Center.
“There’s been a remarkable turnaround and I think it’s notable in our community,” Councilmember Craig Eicher said during the meeting.
Looking ahead, Jones Dickson said she wants to continue building trust with the community through town halls and safety forums and even suggested working with Pleasanton to set one up in the city to hear from residents and local leaders.
She said she also wants to continue emphasizing that cities invest in early childhood education and invest in families in order to prevent some of those theft-related cases, which can be caused by economic hardships.
Other key priorities for her office include developing a hate crimes unit; restoring its efforts to prosecute human trafficking, wage theft and labor exploitation; improving and expanding victim witness services; and continuing its annual reporting.
And as she works on continuing to train lawyers who might have not gotten the experience they needed over these past few years due to the pandemic, or not having enough cases or dealing with budgetary constraints, Jones Dickson said she wants to really focus doing everything she can to keep residents in the county safe.
“The policies that you (saw) out tonight and what’s going on in the office now everyday … is a focus on purpose, a clear strategy for what we’re doing and positive culture,” Councilmember Matt Gaidos said of Jones Dickson’s presentation March 3. “And that to me is the recipe for positive results and that’s what we’re seeing.”