Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton defended her record recently at a small gathering in Richmond, where attendees included Richmond elected officials, a Richmond mayoral hopeful and area residents.
The June 27 backyard event was hosted by Richmond District 4 city council member Soheila Bana, who dubbed it a “house party and community conversation.” It was intended to give Becton a platform as she fights an effort to gather signatures to hold an election to recall her from office. Residents of Richmond, El Sobrante and Pinole showed up, including West Contra Costa Unified School District board member Jamela Smith-Folds and Richmond mayoral candidate Ahmad Anderson.
Bana spread word of the event through her email newsletter, where she urged people not to support the recall.
“I strongly urge you not to sign the recall petition,” Bana wrote. “Removing a DA who stands firmly for victims and justice would not only set back critical progress — it would also cost taxpayers an estimated eight million.”
Helen Nolan, an assistant with the Contra Costa Registrar of Voters, told NBC Bay Area in March that a recall election would cost $8 million or more.
Becton, who lives in El Sobrante, touted her accomplishments as the county’s chief prosecutor and refuted accusations that she has been soft on crime. At the sunny early evening gathering, the crowd ate light snacks of fruit, breads, vegetables and dips and drank flavored waters and sodas as some asked Becton about her programs and the movement to oust her.
The newly formed political committee, Stand with DA Becton and Stop the Recall, helped organize the event. Becton, who was first appointed district attorney in 2017, went on to win elections in 2018 and 2022.
Ten family members of crime victims, including two Richmond murder victims, are waging the recall campaign, according to the Recall Diana Becton website. To successfully force a recall election, the campaign has to gather at least 72,566 signatures from registered Contra Costa County voters by Sept. 25. In their notice of intent to recall Becton, filed in March, recall supporters said they are concerned about a “persistent cycle of unaddressed criminal activity,” as well as “empty promises” and a “lack of transparency” from Becton.
Becton discusses crime prevention, other highlights of her time in office
Becton did not immediately address the recall at the event. Instead, she started out by explaining some of the programs she and her office have initiated.
“Many people don’t have any idea who the district attorney is and don’t know what we do,” Becton said. “I think it’s really important to share the amazing work we’ve done in Contra Costa County, always with an eye for public safety, but also with a lens for equity and fairness.”
Becton shared how she secured a federal grant in 2018 to create a human trafficking unit that focuses on prosecuting those accused of sex and labor trafficking. She touted the formation of a Major Crimes Task Force that collaborates with other agencies to prosecute violent and nonviolent organized crime, and a cold case unit, to investigate long unsolved homicide cases using technology.
She also gave an overview of diversion and crime prevention efforts.
In 2019, Becton said, she secured a grant to create a youth restorative justice program in partnership with Richmond’s Ryse Youth Center that works to hold youths accountable while avoiding the harshest sentences and helping them avoid committing additional crimes.
Becton said she also helped create the Neighborhood Restorative Partnership for adults accused of low level crimes, where victims, perpetrators and community members work together to create an accountability program. Of the more than 200 people who have completed the program, Becton said, none have reoffended.
Additionally, Becton spoke of her office’s efforts to clear more than 2,000 people convicted of marijuana offenses before 2016, when the substance was decriminalized, with the goal of making it easier for them to find jobs.
Eventually, Becton addressed the elephant in the garden when Richmond resident Lorena Ellenberger directly asked her about the recall.
“There is an attempt to follow the playbook for San Francisco and Alameda County,” said Becton, referring to the recent recalls of two Bay Area district attorneys. “Which is to say that ‘criminals are running rampant, that I am not prosecuting cases, and that I do not support victims.’ I hope that from everything you’ve heard today you understand that we are prosecuting a lot of cases.”
Both former San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin and former Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price were recalled in recent years. Like Boudin and Price, Becton belongs to the Prosecutors Alliance of California, the country’s first reform-minded law enforcement association. Recall proponents have connected their reform-minded policies with perceived or actual increases in crime.
Becton said that “crime is not running rampant in our county” and that it has been at an “historic low.” She urged people to check out the Public Policy Institute of California report on Contra Costa County crime rates. The report, which covers the mid-1980s to 2020, shows that Contra Costa’s reported property crime rate has trended downward and continued to decrease since Becton took office in 2017. Its property crime rate has been lower than in Alameda and San Francisco counties.
More recent data from the Department of Justice shows the total number of property crimes reached its lowest point in 2021, then rose very slightly in 2022 and has leveled out since then.
As for reported violent crimes, the Public Policy Institute’s report showed the crime rate for such offenses reached its lowest point a few years before Becton took office and had leveled out. That trend continued until 2020. Newer data shows the total number of violent crimes has risen slightly after 2020. On average, about 14.5% more violent crimes have occurred each year between 2021 and 2024 than between 2015 and 2020.
There’s a lack of clarity around whether reform-minded district attorneys influence crime rates. One study from 2022 of 65 major cities in the United States, looking at data starting in 2015, suggested that having such a prosecutor did not impact the rate of thefts or homicides.
Becton addresses the murder of Oakley resident Alexis Gabe
Becton specifically addressed one case that recall proponents have focused on: The murder of 23-year-old Oakley resident Alexis Gabe. Gabe was killed in 2022, and Becton’s office charged her ex-boyfriend Marshall Jones of Antioch with murder. Officers were attempting to arrest him in Washington but they shot and killed him after, they said, he charged at them with a knife.
Ring camera videos show Jones unloading large trash bags at his mother’s home shortly after the last time Gabe was seen alive. Members of Gabe’s family, notably her father and cousin, who are among proponents of the recall, wanted Jones’ mother charged as an accessory to the crime, but Becton’s office decided not to file charges.
Becton said she “certainly cannot tell anyone how to grieve or respond to such a tragedy” but that after three years of working with lawyers and the Antioch and Oakley police departments, examining and reexamining evidence and interviewing and re-interviewing witnesses, her team has “definitely determined that at this time we do not have sufficient evidence to prove that case.”
Becton said that the standard to file a case is “a high one” and that the office has “an ethical standard that we’re not to file cases unless we have a good faith belief that we can prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Most people at the event were supportive of Becton. WCCUSD board member Smith-Folds told Richmondside she was against the recall due to her “vision for the youth, including but not limited to restorative justice.”
“She is focused on creating programs that prevent youth from making negative choices that will affect them long term,” Smith-Folds said. “This is who we need in a justice-fighting role.”
Recall effort hasn’t yet attracted large donations
Champagne Brown, manager of Becton’s anti-recall campaign, collected contact information from attendees so they could learn about events and volunteer opportunities, and multiple people asked how they could support her.
Brown said that the recall movement has been announcing areas in which they plan to collect signatures and said that her campaign wants to “stop the recall before it gets to the ballot” by delivering positive information to people that could persuade them not to sign. So far, according to posts on the recall effort’s Facebook page, most of the signature collecting has been in east county though a couple sessions have been held in Pinole.
An expert on recall elections, Joshua Spivak, told Richmondside in December that recall signature gathering efforts are difficult and usually fail. If they succeed and a recall election is held, voters usually end up voting to approve the recall.
Brown is concerned that if the recall effort attracts large donations it could more likely reach its signature goal. That happened with the Boudin recall, when William Oberndorf and Brandon Shorenstein donated more than a million of the $6 million raised to oust him. It also happened with the Price recall, as Phillip Dreyfus donated and loaned almost $600,000 of the $3 million raised to oust her.
So far, it appears that not much money has been donated to the Becton recall. According to its latest campaign finance filing, the recall team has received a little more than $4,000 in donations through March 31.
One attendee was dissatisfied about handling of Richmond embezzlement case
Not everyone was supportive of Becton at the event. Angela Votto of El Sobrante confronted Becton over her office’s handling of a case where a woman named Angela Fea Brown agreed to a plea deal after being charged with embezzling more than $900,000 from a Richmond paving company that Votto works for.
Votto said she was not informed of the plea deal until shortly before it occurred, so she and the owner of Viking Pavers were not able to be involved in the agreement. Brown’s sentence, Votto felt, was also too lenient. Brown agreed to a 10-year sentence that was suspended as she was given three years of probation. Typically, if people fulfill the terms of their probation, their sentence is waived.
“I understand that you can’t follow every case but it was a high-profile case,” Votto said. “It was a case that you put a press release out about, and I just feel that the prosecutor did a complete injustice.”
Votto said that the company has not yet received restitution and said that “everyone I’ve tried to reach out to about this, it’s just been like a shuffle.”
Becton thanked Votto for bringing up the matter and said she would check on the restitution. She also advised Votto on how to better navigate her office.
While the interaction was cordial, and Votto told Richmondside that she thought Becton was “a nice person,” she also said that due to her experiences, she’s unsatisfied with Becton’s work and supports the recall.
“It seems she’s brushing off the recall effort against her as just political opposition,” Votto later told Richmondside. “But I know there are regular people like me who have grievances with her office.”
Brave of Becton to meet with the MAGA conservatives and haters. Votto has been a local MAGA for over a decade and doesn’t seem to understand how the legal system works. It’s sad to see some of the El Sobrante folk can be so easily influenced into supporting a recall against a great DA.
8 million for a special election???? She has been doing an excellent job. Even if you disagree and take into account her reelection bid is not until 2028, 8million dollars.
Please don’t lie about me. I don’t even know anyone named Rebecca and anyone who does know me, knows I am the furthers thing from a MAGA supporter.
Diana Becton is not on the side of Law and order. I read about what she did to Officer Andrew Hall.
A gross miscarriage of Justice.