Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has begun affirmatively opposing the release of inmates at state parole hearings, marking the end of a hiatus on parole recommendations imposed by Ursula Jones Dickson upon taking office. That freeze was seen by observers as an effort to prevent former public defenders, hired under her predecessor, from continuing to support the release of murderers.
The policy shift became apparent after a review of transcripts from recent hearings involving inmates committed by Alameda courts. It marks a return to the routine practice of prosecutors appearing before parole panels to scrutinize inmates’ claims of rehabilitation and advocate for public safety.
This practice was curbed by the now-ousted District Attorney Pamela Price, who instead sent the cadre of progressive defense attorneys she brought to the prosecutors’ office to parole hearings where they effectively acted as a second defense advocate for some of the county’s most depraved killers.
Among the first tasks for attorneys implementing Dickson’s new policy was to oppose parole for a condemned double murderer who was resentenced to 25 years to life thanks to Price’s efforts.
Milton Pollock was give a death sentence by an Alameda jury after his 1989 slaying of an elderly Castro Valley couple during a home invasion robbery to obtain money to buy crack cocaine.
Doris and Earl Garcia had their throats slit during an attack of unprecedented savagery, in which Pollock used a butcher’s knife to repeatedly hack at the neck, face and chest of his victims.
“This was a pure district attorney-initiated resentencing that was undertaken in the previous administration,” conceded assistant district attorney Justin Kollar at the May 8 2025 hearing.
“We do oppose parole at this time [and] we haven’t heard anything today that would make us reconsider that position.”
“The minute he was transferred out of the death row housing on San Quentin and given a more conventional housing assignment, he began manifesting, sort of, oppositional behaviors – pretty much immediately racking up, I think it’s 11 total [rules violation reports],” said Kollar. Presiding Commissioner Julie Garland and Deputy Commissioner Cory Woodward denied Pollock parole for a five year period.
Alameda prosecutors were less successful in opposing parole for Andre Freer — guilty of the murder of Sophia Ngo during a November 2007 drive-by shooting. Freer’s intended target appeared to be Ngo’s boyfriend, who was injured in the attack, with whom he had a payment dispute over illegal drugs.
“[T]he primary responsibility of this Board, and in my position as a district attorney is to make sure that the safety of the public is protected,” assistant district attorney Andrew Ross told a parole panel at a May 7 hearing.
“Right now, the danger to society, if he was released, is just too unreasonable…We’re urging the Board to deny this request.”
Commissioner Lawrence Nwajei and Deputy Commissioner Gary Shinaver disagreed and ordered that Freer be paroled.
And, that same day, Ross’ colleague, assistant district attorney April Smith, opposed the parole of Santos Flores – sentenced to 25 years to life in 2000 for shooting a man dead at a wedding reception.
He had also attempted to kill another guest, but the gun misfired when he pressed it to the victim’s head and pulled the trigger.
Smith drew commissioners’ attention to the circumstances of Flores’ eventual arrest after years as a fugitive: he was detained after trying to run over and kill a man during a parking lot dispute.
“The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is opposed to parole and believes this inmate still poses a current unreasonable risk to public safety and it should be denied,” she concluded.
Flores was denied parole for a period of seven years.
Smith also appeared at a parole panel on April 2 to oppose Marvin Crosby‘s release.
During a six-month crime spree between 1968 and 1969 Crosby murdered two women in Oakland’s Trestle Glen district. He shot 30-year-old Judith Stratton in her own bedroom after breaking into the home she shared with her husband in the early hours of October 12 1968. Then, on March 2 1969, he used a shotgun to kill 69-year-old Janet McLeod after he broke into her home less than half a mile from the site of Stratton’s slaying. The widow, who lived alone, was in her bed when she died.
Crosby was 17 at the time of the offenses and was already serving a prison term for the violent robbery of an Oakland woman when police linked him to the homicides. At age 10 he, along with four siblings aged between 8 and 11, witnessed his father kill his mother. Five younger siblings were in bed at the time.
He has been in prison for more than half a century.
“At this point I would be objecting due to the level of dangerousness in attempting to integrate back [into] the community without appropriate plans and without the understanding of his mental health diagnosis and necessity for medication,” Smith told commissioners.
Presiding Commissioner Kathleen O’Meara and Deputy Commissioner Dale Pomeranz denied Crosby parole for three years.
On May 14 prosecutor Robert Graff unsuccessfully opposed parole for Oakland child killer Chazarus Hill Sr.
Hil, who beat his three-year-old child to death with a belt because he had wet the bed and not yet learned his letters and numbers, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2007 and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.
Chazarus Jr’s injuries were “almost too numerous to count,” the hearing was told.
“The people oppose parole for Mr Hill at this time,” said Graff. “At his last hearing Mr Hill commented that he knows he has more work to do and I believe that is true, some 18 months later, today.”
“It appears that Mr Hill still operates with a criminal mindset.”
“I feel like it should be a life for a life,” said Chazarus Jr’s mother Tyrinza Brown. “So since he took a life from us he should be able to do life in prison.”
“He needs to stay in there until he dies.”
Hill had served 21 years and seven months.
Presiding Commissioner Kathleen O’Meara and Deputy Commissioner Timothy Kelly determined that Hill, 45, did not pose a public danger and granted him parole.
The new approach to parole hearings further underscores Dickson’s stated intent to distance herself from her predecessor and steer the office back toward the Bay Area prosecutorial mainstream — soft on crime though that mainstream may be.
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