A year ago, local media widely reported a press release from newly-seated Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price that she had created a new “District Attorney’s Mental Health Commission.” The announcement stated the MHC would “advise the [DA’s] office on how to better respond to criminal justice cases involving people with serious mental illnesses. The hope is to provide care and new pathways, rather than punishment, to the families and loved ones of those with mental health challenges, according to the district attorney’s office.”
This was in conformity with Price’s ideological claim that most crime in Alameda County is caused by two factors: racism and mental illness, and seldom if ever through personal choice. Creation of the MHC was directly tied to a vicious crime in Oakland that occurred on Jan. 11, 2023, just one week after Price was sworn in as DA.
A 71-year old postal worker, Dilma Franks-Spruill, was walking home from work along Eighth Street when she was brutally stabbed more than a dozen times, including in her throat, by a homeless man, Wilbert Winchester. Franks-Spruill died from her wounds. Winchester had earlier stabbed another woman on an Oakland bus, and had a long history of attacking women in public. Local media reported that, following his arrest, Winchester reportedly was charged by DA Price for murder, but so far the case seems to have languished; I can find no reports of followup. However, on Feb. 10, 2023, just one month after the murder, Price announced the creation of her new District Attorney’s Mental Health Commission to “help improve how the District Attorney’s Office responds to residents impacted by the criminal justice system while experiencing mental health challenges.” Price specifically referenced both the victim, Franks-Spruill, and the murderer, Wilbert Winchester, claiming that Franks-Spruill’s “death has become a clarion call for dramatic improvement in our response to the issue of mental illness in our community.”
Because Winchester was said to be mentally ill, Price argued that his crime was less important than the real issue, which, she claimed, was for Winchester to receive “the care” he deserves. Her new Commission, Price said, would help her office “improve how the system currently operates.”
So how’s the District Attorney’s Mental Health Commission doing? I could find no mention of it anywhere on the Internet, despite the fact that Price announced its creation nearly a year ago. A Google search turns up nothing on the MHC, except for all those media reports in the days following Price’s press release that quoted from it.
There’s no MHC website. No reporting on anything MHC has done. No evidence MHC exists. On the official Alameda County listing of “Boards, Commissions, and Committees,” there’s no mention of it. There is an Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board (i.e., not “Commission”), but it was established in 1958 and hence cannot be the one Price claims to have created.
So what’s going on? So many questions. Does the MHC exist, or not? Is it being funded with taxpayer money? Does it have employees? What is the status of Winchester’s murder charge? Is he in custody, or has Madame DA already provided him, without telling us, with “care and new pathways, rather than punishment”? I asked these questions of the DA’s office, but they haven’t answered more than 24 hours later (nor do I expect them to). How long does it take for DA Price, who promised transparency, to let the public know what she’s doing? A beloved, elderly postal worker is randomly and heinously slaughtered on the Oakland streets; Price reacts to the public outrage with a statement designed to portray her as compassionate, and then…nothing. Silence. Coverup? Behind Price’s locked door or should I say iron curtain, anything can happen.
Steve Heimoff