The new state’s attorney of Prince George’s County, Tara Jackson, dropped by Laurel on Dec. 9 as part of a county tour to introduce herself to citizens, hear their concerns and talk about scam dangers.
At the meeting in the West Laurel Community Building, Jackson noted that she had been appointed by county Circuit Court judges in June to fill the term of her predecessor, Aisha Braveboy, who won a special election that month to become county executive.
Jackson has a lengthy resume in the county, serving as top assistant to Angela Alsobrooks when she was state’s attorney, acting as Alsobrooks’ chief administrative officer when she was county executive, and serving as acting county executive from Dec 2024 to June 2025 after Alsobrooks left to become a U.S. senator.
Jackson said one of her top priorities as the county’s head prosecutor was reducing violent crime. She said the trends are positive, with homicides, for instance, down 40% from last year. Domestic violence is a particular concern, she said. “There’s so much violence that happens behind closed doors.”
“We’ve got some good police forces in Prince George’s County,” she said, adding that police had a “phenomenal” record of closing cases. She noted, for example, that county police had taken only one day to arrest a suspect after a fatal shooting in a food court at the MGM National Harbor casino on Dec. 3.
Jackson said another of her priorities is “youth accountability. … Our young people in Prince George’s County have to know they have to deal with the consequences of their actions.”
She said her office is launching a school truancy program, studying factors that lead to school non-attendance and providing wrap-around services for chronic truants. “We know chronic truancy leads to juvenile delinquency and juvenile delinquency leads to adult crime,” she said.
She discussed scamming issues, noting that her over-80-year-old mother “is being targeted every week by scams” over the telephone. Often the thieves impersonate government agencies or financial institutions, she said.
“We need to take the time to think and pause and confirm” the validity of such calls, Jackson said. “It’s okay to be rude. They like to keep you talking. … Don’t engage with them. Hang up.” Agencies and financial institutions never ask a person for money over the phone, she noted.
She said hanging up is especially important in the age of artificial intelligence, now that scammers can record a few sentences of a person speaking and create a message in the person’s voice to scam family members.
Many in the audience of about 20 people described scam attempts they had experienced. For instance, one couple said they had just discovered the previous day a Medicare scam in which a company had filed $7,000 in claims for catheters they purportedly had purchased. Medicare had approved partial payment for the claims by the time the couple had contacted Medicare’s fraud department.
Jackson agreed that Medicare is a frequent target of fraud. “These scams are more and more sophisticated, and these people are professionals,” she said.