Alameda County DA recall: Who's for, who's against, what's next?

With the Nov. 5 recall initiative to remove Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price from office just weeks away, lawmakers, unions and political organizers continue to weigh in.

Meanwhile, county supervisors are trying to finalize the process for finding a replacement DA should the recall be successful. In what may be a foreboding sign for Price, one county supervisor told the Daily Journal that prospective applicants are already expressing interest in the position.

Leaders of the recall initiative claim that as DA, Price has been too lenient on criminals and endangered the public. Price and her supporters claim that the recall effort is politically motivated.

In recent weeks the recall initiative has been endorsed by all 14 police unions in Alameda County and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Castro Valley, who claimed she had put in place "pro-criminal" policies. A June 25 article from the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a leaked, confidential email outlining that the Alameda County Prosecutors Association had also voted to support the recall. The association did not respond to a request for comment.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, came out against the recall efforts against Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao on Oct. 8. Skinner clarified that she doesn't support recall efforts "on principle," except for cases involving serious misconduct.

Price, the first Black woman to serve as Alameda County's top prosecutor, received 53% of the vote in the 2022 election. The former criminal defense and civil rights attorney was elected on a 10-point progressive platform which included pledges to help undo systemic injustices, such as racism. Upon taking office, she placed limitations on sentencing enhancements and promoted the offering of probation instead of jail or prison.

Price and her supporters have consistently argued that the recall effort is a political stunt led by right wing advocates and bad faith actors who want to stop her attempts to "root out injustice."

In an Oct. 5 news release, Price responded to the news of the police unions' endorsement of her recall.

"Voters in Alameda County should remember that I refused to take money from police unions during my campaign because the people deserve a district attorney who is free to hold everyone accountable, including law enforcement," Price said. "For too long, DAs have been beholden to these unions, and the result has been a system that neglects the needs of our community and is riddled with racial disparities. I promised to change that, and I'm delivering on that promise. This kind of backlash is to be expected."

At a June 25 news conference, Price had a similar argument in response to reports about the Alameda County Prosecutors Association's endorsement.

She defended her decision to suspend 35 death sentence cases and support the investigation of "decades" of juror discrimination she said had targeted Jewish and Black people. "The final straw for the prosecutors' union was our investigation into the death penalty cases and the disclosure of the misconduct," she said.

The misconduct investigation leading to that decision was first ordered by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in June.

The initiative to recall Price from office was organized by the group Safe Alameda for Everyone, or "SAFE," which said it gathered more than 123,000 signatures and raised more than $3 million to put the recall on the Nov. 5 ballot.

In a phone interview Friday, Brenda Grisham, one of the co-principal officers for SAFE and a homicide victims' advocate since 2010, said Price's background as a civil rights attorney did not equip her for the job of prosecuting criminals.

"Criminal law and civil rights are two different things. Whereas she still sees what she's doing is beneficial, it's only beneficial to the criminals," Grisham said. "It's not beneficial to the citizens. It's not beneficial to the Black and brown community, because what she's doing is not doing them any justice, and it's definitely not beneficial to the victims."

Grisham, who began her activist work in Alameda County in the wake of her son's murder in 2010, said that Price has not taken a respectful approach to victims of crime during her term.

Grisham claimed Friday that Price's office has been mishandling murder cases.

"These are cases where the murderers have been let out without telling the families" of the victims, she said. "Charges have been dropped for very malicious reasons, and so the murderers are not being charged for murders."

Price's office could not be reached Monday to comment on Grisham's statement.

On her anti-recall campaign website, Price responds to similar allegations, writing "DA Price does not decide who gets released and who does not, therefore, she is not releasing dangerous, violent criminals. . . . The DA's office has charged more than 60 people with murder in 2023."

SAFE's other co-principal, Carl Chan, is a longtime community organizer who is also president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

In a phone interview Monday renowned civil rights attorney John Burris, a partner for Burris Nisenbaum Curry & Lacy, speculated that recall effort is "just a function of [critics] being sore losers" and speculated that the prosecutors' union and the police unions support the recall campaign because "they don't want the accountability to come from scrutiny of an outsider."

Burris has represented several high-profile clients including Tupac Shakur, Rodney King, and the family of Oscar Grant. Burris is a donor to Price's "Protect the Win campaign" and previously worked with Price on cases prior to her taking office.

Separate from the allegations by the SAFE campaign, Price has faced criticism over the pace of prosecutions in her office and has appeared resistant to state-led efforts to speed them up. In August her office reached an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom for the California Department of Justice to use both state and CalGuard prosecutors to prosecute drug related crimes in Alameda County without the assistance of Price's office; two months after Newsom rescinded a similar offer to deploy the resources directly to the Alameda County District Attorney.

In a statement responding to Newsom's deal with the Department of Justice, Price said she "welcomed" the DOJ and CalGuard but disputed the efficacy of past "surge operations" by the California Highway Patrol, which Newsom deployed to patrol the streets of Oakland this year.

Price said, "What the public should know is that since March of this year, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office has received 11 cases identified as 'CHP surge' cases. To the extent that there have been a large number of arrests related to CHP surge operations, our records do not reflect those cases being referred to this office for prosecution by either the CHP or the DOJ."

Sgt. Andrew Barclay, a CHP spokesman, rejected Price's claim in an Aug. 2 email. He stated: "Since the Governor announced the initial surge operation of CHP officers, the Department has referred to the Alameda County District Attorney's Office more than 500 cases for prosecution as of July 7, 2024, for crimes occurring within the city of Oakland.

"72% of the cases have been accepted by the Alameda County DA's office, but no charges have been filed," Barclay added.

On Oct. 10, former Oakland City Council candidate and local businessman, Mario Juarez accused Price of malicious prosecution for charging him with check fraud in retaliation for his reluctance to donate $25,000 to her anti-recall campaign. The hearing on his motion to dismiss is set for Nov. 15.

Price's campaign said in a news release from Oct. 12, "DA Pamela Price denies these claims. Do your own research. Mario Juarez is not a credible source." People of the State of California v. Mario Juarez, 24CR000882 (Alameda Super. Ct. filed Jan. 23, 2024).

Debate over what approach prosecutors should take to crime has underpinned the recall of former San Francisco County District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and two attempts to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, whose re-election is on the Nov. 5 ballot. Boudin was recalled on June 7, 2022, by 55% of voters.

If Price is recalled by most voters, per the county charter, the board of supervisors would immediately appoint an interim district attorney who would serve until the 2026 election.

Board of Supervisors President Nate Miley said in a phone interview Monday that he has already been contacted by potential applicants for the interim role in the event Price is voted out of office but declined to reveal their identities. He added, "It's premature to even begin to have those conversations until after we know what the voters do on Nov. 5."

Miley did not express his opinion on the merits of the recall.

He described the application process he would urge the board to adopt should Price be recalled; saying that he wanted the process to be like filling past county official vacancies that did not result from recalls.

"So we have no mandated process, but the process we typically follow, and the process I'll be encouraging the board to follow, would be that: we have an application for prospective candidates to complete, and they can submit that application with their qualifications to the clerk of the board," Miley said. "We'd have a designated committee that we would appoint that would screen the applicants. ... After the committee screens them, we would interview maybe the top three candidates, and then vote to make a decision on who's going to replace the DA."