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It’s not surprising that Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has tried to shake things up. That’s what she promised in 2022, when she campaigned as a criminal justice reformer.
But her actions have gone far beyond reform. Price has punished opponents, hired allies with questionable credentials including her own boyfriend, insisted on disturbing leniency for violent criminals, undermined public disclosure laws, demonstrated prosecutorial bias about cases and even, it is now alleged, made racist comments and tried to extort money from a political rival.
Price holds the most powerful law enforcement post in Alameda County. She should remain impartial and above reproach. She’s anything but. Voters in the Nov. 5 election should recall her.
New personnel
Price, a civil rights attorney, had never prosecuted a case before assuming office. So, the people she chose for her leadership team were critically important. She proclaimed that they had “proven records of leading justice reforms.”
Not exactly.
• Royl Roberts, one of two chief assistants, passed the California bar just six months before starting work for Price. His lawyering experience was serving briefly as general counsel for Peralta Community College District.
• Otis Bruce Jr, the other chief assistant, was hired from the Marin County prosecutor’s office while under investigation there.
The investigation later found that he had shown gender bias, made inappropriate and disparaging remarks, and routinely manipulated and intimidated other prosecutors — often young women. In Alameda County, he resigned after 18 months.
• Eric Lewis, placed in charge of the office’s inspectors, was a former Oakland Police Department deputy chief who abruptly retired in 2021 rather than face firing,
Oakland investigators found that he made inappropriate comments about two officers, was disrespectful to superiors, revealed confidential information and lied about it all.
Antwon Cloird, left, with District Attorney Pamela Price, attend a rally at San Antonio Park in Oakland. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
• Price’s boyfriend, Antwon Cloird, was hired as a “senior program specialist,” a $115,502-a-year job never publicly advertised.
Previously, Cloird was chief operations officer of a company that had its business suspended by state tax officials. And earlier he was investigated by the FBI after Richmond city officials raised concerns that he was shaking down businesses. He was not charged.
Price’s hiring of her romantic partner, said John Pelissero, senior scholar at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, “just doesn’t pass the ethical test.”
Retribution
Price quickly started clearing out veteran prosecutors.
The office was soon down 22 of its 135 attorneys, ABC7 reported. Price placed seven on administrative leave, one was fired, 10 resigned and four retired.
“Yes, it’s a new day,” Price told a rally of the Anti Police-Terror Project soon after assuming office. “Them other folks is gone, most of ’em. I’m working on the rest. OK?”
A year later, three of the seven prosecutors on leave had taken other jobs and four had been returned to work without facing any official findings of misconduct or discipline.
Amilcar “Butch” Ford, center, with his attorneys during a hearing at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse on Nov. 15, 2023, in Oakland. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Perhaps the most disturbing retribution case involved Amilcar “Butch” Ford, a senior prosecutor who once led Alameda County’s felony trial team.
Price charged Ford with a rarely used misdemeanor for allegedly interfering in the prosecution of a San Leandro police officer. If convicted, Ford could have been disbarred.
Superior Court Judge James Cramer, in a ruling upheld on appeal, barred Price’s office from prosecuting Ford because she had a “significant conflict of interest.” Cramer noted that Price appeared to revel after Ford had his fingerprints and picture taken during the county’s standard booking process.
The case was turned over to the California Attorney General’s Office, which dismissed the charge due to lack of evidence. Ford, meanwhile, went to work in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
Alameda County prosecutor Rebecca Warren, a 17-year veteran, also left for San Francisco. In a May 2023 resignation letter, Warren, who is of Chinese dissent, called Price “condescending and disrespectful of the AAPI community”
Patti Lee, a Price spokesperson in 2023 before she was fired, made similar accusations. In a discrimination and wrongful-termination lawsuit, Lee, who is Asian American, described a toxic, racist workplace that often targeted people of East Asian descent.
Lee alleged Price frequently spouted racist views, made “derogatory comments about (Lee’s) race,” and would “utter audible remarks under her breath” accusing Lee of leaking information to the press.
Media and transparency
Lee says she was fired after refusing to violate California’s open records law. Indeed, Price’s flouting of required transparency and disdain for the media has been clear.
In November, she targeted Emilie Raguso, a veteran journalist who produces the Berkeley Scanner website and had reported on discontent within Price’s office.
As other reporters were welcomed to a press conference, Lee and Communications Director Haaziq Madyun, bogusly citing unnamed “safety issues,” barred Raguso from attending.
Lee reveals in her lawsuit that she helped remove Raguso at the “specific behest” of the district attorney. Press and free speech groups condemned the move.
Then, reporters, wanting to know if there was some sort of blacklist of journalists, filed public records requests. Lee says Price chose to “hide, delete, and change” those public records.
Leading cases
Killer David Misch is on trial for allegedly slaying two Fremont women and faces a separate trial for allegedly abducting and killing 9-year-old Michaela Garecht in Hayward. (Hayward Police Department)
Early in her term, Price directed prosecutors to seek penalties of probation or the lowest-level prison term, with exceptions only in “extraordinary circumstances” with her approval.
Prosecutors were prohibited from adding special circumstances to murder charges for, for example, killing a witness or police officer, killing during a sexual assault or murdering for a second time. Without special circumstances, a convicted murderer can eventually be eligible for parole.
Price withdrew special-circumstances allegations filed by her predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, against killer David Misch, who was already incarcerated for fatally stabbing a woman.
Price’s decision affects Misch’s trial, which started this week, for allegedly slaying two Fremont women and a separate future trial for allegedly abducting and killing 9-year-old Michaela Garecht in Hayward, all cold cases from the 1980s.
And Price withdrew special-circumstances allegations against the men accused of killing 23-month-old Jasper Wu with a stray bullet during a 2021 freeway shooting.
Price’s directive also prohibited adding enhancements to felony charges for, for example, use of a gun, causing great bodily injury or gang affiliation.
Charging enhancements serves two purposes: increasing a potential prison sentence and making bail harder to obtain. Prosecutors seeking exceptions to the directive were required to hurdle two or three layers of approval, including Price.
That process probably cost Pooja Naidu her life. Krishan Sharma, a man Naidu had dated, killed her in a July convenience store shooting in Fremont.
Sharma, already facing attempted murder charges for shooting another woman two months earlier, had been released on $200,000 bail.
The prosecutor in his first case had sought permission to add enhancements for use of a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury. But that request stalled for seven weeks, awaiting approval from a top supervisor.
The request was finally approved — after Sharma killed Naidu.
Prosecuting cops
Price campaigned on a promise to prosecute bad cops. But her efforts in two high-profile cases have been inept.
The first involved San Leandro police Officer Jason Fletcher, who in 2020 fatally shot a man inside a Walmart store after a 40-second confrontation. The man had tried to leave with a baseball bat and a tent without paying.
O’Malley filed a manslaughter case against Fletcher. When Price took over, she politicized the prosecution, leading Thomas Reardon, another judge concerned about her impartiality, to bar her from handling the case. The ruling leaves another case for the state Attorney General’s Office.
Mario Gonzalez is restrained by Alameda police officers on April 19, 2021, in a video from an officer’s body-worn camera. (Alameda Police Department)
A second police prosecution involved the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez, who stopped breathing after Alameda police officers pinned him down and handcuffed him.
The incident had similarities to the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd a year earlier. The coroner’s office ruled the Alameda death a homicide, but O’Malley cleared the three cops.
Price resurrected the case and filed involuntary manslaughter charges against the officers. But a judge ruled that Price had not properly filed the charges against two of them before the three-year statute of limitations expired.
Blaming others
During her unsuccessful 2018 district attorney campaign, Price said she would only pursue felony cases, which would exclude, for example, misdemeanor cases of drunken driving, car break-ins and some sex crimes.
This month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that hundreds of misdemeanor Alameda County cases were languishing past the statute of limitations. Nearly two years into her term, Price blamed outdated technology and her predecessor for the backlog.
Former Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group/File Photo)
O’Malley countered that she had always properly staffed to prevent such a misdemeanor backlog. And Warren said she didn’t remember a backlog before she quit the office in May 2023.
Price similarly tried blame-shifting when Gov. Gavin Newsom rescinded an offer to send state attorneys to help her beef up prosecutions to stem an Oakland crime surge.
Newsom made the offer in February but rescinded it in July, saying he was “disappointed” in Price’s “lack of enthusiasm” to partner up. Price responded that her office “received mixed messages on what (the governor) was going to do.”
Extortion claim
The unproven allegation that Price tried to extort money comes from a problematic figure. True or not, the surrounding circumstances raise questions about Price’s ethics and judgment.
Mario Juarez, a key figure in the FBI’s ongoing Oakland political corruption investigation, alleges extortion took place when he and Price attended a gathering in January. (YouTube)
Mario Juarez, a key figure in the FBI’s ongoing Oakland political corruption investigation, alleges the extortion took place when he and Price attended a gathering in January with about five other people at the showroom of a modular home company he co-founded.
According to Juarez, Price pulled him aside and asked for a $25,000 cash donation to support her campaign against the recall. He claims Price later filed grand theft charges against him in another matter because he rebuffed her demand for money.
Juarez account is contained in a motion to dismiss the charges, scheduled for hearing Nov. 15.
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Price and Juarez were political rivals at the time of the meeting, each running on opposing slates for seats to control the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee.
It’s perplexing that Price, knowing her office had Juarez under investigation, did not keep her distance. And given the potential conflict because Juarez was a political rival, it’s puzzling that Price did not ask the state Attorney General’s Office to handle the case.
A job she didn’t want
Price’s disrespect for professional boundaries is not surprising considering her lack of prior prosecutorial experience.
“I never wanted to be a prosecutor,” Price said when she ran unsuccessfully for the job in 2018. “I don’t think that’s what the people of Alameda County are looking for.”
Actually, that’s exactly what they want — someone who has the experience to prosecute bad folks and good judgment to show restraint with those who truly deserve leniency.
In 2022, after O’Malley announced her retirement, Price ran again and narrowly won. Because of a state law passed that year realigning district attorney races to coincide with presidential election years, Price has a six-year term with four years left.
Unless voters seize the opportunity to recall her.
As they should.