Pamela Price is the progressive DA of Alameda County, home to the city of Oakland. If you’re a regular reader then you already know that crime is way up in Oakland and both residents and businesses are sick of it:
Robberies grew 38% last year in Oakland, according to police data. Burglaries increased 23%. Motor vehicle theft jumped 44%. Roughly one of every 30 Oakland residents had a car stolen last year, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis…
Last year even the NAACP put Price (who is black) on blast, demanding she do more about rising crime:
Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis…
Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.
On top of all of that, Price has also been accused of discrimination and retaliation by a former employee.
Patti Lee, a former journalist who was Price’s spokeswoman for about six months last year, says she was fired for raising concerns about the alleged Public Records Act violations, according to the Feb. 26 letter to the DA’s office from Lee’s attorney, Los Angeles-based Roxborough, Pomerance, Nye & Adreani, LLP.
Lee also says Price “constantly and openly” made derogatory comments against Asian Americans, at one point saying that “the media and the Asians” were her enemies, according to the letter…
Lee, whose claims include retaliation, discrimination, wrongful termination and failure to pay wages, is now seeking a $1.5 million settlement, according to the letter.
Today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Price has been accused of retaliation by two more former employees, both of whom were fired as soon as Price learned they had supported another candidate during her run for office.
Maria Ramirez said in a March 2023 claim that she was escorted out of the courthouse office “like a common criminal” on her fifth day of work, after Price learned that the administrative assistant had worked as a field organizer for Terry Wiley, a veteran Alameda County prosecutor whom Price narrowly bested in the election…
Douglas Butler, in a separate claim, asserted in July 2023 that Price fired him shortly after he returned to work after dislocating his shoulder and fracturing his knee in the office, and filing for workers’ compensation. The program services coordinator, then 76, said he believed he was terminated because of his age and disability, as well as over his support for Wiley during the campaign…
While public officials such as Price have the right to select higher-ranking officials based in part on political alignment, it is illegal for them to retaliate against rank-and-file workers for having differing political views, said William Gould, an emeritus professor of law at Stanford University and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.
If Price did fire Butler or Ramirez because of their political beliefs, he said, “that is against the law.”
Price has already been targeted for a recall. More than a 100,000 signatures were turned in earlier this month. However, the county’s Registrar of Voters office says efforts to determine if enough signatures were gathered have hit a stumbling block.
The ROV said it conducted a count of the signatures using a random sampling method authorized by state law. However, according to the ROV, the results of the random sampling are not sufficient to determine whether the signature threshold to call for a recall election has been met.
For a recall election to be held, a total of 73,195 signatures are required. The ROV said it will now begin a manual recount.
I don’t have any inside info but my guess is that the random sample showed a percentage of approved signatures that was close enough to the percentage needed that they have to do a recount. Presumably that will take several weeks, though the county can take up to early May to get this done.
Meanwhile, other allegations against Price’s keep piling up. Here’s hoping Oakland can get rid of her the same way San Francisco ousted Chesa Boudin. Given the way things are going in the city, the voters would be crazy not to remove her.