A group that seeks to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price said on March 4 that it has submitted sufficient signatures to the county registrar of voters to potentially qualify for the issue to be placed on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Save Alameda for Everyone (SAFE), the group behind the recall effort, said in a statement that it has submitted more than 123,000 signatures—a 69 percent surplus of the number required to qualify.
“Every day, people feel less and less safe,” the group said on its website. “In less than nine months, DA Price has violated victims’ rights, ignored victim pleas and disrespected people who have been victimized by some of the worst crimes imaginable.”
SAFE, according to the group, is a committee of former Alameda County prosecutors, victims, victims’ families, community activists, and residents, “who have come together in the face of rising crime and a failure by DA Price to hold perpetrators accountable.”
Ms. Price, who has faced criticism for her progressive criminal justice reform approach, was elected with 53 percent of the vote in 2022.
Formerly a civil rights attorney, she pledged during her campaign to decrease mass incarceration and adopt a stringent approach toward police misconduct.
However, opponents have criticized her approach as being too lenient on crime, particularly highlighting high-profile cases such as her handling of two men accused of killing toddler Jasper Wu during a November 2021 freeway shooting on Interstate 880.
Ms. Price’s office decided against filing additional special circumstances murder charges against the defendants, which could have resulted in additional prison time if they were convicted, such as a possible life without parole or the death penalty—which is still on hold in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in 2019 halting the practice.
“By not sending a strong message, we are almost saying it’s OK to commit crime because there are no serious consequences,” Carl Chan, a prominent advocate in Oakland’s Chinatown, said on behalf of the Wu family during a news conference in June 2023.
Criticism has also escalated following a surge in crime in Oakland over the past year.
According to the Oakland Police Department, violent crime increased by 21 percent in 2023 from the previous year, with robberies up by 40 percent overall and residential robberies spiking by 71 percent.
The year also saw a rise in car thefts, with nearly 15,000 vehicles stolen—a 45 percent increase from 2022 and a 229 percent surge from 2019. Additionally, about 14,000 vehicles were reported broken into during the same period.
It’s the second recall effort targeting a Bay Area district attorney in recent years, following San Francisco voters’ removal of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, however, has survived two recall attempts.
In response to the recall effort, Ms. Price has defended her legitimacy as an elected official.
“These are election deniers,” she said in an interview with KTVU-TV in July 2023. “We had an election. We won the election by an overwhelming majority. It wasn’t a small, close election, and so the people who lost, they lost, and when you lose an election, you shouldn’t be able to overturn the will of the voters.”
A spokesperson for the campaign opposing the recall expressed skepticism on March 4 about the validity of the signatures submitted for verification in an interview with CBS News Bay Area.
“We’re asking for the California Secretary of State to independently verify and check every signature,” Protect the Win spokesperson William Fitzgerald said. “We’ve received hundreds of complaints about fraud, deception, and bait-and-switch tactics.”
