Enough signatures for Alameda DA recall, group says

Save Alameda For Everyone, or “SAFE,” says that it has exceeded the number of signatures needed to get a recall vote of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price on the ballot.

Supporters of the recall effort want Price removed from office because they believe her approach to prosecuting crimes is too lenient and argue that she is failing to keep the community safe.

Price, who was elected in November 2022 by 53% percent of the vote, has routinely responded to public criticism by reiterating her commitment to her progressive prosecuting philosophy and has said her role has no impact on crime.

In a Feb. 9 phone interview, Carl Chan, chief principal for SAFE, said “The county will allow us until March 5 to obtain 73,195 signatures and those have to be people that are voters from Alameda County. Currently we’re definitely more than 75,000 signatures already. The thing is that we have learned from the success of San Francisco, but also the failure from Los Angeles so we have to get additional signatures. The ideal is about 110,000 signatures.”

Chan was referring to the successful recall of San Francisco County DA Chesa Boudin in June 2022, and so-far failed recall efforts against Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. In LA, the recall organizers allege the county registrar wrongly said they did not have enough valid signatures and a lawsuit challenging the disqualification is pending.

The organizations behind the Los Angeles recall claim to have submitted approximately 717,000 signatures by the July 6, 2022 deadline but roughly 200,000 signatures were disqualified by the county registrar of voters and the final signature count fell below the 566,857 signature requirement. In San Francisco, former District Attorney Chesa Boudin was successfully recalled and voted out of office on June 7, 2022 by 55 percent of the vote.

Chan said that San Francisco’s crime situation has improved since Brooke Jenkins was appointed interim district attorney in San Francisco and then won the November 2022 election and his group wants to see similar change in Alameda County.

“So when we finish the recall, we also need to bring in a few things,” Chan said. “We need to bring the awareness and also we need to bring in the needed resources to support the police departments. And also making sure that the DA and police department are working hand in hand again.”

Price did not respond to a request to answer questions for this article.

In an interview with CBS News in July 2023 Price responded to the launch of SAFE and the recall efforts, saying, “The DA’s role has pretty much no impact on crime.”

She added, “My heart goes out to the people who have lost loved ones in the community. We, at the district attorney’s office, are committed to providing the best services. Some people are not actually able to appreciate the work that we do. … I was elected because the people in this community didn’t feel safe unfortunately. We know that crime exploded under my predecessor.”

Price built her campaign on a platform listing these goals: “restore trust in our criminal justice system; reduce gun violence; implement fair justice measures; stop over-criminalizing youth; end the death penalty; protect immigrant communities; hold police accountable for misconduct; establish prosecutorial accountability; effective reentry strategies; invest in public health and social services.”

According to the Procedures For Recalling County of Alameda Officers, a recall petition would need to acquire signatures from 15% of the number of votes cast by county voters in the last governor’s race. The Official Election Site of Alameda County’s data from the November 2022 election states that 487,969 people cast votes for governor candidates in the 2022 general election.