Just when we thought that cop-hating was going away, along comes Pamela Price to remind us otherwise. Running for Alameda County District Attorney, she’s determined to shove us back to 2020, when defund the police was on every progressive’s lips and attacking police departments was considered proper.
Remember those bad old days? We had Cat Brooks (who has endorsed Price) demanding defunding, and Carroll Fife talking about how horrible cops were, and an Oakland City Council itching to reduce the police department’s budget by 50 percent. Then came the violence of 2021, showing Americans how much we need cops, and the political winds changed. The progressives found themselves having to soft pedal their message. They still hated cops, but they could no longer come right out and say so.
But for Pamela Price, the war on cops never stopped. And if she’s elected D.A., our county’s police will once again have a target on their backs, will once again be indicted on trumped-up charges, will once again face a government that sees them—not criminals—as the enemy.
Take a look at Price’s positions on the issues to see how out of touch she is. If elected she will out-Boudin Chesa Boudin when it comes to harassing cops and coddling criminals.
She insists that we stop charging and incarcerating thugs under 18 as adults, as if 17- or 16- or 15-year olds can’t be monsters. Tell that to the families of the victims they’ve maimed and murdered.
She will “hold law enforcement officers accountable for unlawful conduct.” Great. Just what we need: more angry vengeance against law enforcement. At a time when the Negotiated Settlement Agreement is about to end, when East Bay cops are among the best-trained in the world, when public sentiment honors the police, here comes Pamela Price promising a new round of terror for cops. “We will no longer turn a blind eye” to “excessive uses of [police] force,” she declares, echoing the Cat Brooks propaganda. How about excessive use of force by gangbangers and killers? On that subject, Pamela Price has nothing to say.
As for the causes of crime, here’s Price’s theory: “racial, socioeconomic and gender disparities within the nation’s criminal justice system” are what cause thugs to rob, assault, smash and grab and kill. It’s never the criminal’s fault that he breaks the law, according to Price. No, of course not. Criminals are just misunderstood poor people. Crime has to be due to “structural racism.”
And then there’s her promise to find “alternatives to incarceration.” To see how well this is working we need only go across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, where Boudin’s alternatives to incarceration are about to get him recalled. People are hopping mad that sociopaths, instead of being thrown in jail where they belong, are shown a training film on how to be nice, and then sent through the revolving door to recidivize.
And let’s not forget Price’s shameful role in the Celeste Guap sex scandal. You’ll recall that the young girl had consensual sex with a number of Oakland and Richmond cops, some of whom were eventually fired. Price rushed to Guap’s side—here was a made-to-order scandal involving cops! Only problem was, Guap herself later accused Price of “exploiting her and acting out of greed.” She said Price essentially kidnapped her, took her cell phone, and held her “incommunicado” at a remote cabin in Lake County, and assured her that she (Guap) would make “millions of dollars” if Guap would only allow Price to represent her. Guap said she felt “used” by Price.
The plain and simple truth is that Pamela Price is unfit to be the District Attorney of Alameda County. She’s too obsessed with race to be fair, too unscrupulous, too committed to a far-left ideological agenda, and too biased against the police to be allowed any position of power. Pamela Price wants to take Alameda County backward, not forward, and we can’t let her do that. I think the people of Alameda County are smart enough to realize that the last thing we need is a District Attorney who wants to harass the police instead of protecting us from the true danger, which is crime.
Steve Heimoff