Pamela Price is fighting back against her pending recall in two ways: first, she’s high-profiling the tiny number of indictments she’s actually made lately (to convince voters she’s really tough on crime), and second, she’s launched a propaganda campaign replete with lies.
With regard to the former, an example was late last month, when Price very publicly filed murder charges against a San Leandro man who allegedly killed two people. In her announcement, Price said, “This case of deadly violence traumatizes our whole community and will not be tolerated.” It’s nice to see Madame D.A. actually bringing a double murderer to justice, but it’s too little, too late. Nobody can possibly believe that Price is now a tough-on-crime D.A. She’s let too many horrible people off, and convinced a generation of young thug wannabes that she’ll go easy on them, especially if they’re POC and have the bad luck to be caught committing a crime. But let’s not be fooled: the leopard doesn’t change its spots so easily.
Concerning Price’s propaganda campaign, she’s all over the East Bay holding town meetings and giving interviews bragging about her commitment to law and order. She’s begun a new online series, “Ask the DA,” that’s nothing more than an opportunity to blow her own horn with clichés and self-advertisements. Her town halls have been fiascos. “Some people even got so frustrated,” reported ABC News of a town hall she gave in Fremont, “that they stormed out of the event.” One attendee said, “I listened to [Price] over and over again talking about how people in jail are so mistreated and we have to get them out, we're over incarcerating.” Price, in reply, responded with her standard line: “We're not going to be able to lock our way up out of this situation.”
People know that’s bull. No, we can’t lock up literally every single thug, but we can lock up a lot more of them than we are, and we know we ought to lock up as many as we can. What people—we—don’t know is exactly what’s going on in Price’s office. What indictments have been filed? What crimes have not been indicted? What plea deals has Price struck? What enhancements has she refused to file? What crimes has she reduced from felonies to misdemeanors? Who’s been paroled that shouldn’t have been? Who’s committed what crimes since they were patrolled? We don’t know any of this, because Price operates behind a black curtain, refusing to release that information to the public. “Price’s office hasn’t published any data on its charging decisions or case outcomes, despite repeated [San Francisco] Chronicle requests for the information,” the paper reported, “so aside from several high-profile cases…it’s difficult to pinpoint what her office is doing…”. This secrecy is in direct contradiction to Price’s claim that her office is transparent.
It’s anything but. One can only conclude Price doesn’t want us to know how many dangerous criminals are back on the streets due to her soft-on-crime ideology. She promised to decarcerate the prisons, and that’s exactly what she’s in the process of doing.
Of course, a large part of Price’s propaganda campaign has been her repeated allegation that “This endeavor [the Recall] is primarily funded by individuals who do not reside in our community and who are wealth [sic] real estate developers and tech investors…”. This is so contrary to the truth that it’s hard to know how she says it with a straight face. Yesterday, our friends at Save Alameda For Everyone (SAFE) provided the latest status of the signature gathering. Remarkably, Carl Chan said SAFE has already exceeded the number of signatures needed to get a recall on the ballot! “We thought we may be able to achieve that maybe early January or hopefully maybe end of December. But within five weeks, we had more than 70,000, basically more than about 75,000 signatures already collected.” Chan added that his goal is “to collect more than 110,000 signatures to ensure they are validated.” This stunning development reveals Price’s allegation as a Big Lie, in the Trump style. We are not wealthy, rightwing real estate developers. We reside in this community. We are the people of Alameda County! This dreary episode simply proves that Price is running scared, as well she should be, and her fear has driven her to mad, frantic extremes.
Well, she can run but she can’t hide. We have Pamela Price’s number. She will join Chesa Boudin as a recalled, disgraced District Attorney because both of them tried to impose their insane leftwing ideological biases on the greater good. They endangered our safety, and now we are justifiably endangering Price’s job.
Steve Heimoff