In a lengthy interview, the Alameda County DA said she walked into an office in disarray, improved victims’ services, and faces a recall because she beat an insider candidate.
Pamela Price surprised Alameda County's criminal justice system in 2022 by winning the election for district attorney after running on a platform emphasizing reform, racial justice, and greater accountability for law enforcement. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez.
Depending on who you ask, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is either a maverick reformer dismantling systemic racism in the criminal justice system, or a corrupt figurehead whose misguided policies incentivize violence.
Few elected officials in Alameda County have ever been subjected to as much critical reporting, some of it deeply serious and investigative, but quite a lot of it sensationalistic and inaccurate.
Now that we’re nearly two years into Price’s tenure, and heading into an election in which she faces a possible recall, The Oaklandside sat down with the DA last week to ask her what she thinks about the media storm surrounding her tenure, what her biggest accomplishments are, and mistakes she’s made.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You have a reputation for not wanting to speak with the media. A Mother Jones reporter opened a story about you with the following sentence: “Almost as soon as I get into the car, District Attorney Pamela Price makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk to me, or at the very least she doesn’t have time to.” A Bolts Magazine reporter described your administration as ranging “from bewilderingly disorganized to outright antagonistic” toward the press. Why are you hesitant to talk to journalists?
I’m not.
Why is this perception out there?
I’m not sure. As much as we can schedule media interviews, we schedule them.
I attribute the perception to the first couple of months, or the first year [of my tenure], when people were very antagonistic towards everything we were trying to do, and people were attacking us without talking to us. But I wasn’t hesitant to talk to people.
Initially, a lot of the stories by the Berkeley Scanner — she didn’t give us a chance to comment at all.
So what we saw was a lot of people doing their exit interviews and saying a lot of things that were really untrue, and they were being reported. So nobody asked me.
[Editor’s note: Price is referring to the Berkeley Scanner’s stories that included statements from former prosecutors who resigned over disagreements about the direction the DA’s office was moving. Emilie Raguso, editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Scanner, told The Oaklandside she repeatedly reached out to Price’s office for interviews and information and shared some of her emails to the DA’s office from early 2023 to confirm this.
Following numerous other reports about Price by the Scanner, almost all of them highly critical of the DA, Price’s staff excluded the Scanner’s Raguso from a press conference, which drew condemnation from First Amendment advocates. Price’s team later allowed Raguso access to press conferences.]
Within the first few months of your tenure, multiple investigators and prosecutors resigned or were fired, placed on leave, or transferred. Some of those people have publicly spoken out against you. What feedback has your staff given you about workplace morale?
When we got here, there was a lot of fear about what could be expected. Most people in the office didn’t know me. There was an expectation that my opponent [Terry Wiley] would be the next district attorney, and there was a lot of investment and pressure to support his campaign.
So when he lost, a lot of people were very shocked. They didn’t anticipate that. They were very frightened because they knew they had done some things that they probably would not have done if there had been a less political or politicized environment in the office. A lot of donations, we were told, were essentially coerced.
[Editor’s note: Price filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission in 2021 alleging that former DA Nancy O’Malley and some of her staff, including then Assistant District Attorney Terry Wiley, illegally campaigned and raised money using county computers and emails. State watchdogs dismissed the complaint, but the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury published a report last year that found O’Malley and her staff violated similar local policies in the 2018 election in which Price unsuccessfully challenged O’Malley.]
And there was no transition plan internally. So we walked into an office that was completely unprepared to have new leadership. In many ways, the office lacked leadership because my opponent [Wiley] was, in name, the chief assistant, but he was actually running for office, which is a distraction. My predecessor did not appear to have invested a lot of time and energy into running the office. So people were very traumatized, and it was a very toxic environment, and what we saw was what spilled out into the public when I got here.
We did not fire anyone. I haven’t fired a single lawyer yet because there’s a process to fire lawyers, and we have not invoked that process. So the narrative that we were firing people was completely false and manufactured.
We put some people on administrative leave, and obviously, I can’t talk about that. It’s a personnel matter. I certainly couldn’t have a press conference and say, “I put this person on leave because of this….” Those personnel matters were supposed to be confidential. Some of those people who were put on leave chose to breach their own confidentiality and talk about their side of the story without us being able to give our side.
There were some people who retired before we got here, and some after we got here. There was a lot of bitterness about the fact that we actually defeated the chosen, hand-picked candidate. That was hard for people.
Also, what we did not know, and the public didn’t appreciate, was in the previous four years, before we got here, there had been three suicides in this office. They were very close to having a suicide cluster. So morale was pretty rock-bottom.
[Editor’s note: The Oaklandside was able to confirm that two employees of the DA’s office died by suicide in the several years leading up to Price’s election.]
Staff were in trauma, and we immediately realized we had to focus on mental health and wellness, and we had to amplify that and make those resources available. We’re continuing to do that.
It was particularly acute when we first got in the office. Lines of communication and accountability appeared to be nonexistent. There was a lot of disorganization and a lot of bitterness in the office that spilled out, and they went into the public and they exposed all of that.
Why do you think those issues in the DA’s office — problems that preceded your tenure — weren’t known and talked about publicly?
I’m the first person to run for this seat since 1972. Richard Nixon was the president [at that time], and Ronald Reagan was the governor. Most people who live in this county had never voted for a DA or never had any understanding of what the DA did.
[Editor’s note: Other outsiders have run for Alameda County District Attorney in elections since 1972, but all unsuccessfully. Until Price’s 2022 election, leadership of the DA’s office had historically been transferred by the incumbent DA to a handpicked successor prior to a competitive election, giving the new DA a big advantage should someone challenge them in the next scheduled election. O’Malley was appointed in 2009 by the county Board of Supervisors after her boss, Thomas Orloff, retired and threw his support behind her. Orloff ran for office in 1994 against two opponents but had the endorsement of outgoing DA John Meehan. Meehan was appointed by the county Board of Supervisors in 1981 after his boss, then-DA Lowell Jensen, left to work in the Reagan administration. And so on.]
People didn’t know what was happening in this office. There was no oversight. There was no inquiry. People still don’t know what the role of the district attorney is. We never had that conversation until 2018. So until we got here — until there actually was a change — that’s the first time people started asking questions.
There was no inquiry about my predecessor [O’Malley] — what she was doing, why cases were being overturned, why cases were dismissed and convictions being thrown out. That was not a conversation in this community. The media certainly wasn’t covering it. So when I showed up, it was a dramatic shift.
As you mentioned, not a lot of people are familiar with what a district attorney does. How would you describe what your role is as DA?
I am, first and foremost, a minister of justice. My role is to make sure that justice is administered fairly in this county, that the impact of our actions is not based on any kind of unfair criteria, that we have to respect and enforce the Constitution, whether it applies to the victims or the defendants. I’m not simply an advocate.
My role is to make sure that justice is being applied across the board, and that accountability is reasonable and appropriate. And because we know more about what hurts people, and what opportunities people have to heal, particularly victims of crime, it’s important that we embrace innovation.
I understand that I’m the head of an agency. I run this department, like every other county department. I have 10 locations and 450 employees, so I don’t get to practice law as much as I love to. I mean, one time I went to court, and it became a story — that I went to court. Well, I’m used to always going to court. I had no idea that my going to court would become a story.
[Editor’s note: After this interview we followed up to ask Price what she meant when she said “it became a story” when she went to court. Price’s spokesperson Haaziq Madyun told us in an email “The DA was not referring to any specific news ‘story’ about her going to court. She was speaking metaphorically not in the literal sense of the word. DA Price was reflecting on the response from the reporters and photographers who enthusiastically followed her when she was spotted in the courthouse.”]
I’m a manager of a very large county agency, and I have to oversee all the operations of the agency, while at the same time administering justice for the residents of Alameda County.
Do you feel that the media has fairly and accurately covered your tenure and work as district attorney?
Not at all. They have not.
Many media outlets have no idea what the district attorney does. As long as I’ve been in Alameda County, Oakland has always been the stepchild of the media. There’s always been a lot of negativity around my city, and that is portrayed around the county. There are places in this county that say, “We don’t want to be like Oakland,” and why would they say that? Because Oakland has traditionally borne the brunt of all negative media coverage.
I think the effort to minimize my role after I came into this seat and make me the district attorney of Oakland was very convenient, if not intentional. I’m not the district attorney of Oakland. I’m not the mayor of Oakland. I am the district attorney of Alameda County. And I think that was lost in the way that our actions were portrayed in the media.
Do you mean you feel there was an effort to put the blame for crime or other negative things happening in Oakland on your shoulders, and not show what’s going on in Livermore, Fremont, or other cities in the county?
Absolutely. Every time a business closed in Oakland, it was the district attorney’s fault.
Every car break-in in Oakland was the district attorney’s fault.
I wasn’t blamed for crime in Fremont, Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton, Union City, or Newark. It was always, “This happened in Oakland, and it’s Pamela Price’s fault.” And that was very intentional.
The people who were resistant to my leadership were able to exploit that narrative, and it was amplified in the media.
A lot of the work that we’ve been publicizing around our Consumer Justice Bureau and the civil litigation we do — that wasn’t normally covered in the media. Sometimes I would hear people say, “Well, she doesn’t know what her job is,” or “She’s not doing her job,” and I realize they don’t know what my job is because they haven’t been given the information about what we do.
The Consumer Justice Bureau is a very active and major part of our operation, and there was very little media coverage or publicity at all about this. As somebody who’s practiced civil law, I understand how important it is to do consumer litigation, the value of it, and the difference it makes having a district attorney who understands how to do that and is interested and supportive of that.
Just in the last year, our Consumer Justice Bureau was able to bring in settlements and judgments of over $20 million, whereas under the prior administration, as best we can tell, the average was $4 million to $5 million a year. We began to be very intentional about not only staffing up this unit but also making sure that it had a direction and a focus.
Another thing that many people don’t have a clear understanding of is our Victim–Witness Assistance Division. It’s been reported to me that some people think that the victim-witness advocates don’t work for the district attorney, that they’re a separate office or division. In some reporting I’ve seen, it’s portrayed as if it’s a separate entity, like the Alameda County Family Justice Center. These are essentially bureaus or units within our office.
What do you feel are your biggest accomplishments as DA so far?
One of my greatest accomplishments is supporting, creating, and improving victims’ services and the Victim-Witness Assistance Division, which was woefully mismanaged. People had no idea that Alameda County’s backlog for compensation for victims and payments for providers was anywhere from 300 to 400 days behind.
The way it works is that the state agency [the California Victim Compensation Board] gives money to the local district attorney’s offices to provide compensation for victims. We provide burial expenses, we pay some medical expenses, we provide mental health counseling, and we provide loss of income claims. If people lose income, they can get compensation from the state. Our Victim-Witness Assistance Division is, for the most part, funded by the state, so the staffing is pursuant to a grant.
This DA’s office was so inefficient and ineffective in providing compensation to victims that we were driving the state curve, so the delay statewide was being impacted adversely by the delay in Alameda County. Some mental health providers provided mental health services at a much lower rate than the competitive market rate, but they were not getting paid for more than a year.
There was a backlog of U visa applications for the many victims who needed a U visa to be able to stay in this country to testify. I think 85 people had been waiting for years to find out if they were going to get a visa. We cleared up the backlog of U visas.
We replaced the director [of the Victim-Witness Assistance Division], realigned the unit, and hired 14 victim-witness advocates.
One of the things that was disturbing as well was that, if you were a victim, and the person who hurt you was not being prosecuted, you’re still entitled to compensation through the state. And the majority of claims we see in Alameda County are coming from victims … whose assailant has not been apprehended.
Victim-witness advocates provide support for those victims going to court [to testify]. But if they don’t have a case, and they don’t have a person who’s being prosecuted, they’re still traumatized. They’re still very much a victim, and maybe even more so, because the person who hurt them has not been caught. Those victims have to file a claim with a claims representative, but they don’t need an advocate to go to court. So the victims were being assigned to claims representatives who are not trained to deal with victims who are traumatized.
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price described her approach to running the DA’s office and responded to criticisms about her policies and administration which she says are unfair and inaccurate. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez
What about some other accomplishments?
The collaborative courts. When we got here, there were no mental health clinicians and two lawyers who were assigned to staff 14 collaborative courts, which was just unmanageable. I brought in a mental health clinician. Ultimately, we now have two mental health caseworkers and six lawyers.
What are the collaborative courts?
We have behavioral health court, drug court, early intervention court, homelessness & caring court, crossroads mentoring, which is for transitional-age youth. There’s informal behavioral health court, mentor diversion, reentry court, veterans treatment court, mental health diversion, military diversion, Department of State hospitals diversions, developmentally disabled diversion, and misdemeanor diversion. All of these courts, except for one or two, require a mental health diagnosis. They weren’t even tracking how many people were going through those courts, so we had to fix that.
The office was chronically understaffed. I can only assume it was because of the COVID-19 pandemic that people weren’t being replaced after they retired or left. So we had dramatic staffing shortages across the organization, and we’ve pretty much fixed that. We’re almost at capacity for inspectors, which is huge because inspectors provide support for victims, witnesses, lawyers, and case investigations. We have one vacancy now out of 75. We’ve hired and sworn in 16 inspectors. So that’s huge.
We established a viable communications department, led by competent communications staff, which was huge and necessary.
I’m really excited I started the Gender Justice Bureau. I’ve been an advocate for women’s equality and against domestic violence and sexual assault since I was in college at Yale. One of the first things I did in early 2023 was that I went to a conference in New York, and I met with the district attorney’s office in Brooklyn because they have a gender-based justice unit. They gave me some ideas, tips, and directions, and I came back and worked for a year to put that together. We launched it in June.
You’re facing a recall. Why do you think people want to recall you?
Because they lost the election. That’s number one. The people who started this, many of whom were the lawyers who left [my office], were very upset that their candidate lost. The people who signed onto it early on were those who lost the election. I think once they realized there wasn’t going to be a recount, they started thinking, “How can we have a recall?”
I’m the first non-anointed, non-appointed district attorney in this county in 100 years. I don’t look like the people who were here before. I don’t sound like them, either. So I think that it was a shock, and any time you have a dramatic shift in the way that something looks, people aren’t necessarily ready for that.
I say this over and over again. In November 2022, Alameda County took a huge step forward. And any time you take a huge step forward for social justice, there’s backlash.
The people seeking a recall blame you for rising crime in Oakland. They say your policies — like not charging certain types of enhancements, not always seeking the longest possible sentence for someone, and diverting someone out of the criminal track and putting them in a mental health court — encourage people to commit more crimes, and it makes the community less safe. How do you respond to that?
That’s a false narrative. It was manufactured.
But they got enough signatures to put the recall on the ballot. So there are enough people out there who believe that narrative. What do you say to them?
They’ve been misled. They have truly been bamboozled, both by the people who started the recall and the sore losers whose candidate lost the election.
There was a lot of misinformation by the media about what we were doing — a lot of amplifying the disgruntled employees who left here saying, “They’re not going to be able to do anything.” I mean, I was hearing in the media and on social media that in the first six months, I had totally destroyed the Alameda County criminal justice system. That obviously is not true.
When you talk about not using certain enhancements, what enhancements might those be? I think that people need to look below the rhetoric and ask the real questions.
You have media that is open to spreading a lot of drama and misinformation. I mean, you, Oaklandside, interviewed Brenda Grisham. She told you that I was trying to physically attack her, that I was physically threatening her, and that I came to her office to threaten her. And that’s the kind of thing that was being amplified by people. So, unfortunately, as part of this backlash and this effort to turn back the clock, the residents of Alameda County were just completely misled and put into a position where we now have to have another vote on how we do criminal justice.
Part of the shame of it is that people never talk about what would happen if they were successful. There’s no plan for what will happen if I’m removed from this office. There’s no plan as to who the board is going to appoint, what that person’s vision will be, how they will run the office for the next two years before they actually have to stand for election. And then what will happen once that person is elected?
So we’re just going to have a revolving door, and that’s not OK. That’s not good for anyone in this county, and yet, that’s not part of the conversation. They want people to believe a very narrow narrative without thinking about what is actually happening, what is the factual basis for it, and what are the implications.
You mentioned Brenda Grisham, who is one of the most prominent people speaking out against you and supporting the recall campaign. She has accused you of not being an advocate for victims of crime and their families. What is your response to that?
Ms. Grisham does not know me at all. I never met her before she was on Fox News calling for my recall.
I have been in this community representing victims as part of my life’s work since 1991. I became a lawyer in 1983. I never met Ms. Grisham between 1983 and 1991, when I was learning to be a lawyer in Oakland, California. I never met Ms. Grisham between 1991 and 2024, when I was representing victims. She has an opinion, and she has chosen to amplify that opinion from the very early days of our administration. It is not based in fact.
One of the things I heard the other night in a meeting at the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee was that Ms. Grisham has been coming to court and listening to what my deputies are saying, and that all the victims that she’s been coming to court with are not getting information about their cases. That could not possibly be true. We’ve represented and serviced over 22,000 victims in this county. We have cases in at least five different locations every day that are being prosecuted, that people are meeting with my deputies about. I can assure you Ms. Grisham is not in any of those meetings, and she’s not talking to deputies about what’s being charged or why.
So to the extent that people are giving her credibility, I just have no reason why.
Let’s say the recall campaign does not succeed. Will you change your prosecutorial approach at all?
No. I came into this office with a mandate to not only change but improve the administration of justice. I’ve been a victim in this county. I’ve represented victims in this county. I know this system is broken. I know that the way this office has engaged with the community has not been honorable or favorable for many years — decades, in fact. I understand the role that this office played in repressing social movements and in racial disparities that have taken root in our criminal justice system. I was elected to tackle those problems, and that’s what we have been doing.
We found an office that was broken and in disarray. Fortunately, I do have some managerial experience. I think I’m a pretty good manager. I’m very focused on organizational development and what needs to be done to create a safe and thriving workplace for people. I’ve hired, fired, and employed hundreds of people and had a very successful practice, so I feel like we’ve done an excellent job uplifting the people in the office, trying mightily to improve the administration of justice, and tackling problems that most people didn’t even know existed, under the circumstances.
The technology in the DA’s office was antiquated. You walked into an employee break room, and their television was like a 19-inch TV. The Family Justice Center didn’t have internet. Our victim-witness advocates were using their personal cell phones to receive and make telephone calls to witnesses and victims, which was totally inappropriate. My inspectors were being billed for their mileage when the government code clearly exempts peace officers when driving government vehicles. They don’t have to pay for that. But people were being dinged as much as $800 a month from their paychecks to pay for mileage.
We’ve done a pretty good job of improving this office, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll continue to do that. We don’t make our decisions based on politics. Whether the recall is here or not, that’s not what we’re going to do.
Has your approach to the job of prosecutor changed as a result of the recall?
What it has forced me to do is to make inquiries when I hear things that people are upset about. If I have victims on the steps of a courthouse, and they’re saying, “We didn’t get treated fairly,” then I need to talk to the lawyers who were involved in that case, because it’s not me personally. It means that there’s been a breakdown in communication somewhere in the case.
One of the things that we’ve emphasized with lawyers and done training on is empathy — making sure that their role is clearly explained to people, and that they don’t overpromise and underdeliver, which is what prosecutors have done for decades. They’ll bring victims in and say, “We’re going to get 1,000 years to life,” and then they wait until the last minute to talk about the plea bargain, and the plea bargain is three years and no life.
If there’s dissatisfaction or things we can fix, then we need to do that, and we’re open to doing that. We know there’s a lot of false information. Some victims will say, “Well, I never heard this,” or “Nobody told me that, and I haven’t been talked to,” and then we go back, look at the notes, and we see five phone calls — extensive conversations that people have had. It’s unfortunate that people’s pain and trauma have been politicized.
In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom rescinded an offer to dispatch attorneys to your office to help prosecute drug crimes in Oakland. What’s the full story there? And what are your thoughts on the governor’s critique of your performance?
Well, let’s be clear, when you say he’s critiqued my performance, it seems that him sending a letter to POLITICO on one issue gets blown out of proportion. How is that being blown up into a critique of my performance?
We’ve done many things other than talk to the National Guard judge advocate general lawyers about bringing two lawyers to come work here for two months and one lawyer for a month. We’ve done many things with the governor’s office. We got a $2 million grant, successfully applied for the organized retail theft program that the governor pioneered, and my office was number two in the state, and then I matched that. He wasn’t critical of us when we got that grant. We just got another grant from the state of California to do anti-labor trafficking work.
We have not had any conversations with the governor where he has critiqued our performance or has said, “You’re not prosecuting people,” “You’re not serving victims,” or “You’re not doing any of the things that we are doing.” Those kinds of performance-based assessments, to my knowledge, have not been forthcoming from the governor’s office or from any source, perhaps other than the recall movement. I mean, that’s where it’s coming from.
I think that the governor’s decision to rescind his offer was highly politicized, publicized, amplified, and now has been exaggerated. The commissioner of CHP is the one who initiated the contact, and I said, “Of course, we’d be happy to work with you and the National Guard.” I had one conversation with them, and my team began the process of negotiating what that would look like. The last I heard — before we got this notice about a letter in POLITICO — was that there was one lawyer who was going to come here for two months, and another who was going to come in the beginning of June.
Can a lawyer try a case in two months?
No, you can’t try a case in two months. You can’t do anything in two months. [The lawyer] was going to come in June. He had another commitment in San Diego, and he had to be there by Aug. 10. That’s what we were told.
So my team was trying to figure out, what could this person do in a two-month period of time? Now, what I understood from the POLITICO letter, was that they were going to send this person for two months, and then after that, they would see how that worked out once he was oriented to our system. And then they would send some other people later. That’s what I read in the letter. But we weren’t given that perspective at all.
I was asked to deputize the one person, and then to deputize his supervisor, who would not work here. So that’s how you get to two lawyers. My understanding is there are only three of them in San Francisco, and they work remotely. They don’t all come at one time. They rotate in and out. So there were some logistical things that needed to be worked out, and they were limited to working on.
I remember the National Guard representative saying they had to work on drug-related cases. So yes, we have drug cases in Alameda County. We participate in and support the Alameda County Narcotics Task Force through staff. I’m not aware that the governor was critical of our performance in that area, but that’s something that we’ve been doing and will continue to do. And the governor was certainly mistaken when he said we only had one prosecutor doing drug cases in Alameda County, which was not true.
How many prosecutors are there in your office handling drug cases?
There are two. One staffs the Alameda County Narcotics Task Force and he has a supervisor who he reports to, the chief of prosecutions. Not all drug cases go through the Alameda County Narcotics Task Force. They go across the county.
A lot of drug cases end up in drug court, which is a diversion court. In fact, when I got here, there was one day of drug court per week, but because of the up-staffing that I was able to do in collaborative courts, there are now two days of drug court per week. So there are probably two to three lawyers who do the drug cases in the collaborative courts. We also have drug cases throughout the county — at the East County Hall of Justice, the Fremont Hall of Justice, the Wiley Manuel Hall of Justice.
Some people have accused you of being biased against Asian Americans. They’ve criticized your decision to make the two men charged in the murder of Jasper Wu eligible for parole after 25 years if they are convicted. Your former public information officer, Patti Lee, has sued you for allegedly making anti-Asian remarks, among other accusations. What is your response to those people?
I can’t respond to Patti Lee’s allegations, unfortunately, because of the litigation aspect of it.
What I can say to people, generally, is that I’m a civil rights lawyer by trade, by definition, and by spirit. I have been fighting for racial justice since Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, which was a very long time ago. And most of my life, I’ve been actively engaged in the battle for racial equality — not just for Black people, but for all people. I certainly was never accused of being a racist until I took this position.
I think the narrative was contrived by people who have something negative to say about me and my administration. It’s a very intentional attack, and in some instances, a racist attack, because the presumption is that, because I’m Black, I must be anti-AAPI, which is racist because most Black people are not anti-AAPI. That is an exploitation of division and hatred that, unfortunately, has been used as a basis of division.
I think that the way people seized upon the Jasper Wu case was transparently political. That case was obviously very tragic. I met with his family. It was one of the early cases that we looked at. It was very important to us to make sure that we got it right. And by doing that — by taking our time to actually look at the case — we were attacked for it. People said, “You’re not taking it seriously,” which was the farthest thing from what was actually going on. We did charge them, and one defendant is now facing 265 years to life. And people should understand that when we say “to life,” it’s a life sentence. The minimum amount of time before he’s eligible for parole is 265 years. And to my knowledge, we don’t have anybody in our criminal justice system who’s 265 years old and therefore eligible for parole.
The critique was that you weren’t going to charge them with enhancements, right?
The critique was that “she might not do something.” They had a whole rally in front of the courthouse, saying, “You might not do this.” They didn’t know what I was going to do. They were attacking me for what I might do, but they had no basis whatsoever for it.
The other young man is facing 175 years to life. When I met with Jasper Wu’s family, I explained what the law provides. I actually felt like I knew more about the law than the lawyer they brought to the meeting.
I think the fears and the trauma of the AAPI community were being manipulated at that moment, because when we did charge them, suddenly no one was interested in the case anymore. The case is being prosecuted. You don’t see any more stories about it. No one’s following it. What happened? We looked at the [preliminary hearing], we followed it very closely. We needed to know that we got it right. And a lot of the cases, unfortunately, that I am asked to look at, often, I find they have not gotten it right.
What do you wish more people knew about you?
I wish they knew less. [Price said this jokingly.]
I was a respected, well-thought-of, nationally recognized, very successful civil rights lawyer who had a great career and was doing great work and had a great life. It was hard. Being a trial lawyer is hard, but I was motivated and purpose-driven. I’m very purpose-driven. I’m a workaholic because I believe in doing the best that you can. And so I was having a great life — until I got into politics.
A lot of the news coverage about you and your administration has been overwhelmingly negative. What gives you hope?
That Nov. 5 is right around the corner. Because after the election, it won’t be a story anymore.
I think my administration is a story because there’s drama and intrigue around recalls. There are rallies, there’s controversy, and after this is over, we can go back and focus on what is really important in this community. That is, how do we deal with gun violence? How do we deal with our mental health crisis? What are we doing about our homelessness crisis? These are the things that are impacting us.
We’ve got great opportunities. We’ve got [the African American Sports and Entertainment Group] and, potentially, the whole development of the Coliseum. We’ve done amazing work shifting some of the very negative things that were happening here and building a stronger, better district attorney’s office. And I hope people will be able to see that because they won’t be so focused on the recall.
Clarification: This interview was updated with an editor’s note on Sept. 25 to address a statement Price made about morale in the district attorney’s office.