OAKLAND — In her first press conference since voters booted her from office last week, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price refused to answer questions about the outcome of the recall against her and gave no timeline for when she may concede or leave office.
Price’s appearance Thursday afternoon came as she announced charges against 11 people — both Alameda County sheriff’s deputies and clinicians — in the 2021 death of Maurice Monk at the Santa Rita Jail. She repeatedly said that the press conference, which marked her first appearance before members of the media since the Nov. 5 election, was not the right venue for commenting on the election yet gave no indication for when she would address the topic.
“We will speak to the election at the appropriate time — now is not the time or the place,” Price said.
Last week, voters opted overwhelmingly to remove the former civil rights attorney from office less than two years into her first term. When the Associated Press called the race on Monday evening, the recall measure had been leading by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, with roughly 430,000 votes counted. A message sent by this newspaper to her Protect the Win campaign Thursday afternoon was not immediately returned. Her campaign has repeatedly declined to comment on the recall’s results since Election Day.
Already, a growing number of former Alameda County prosecutors have expressed interest in succeeding Price once she leaves office in the coming weeks.
Venus Johnson, the chief deputy and senior advisor to state Attorney General Rob Bonta, this week said she’s interested in applying for the job once the county’s Board of Supervisors begins considering candidates. Raised in Oakland, Johnson spent eight years as a prosecutor in Alameda County before serving as Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s director of public safety in 2017. She then moved to the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office and the California Department of Justice.
Also voicing interest is L.D. Louis, another former county prosecutor of 23 years who left the district attorney’s office shortly after Price won election in 2022 to become a deputy county counsel for Alameda County.
They join Amilcar “Butch” Ford — a San Francisco prosecutor who spent years working in Alameda County and became a vocal critic of Price — in publicly announcing plans to apply for the post. Darryl Stallworth, a defense attorney and former county prosecutor whose name has also been publicly floated as a potential candidate, gave a less committed answer this week.
“If the Board of Supervisors wanted to talk to me about the DA’s position, then I would receive that phone call, I would talk to them,” Stallworth said. “But I am not proactively seeking the position.”
Price’s continued presence within the district attorney’s office has rankled those who led the charge to recall her.
A campaign manager for the recall group Save Alameda for Everyone issued an open letter this week urging the county’s Board of Supervisors to immediately appoint a temporary replacement until a more permanent selection can be made next year. The letter from Chris Moore also called on the supervisors to place a moratorium on staff dismissals and halt resentencing motions for people accused of violent crimes.
Price is expected to remain in office until the election’s results are certified next month, at which point Chief Assistant District Attorney Royl Roberts would be expected to take over, county leaders have said. The five-member Board of Supervisors would then be tasked with appointing an interim district attorney, a scenario that’s never before happened in the county.
Price’s appointed replacement would serve until the next general election in 2026. The winner of that election would be expected to serve until the 2028 election, when Price’s first term was originally slated to end.
Whoever takes the helm will immediately be confronted with a bombshell case. Days after the election, Price charged nine current and former Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, as well as two medical professionals, in the death of Monk.
Seven deputies are charged with a single felony count of elder or dependent adult abuse: deputies Donall Rowe, Ross Burruel, Robinderpal Hayer, Andre Gaston, Syear Osmani, Mateusz Laszuk and Christopher Haendel. Two former deputies — Thomas Mowrer and Troy H. White — as well as WellPath nurse David E. Donoho and Alameda County Behavioral Health clinician Dr. Neal Edwards each face the same charge.
Osmani, White and Hayer also were charged with one felony count of falsifying documents.
Monk, 45, was declared dead on Nov. 15, 2021, after languishing for days while he lay facedown and half-naked in his Dublin jail cell, a pool of brown liquid oozing from beneath his body. His family later sued Alameda County and received a $7 million settlement along with assurances that the sheriff’s office would implement new training for its deputies.
All of the current deputies have since been placed on administrative leave, according to Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, who has defended her deputies while acknowledging that “mistakes were made in our handling of Mr. Monk.”
Price declined to provide any new details about the deputies’ and clinicians’ alleged actions. Before Thursday, the only other known time the district attorney made public remarks since the election was at the end of Wednesday’s meeting of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee. While other members asked to adjourn the night in honor of a grandparent, record producer Quincy Jones and U.S. veterans, Price asked that the meeting end in her own memory.
“I would like to acknowledge the legacy of the first African American district attorney of Alameda County,” Price said.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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Source: www.mercurynews.com