OAKLAND — Pamela Price has no plans to run again for public office, but in a wide-ranging press conference on Wednesday – her first since being ousted as Alameda County’s top prosecutor – she took shots at her successor, stopping short of calling for a recall.
The former district attorney staunchly defended her legacy Wednesday morning, almost seven months to the day after voters booted her from office in an unprecedented recall election. In the process, Price likened her replacement — former Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ursula Jones Dickson — to President Donald Trump, while warning of a brewing “miscarriage of justice.”
“She dismantled everything we’ve done,” said Price, suggesting that the new district attorney had taken the office back to the same practices as her own predecessor, former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley. “We’re going backwards – we’re not going in a new direction.”
Asked whether she wanted to be the person challenging Jones Dickson in the coming June 2026 primary, Price simply said “not at all.” And despite her grave concerns over the direction of her former office, Price flatly said “no” when questioned about her desire to mount a recall effort against her successor.
Jones Dickson’s communications team declined to comment.
Price’s critique represented a point-by-point rebuke of Jones Dickson’s work since the Alameda County Board of Supervisors appointed the former county prosecutor and judge on Feb. 18. Until Wednesday, Price had largely kept her public appearances limited to a new podcast, Pamela Price Unfiltered, while returning to her private law firm, which represents small- and medium-sized businesses.
Price’s event at Everett & Jones Barbecue came almost a week after Jones Dickson held her own celebratory press conference marking her first 100 days in office, during which she claimed — without specifically naming Price — that the office had become mired in “ethical issues,” while being waylaid by “bottom-heavy” staff of young, inexperienced attorneys hired over the past two years.
Unlike her successor, Price made no hesitation to call out Jones Dickson by name.
The former district attorney lambasted Jones Dickson for dismissing a criminal case against Radius Recycling, which faced a 10-count grand jury indictment over a massive August 2023 fire at its West Oakland plant. Price’s staff alleged the blaze sent a toxic plume saturated with lead and other dangerous chemicals drifting over the East Bay, before the company’s staff allegedly tried covering it up.
For many of the misdemeanor charges, “all you have to do is show up and show that what happened, happened,” said Price, while echoing concerns over the dismissal that were aired last month by West Oakland environmental advocates and state Assemblywoman Mia Bonta.
Price also defended recently dismissed consumer fraud lawsuits against Progressive, Farmers Insurance and USAA as “carefully vetted,” while accusing Jones Dickson of making a “dramatic decision without doing her due diligence.” She took particular issue with any suggestion that her office acted unethically by outsourcing its work on those lawsuits to private law firms, noting how the county’s Board of Supervisors had signed off on the contracts multiple times.
While legal, such contracts with outside firms have been frowned upon by many Bay Area and California district attorneys, and leaders of the California District Attorney’s Association have historically warned prosecutors against entering such partnerships. At Jones Dickson’s press conference last week, she repeated those concerns — while stressing that her office could still re-file those cases.
Price countered that her successor’s actions appear to strike a “theme.”
“When you dismiss an environmental pollution case, when you dismiss corporate cases, who are you protecting?” Price asked. “You are not protecting the residents of Alameda County.”
The dueling press conferences mark the latest salvos in a see-sawing debate over how best to dispense justice across the East Bay.
In January 2023, Price rode into office on a broad progressive platform that sought shorter prison sentences, alternatives to prison and more lenient prosecutions of young defendants as a means to combat the nation’s legacy of mass incarceration.
Yet Price encountered pushback just months into her tenure, leading to an unprecedented recall vote just two years after San Francisco voters ousted their own progressive district attorney. Multiple finalists named by county supervisors to replace Price — including Jones Dickson — touted a more tough-on-crime approach to the job, along with the endorsements of the recall’s organizers and the region’s many police unions.
Immediately upon taking office, Jones Dickson scrapped directives aimed at curtailing the filing of sentencing enhancements, and reorganized a unit that aimed to prosecute law enforcement misconduct.
On Wednesday, Price called Jones Dickson’s actions regarding those sentencing enhancements “just like Donald Trump, rescinding the special directives; it sounds so familiar, and so Trumpy.” And she implored Jones Dickson not to toss any of the remaining cases Price’s office filed against law enforcement officers.
Price saved some of her strongest criticism for Jones Dickson’s decision not to continue resentencing some death row inmates amid sweeping allegations of prosecutorial misconduct decades ago in capital murder cases. A U.S. District judge last year found “strong evidence” of systemic racism and antisemitism regarding how Alameda County prosecutors selected jurors in death penalty cases — prompting Price to review the cases of more than 30 people still living on death row for signs of racism, bigotry or other misconduct.
On Wednesday, Price accused Jones Dickson of allowing a staff member with family ties to a former prosecutor accused of wrongdoing in the scandal of spearheading the review in recent months. She appeared to reference a recent CalMatters report, which found that Jones Dickson’s office sought to keep four people on death row whose execution orders were targeted by Price’s administration.
“This is not just a change in policy, this is a refusal to confront and correct systemic and racial injustice in Alameda County’s court system,” Price said.
She later quoted a Brooklyn, N.Y. gospel singer while addressing about her motivations for speaking out.
“For those who will say that this is just sour grapes, don’t be misled. I am doing just fine,” Price said. “As the songwriter says, ‘They whisper, they conspired, they told their lies, but God favors me.’”
