Oakland woman leading efforts to recall progressive DA Pamela Price slams prosecutor for showing up at her business with ‘ARMED GOONS’ as violent crime in city spikes 21 percent in one year

An Oakland, California, woman who led a recall effort against woke District Attorney Pamela Price accused the official of intimidation tactics to curb her campaign.

Brenda Grisham, a homicide victims activist, claimed Price came to her business this week with “armed goons” as her fight to remove the prosecutor from office has taken an ugly turn.

Price became Alameda County district attorney in 2022, promising shorter prison sentences, more lenient criminal charges and a refusal to try juveniles as adults — policies that Grisham says are escalating spiraling crime issues in Oakland.

The city has been plagued by a citywide crime wave for more than two years, with murders rising 80 percent in July 2023 compared to 2019, while assaults and robberies rose 40 and 20 percent respectively.

According to crime tracker Neighborhood explorerOakland is essentially the most dangerous city in America, with a violent crime rate nearly four times higher than the national average, making it safer than zero percent of American neighborhoods.

Alameda County DA Pamela Price took office as ‘progressive prosecutor’ in 2022, promising shorter prison sentences, milder criminal charges and a refusal to try juveniles as adults

Since launching her recall campaign in July, Grisham said she has been the victim of a smear campaign comparing her to Jan. 6 insurrectionists, accused of spreading misinformation and labeled a racist.

“I’m African American, how is that racist?” she told the Berkeley Scanner. ‘This is homegrown. This is from here. Right here in the city of Oakland.”

Last month, the recall reached 80,000 signatures, more than the 73,000 needed to qualify for a recall in March.

However, she says tensions with Price arose months before her recall campaign even began, when she tried to organize a rally for recent homicide victims in March.

In a move that fueled her desire to remove Price from office, Grisham said the district attorney was disinterested and emphasized that she “would not speak to anyone who advocates removing me from my elected position.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about today, that’s what I told her,” Grisham said. “We’re talking about the families of homicide victims working the streets of Oakland trying to make a difference. That’s our job.’

Grisham, who lost a son to gun violence in 2010 and has since advocated for the victims, said Price ultimately agreed to the meeting in April but showed up 45 minutes late and reportedly refused to answer questions from the families.

“She didn’t respond to the families that they were victims,” Grisham said. “She never acknowledged that they had lost anyone.”

Price, Grisham says, turned to leave after stating that there were “people in the room who oppose my position as a prosecutor,” before a victim’s mother stopped her to ask about any developments in her son’s business.

She claimed Price said she knew nothing about the case and walked out of the room.

“These are real victims,” Grisham concluded.

‘These families were traumatized at some point. And they will be re-traumatized – if the punishment does not match their children’s crime.”

Surveillance footage shared by Grisham this week allegedly shows Price arriving at her workplace with “armed goons,” which she says is an intimidation strategy

Grisham lost a son to gun violence in 2010 and has been advocating for victims ever since

Data shows the city’s current crime epidemic, with rates in almost every major category increasing dramatically since well before the pandemic

In the months since, Grisham says her recall petition has gained popularity and regularly receives inquiries from victims’ families wanting to join the cause.

At one point last July, Price denounced the campaign as “backed by the Republican Party,” taking “a page out of the January 6 playbook.”

She has also said the recall “amounts to a coup to undo the will of Alameda County voters” and that “a few right-wing local leaders have been recruited as figureheads” for the recall.

Grisham claims Price has fought her efforts and used intimidation techniques, including a recent “pointy” letter detailing Grisham’s achievements that was sent directly to her home address in August.

Price, Alameda County’s first black district attorney, has taken a public stand on reforming Oakland’s criminal justice system and seeking to address racial disparities in prosecution rates.

She is known as a staunch opponent of jailing people and favors lenient sentences, a position that sparked outrage in April when she demanded reduced charges against a gang that killed a toddler with a stray bullet during a highway shootout .

In the letter, she touted how she had prosecuted more than 7,600 cases, hired “the most diverse class of victim-witness attorneys ever” and trained attorneys in the Racial Justice Act.

Her campaign reportedly sent the letter to her home as an official response to the recall request, which is required by law within seven days of the recall campaign being filed.

The prosecutor added that the letter was sent to Grisham because her name appears first in the file, but Grisham says she does not believe that was the reason and that she felt reluctant to send the letter to her home. to steer.

There was no mention of the recall and it was said that she did not know how Price got her home address, which made her feel unsafe.

“It didn’t say, this is my response to the petition,” Grisham said. “So I took it personally. Because I’m a mom. I have my children and I have my grandchildren.’

“There was no reason for that letter to come to my house,” she added. “I took it as a message and I will continue to take it as a message … but what I’m not going to do is be intimidated by not standing up for these families.”

Hostilities between the two women appeared to reach a fever pitch this week, when Grisham shared surveillance footage showing Price arriving at her business with “armed goons.”

Grisham felt it was an attempt to intimidate her and said Price arrived with about five others, although it is unclear why she claimed the group was “armed” and there is no evidence they were carrying weapons.

She also claimed that Price’s team said they didn’t know it was Grisham’s place of business but were just looking around before leaving since the activist wasn’t there at the time.

It came after Grisham made a public plea in August to cool tensions, saying: “Personal attacks, I can’t do that. All that name-calling, I can’t do any of that… we have to focus on what we have to focus on, and that’s these families.”

Price’s campaign wrote in July that she was committed to carrying out her political platform, arguing that it is what voters were asking for.

“The people handily elected her to pass criminal justice reform and make our system fair and balanced, eradicating racial, gender and economic disparities,” the campaign wrote in July.

“DA Price is the People’s DA. She will not be deterred by this undemocratic effort and will continue to focus on implementing the reforms that voters have mandated in the province.”

DA Price’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by DailyMail.com.