Pamela Price officially left office Thursday evening following her loss in the Nov. 5 recall election and has left the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in the hands of her chief assistant, Royl Roberts.
Roberts officially took the reins at 5 p.m. Thursday, but it is unclear how long he will be in charge.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors is expected to finalize a process to appoint Price’s temporary replacement at its meeting Tuesday.
Whoever the board selects as interim district attorney will serve until the county’s next regularly scheduled election in 2026. The winner of that election will serve the rest of Price’s term, which was extended to 2028 by a recent change in state law to line up elections for district attorneys and sheriffs with the presidential election.
Roberts has been with the District Attorney’s Office for just two years and doesn’t have extensive experience as a prosecutor, according to his bio on the agency’s webpage and his LinkedIn profile.
Prior to his role as Price’s top manager, he spent nearly six years as chief counsel to the Peralta Community College District.
Roberts graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, got his master’s degree in business from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and his law degree from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
He’s taking over for his boss, who lost the office with only about 37 percent of the vote compared to 63 percent voting in favor of the recall after a well-funded pro-recall campaign successfully convinced voters she was soft on crime and insensitive to crime victims.
‘This is a mandate’
Meanwhile, organizers of the recall met on the steps of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on Thursday urging supervisors to choose someone the community can support.
During their first news conference since the Nov. 5 election, Save Alameda for Everyone members asked the Board of Supervisors to recognize what they called a “mandate” from voters.
“This is a mandate and telling the Board of Supervisors we, the public, the team here, have a mandate for them to not only replace the DA, but replace the DA with somebody that’s going to hold offenders accountable,” SAFE campaign manager Chris Moore told a group of reporters.
Brenda Grisham, SAFE cofounder, said the group won’t be suggesting a candidate for the board to consider as Price’s replacement but said that whoever it is should be ready to hit the ground running.
“Well, we’re hoping that whoever they pick, they’re picking somebody that’s in it for the long haul,” Grisham said. “(Price’s replacement is) going to need to put their heads down and get in there and kind of, you know, get the department in order.”
Price’s professional demise was sealed by recall groups collectively spending more than $2.5 million in a campaign to blame her for crime in the county and hammer home the notion that she was soft on criminals and uncaring toward crime victims.
The recall campaigns were primarily run through two major campaign finance committees — Save Alameda For Everyone and Supporters of Recall Pamela Price, which had significant financial support from several East Bay police officers’ unions, including Oakland’s, and the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County, along with PG&E and Philip Dreyfuss, a wealthy hedge fund executive and Piedmont resident.
“We’re hoping that whoever they pick, they’re picking somebody that’s in it for the long haul… (The new DA) is going to need to put their heads down and get in there and kind of, you know, get the department in order.” Brenda Grisham, recall organizer
Price came into office in 2023, winning her election with roughly 53 percent of the vote and becoming the first African American woman to hold the county’s top prosecutor job.
At the time, she was clear about her reform-minded policies, including not tacking on enhancements to charges in order to win longer prison terms in criminal cases, not charging juveniles as adults and finding alternatives to prison or jail for certain defendants, among other things.
Just a few months after she took office, however, opponents launched a petition drive and ultimately gathered enough signatures to place her name on a recall ballot, alleging that her progressive reform platform was too soft on criminals and led to increasing crime — making her the first district attorney in the county’s history to face a recall.