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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’s 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 worked at the Peralta Community College District for more than seven years between 2013 and 2023, with five months spent as the district’s chief counsel, according to his Linkedin page.
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.
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. She is now the county’s first district attorney to lose the office in a recall.
— Story by Kiley Russell, Bay City News
