New lawsuit alleges anti-Asian discrimination by Pamela Price
Craig Chew says he was fired after raising concerns about Price's attempts to get around legally mandated background checks.
A veteran law enforcement officer who spent more than 20 years working for the Alameda County DA's office says he was fired due to anti-Asian discrimination by DA Pamela Price.
Craig Chew filed a lawsuit Thursday against Alameda County alleging illegal practices including unlawful termination because he was Asian American.
Chew, who worked briefly as a Berkeley cop earlier in life, spent most of his career in the Alameda County DA's office, working his way up through the ranks.
He eventually became chief inspector at the DA's office, running a unit of more than 60 sworn peace officers.
Chew says he was warned early on by a Price campaign team member that "Price 'did not trust Asians,' that Price would 'potentially have issues' with Plaintiff, and that 'you will just have to gain her trust.'"
The 85-page lawsuit details eight alleged events in which Chew failed to "gain Price’s trust as an Asian American" and says Price's views were based on longstanding racial stereotypes that paint Asian Americans as "sneaky, cunning [and] untrustworthy."
The claims are only the latest in a litany of allegations by former employees who have said Price expressed anti-Asian bias or allowed such discrimination to exist in her office.
These include a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by her former spokeswoman, Patti Lee; allegations of anti-Asian remarks by Price's former top deputy, Otis Bruce Jr.; and claims by former prosecutors Rebecca Warren and Butch Ford that Price "discounted cases based on race" and was "condescending and disrespectful" toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Since taking office, Price encountered stiff public criticism after addressing an email about the high-profile Jasper Wu case "To the Chinese communities" and announcing (and then canceling) a press conference to share her Chinese name.
Price also asserted in a recent interview with the Berkeley Democratic Club that "having an Asian background is not a stigma in this country, nor has it been," notes Chew's attorney Jon King, writing in this week's lawsuit that, "Price’s astonishing statement … made with full knowledge that she was being recorded for public display, provides unique insight into her views on race, and her supreme comfort in holding and espousing wildly-misguided racial views."
Price has staunchly denied any allegations of anti-Asian bias.
Emilie Raguso
In the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday, Chew says he proactively provided Price with key transition materials weeks before she took office, alerting her to the strict legal requirements for bringing on new DA inspectors — who carry guns and have access to sensitive, confidential information.
Chew says Price wanted to get around the rules so she could bring on staff sooner, including two new African-American DA inspectors, but that Chew determined through conversations with county staffers that there was no legal way to do it.
Chew says Price also wanted him to send confidential materials to her personal email account and "share confidential information with an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union" who did not work for the DA's office — both of which were prohibited.
The Department of Justice can cut off access to critical databases if an agency is found to have sent protected materials to unsecured email addresses, according to Thursday's filing.
In the lawsuit, Chew says his attempts to bring up the background check requirements "confirmed that, in Price’s stereotypical and misguided view, he couldn’t be trusted and wasn’t loyal."
According to the lawsuit, Price was also driven by an "overriding, and outspoken, desire to rapidly install African-American individuals in leadership positions, regardless of merit and qualifications, regardless of previous misconduct and disciplinary history."
As examples, the lawsuit describes sustained misconduct by top Price deputies Otis Bruce Jr. and Eric Lewis at their former jobs.
Emilie Raguso
Emilie Raguso
Chew said he only learned he was being replaced when someone told him Lewis was walking around the office announcing the news Jan. 5, 2023.
"This is notable because, at the time, Lewis had not yet been Livescan fingerprinted, had not been subject to a background investigation, and had not participated in a POST medical or psychological exam," according to the lawsuit.
Those rumors took on more weight after reporter Henry Lee tweeted that Price had fired Chew to bring on Lewis.
Chew also found that he had been cut off from remote computer access and said people kept calling to wish him well and thank him for his years of service.
It turned out Price had mailed Chew's termination letter to an address where he hadn't lived for 10 years, the lawsuit says.
"This wasn’t a simple, straightforward termination," according to the lawsuit. "Price did it with a particular effort to at first humiliate and embarrass Plaintiff (who had served the County for 22 years at that point, and its cities for 11 years before that), and then an attempt to intimidate and scare him."
Rather than doing the requisite background check, the lawsuit says, Price brought in Eric Lewis through temp firm Tryfacta.
"This appears to [be] a highly dubious bizarre arrangement, and likely illegal, given that an Inspector by law must be a sworn peace officer, properly backgrounded by law (which includes mandatory psychological and medical testing) in a process that takes several months, and cannot by law be employed by a temporary staffing company," the lawsuit alleges.
Two days after getting his official termination letter, Chew said Price sent two inspectors to his home "at night, unannounced, demanding to immediately take possession of Plaintiff’s County-issued car … and numerous items that Plaintiff had never even been issued."
Then Price sent him a letter, the lawsuit says, "stating that 'your conduct constitutes theft of county property' and that unless he immediately returned items including ones that he never had even been issued 'criminal penalties will be considered.'"
King, the attorney, argued that the entire process was "extremely unusual."
"This was absurd, heavy-handed conduct totally at odds with Plaintiff’s decades’ worth of dedicated public service, and a transparent attempt at intimidation, humiliation, and stripping him of his dignity," he wrote.
The lawsuit says Price was driven in her decisions by "acute racial animus."
Emilie Raguso
According to the lawsuit, Chew repeatedly alerted the Alameda County HR and County Counsel's offices about what was going on but they took no action.
Alameda County should have launched an investigation, the lawsuit says, into why Price "had abruptly fired an exceedingly qualified Asian American individual (Plaintiff) and replaced him with an incredibly unqualified African American individual (Lewis), so unqualified that the County had to go to tortured, and probably illegal, lengths to bring him on board."
The lawsuit also details announcements Price made after taking office, beginning in July 2023, where she touted her efforts to increase office diversity in terms of hiring and promotions.
"None of these promotions included Asian Americans being promoted to leadership positions," according to the filing.
In a brief statement Thursday, a spokeswoman for the DA's office said the new lawsuit "involves a former at-will employee whose employment ended on January 24, 2023. While the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office does not comment on personnel matters, we can say that October 31, 2024, almost 2 years later, marks the first time that this office has heard this unfounded accusation from this former staffer."
