Recall campaign against Alameda County DA Pamela Price paid thousands to security firm tied to its own leader, records show

OAKLAND – The campaign to recall District Attorney Pamela Price has paid thousands of dollars to a security company created by one of the group’s key leaders — even though it lacks proper state licenses to operate as a security firm, according to campaign finance and regulatory records.

State business filings show that Efficient Private Protection and Security LLC is owned by Brenda Grisham, who also serves as one of two principal officers for the recall campaign, Save Alameda For Everybody.

SAFE paid Grisham’s security firm $4,525 sometime during the last three months of 2023, according to an amended campaign finance form that was filed to the county on Monday.

It is unclear what work that company may have done for the campaign and why it appeared as a campaign expenditure from last year. Grisham filed documents to start the security company on Jan. 23, according to California Secretary of State business records.

The payments appeared in a campaign finance filing on the same day that Grisham and other leaders of the recall campaign appeared on the front steps of a downtown Oakland courthouse to mark the submission of more than 123,000 signatures in their bid to remove Price from office.

The payments appeared in campaign finance documents filed on the same day that Grisham and other leaders of the recall campaign appeared on the front steps of a downtown Oakland courthouse to mark the submission of more than 123,000 signatures in their bid to remove Price from office.

As they spoke, they were flanked by six masked men dressed head-to-toe in black, some armed with handguns and all of them wearing clothing emblazoned with the words “SECURITY.” They did not appear to be wearing patches identifying the company they worked for, as required of armed security guards by the state’s business code.

Price’s campaign, called Protect the Win, seized on the filings — claiming in a press release early Thursday evening that “this makes clear to us that this campaign isn’t about public safety or helping victims of violence for Ms. Grisham, it’s actually about money.”

“We are not surprised to hear that Grisham is weaponizing other people’s pain so that she herself would personally profit,” campaign spokesman, William Fitzgerald, said in a statement.

Contacted by this news organization, Grisham said her company was not hired to provide security for Monday’s press conference at the courthouse. But she refused to name the outfit that was contracted for that event.

Grisham said the campaign only recently started partially reimbursing her for security costs that she says were necessary to ensure her safety as she works to recall the county’s top prosecutor from office. She has repeatedly claimed to have been intimidated in her role as a leader of the recall campaign — at times, mentioning Price and her campaign by name in those accusations.

She also expressed surprise and confusion at the appearance of her security company on the campaign finance forms. She said Efficient Private Protection and Security had never been hired by the campaign and hasn’t performed any work. “I just started the company,” Grisham said.

She also could not explain a $2,562.50 payment listed on the latest campaign finance filings that appears to have been made to her specifically. Rather, she said that the campaign paid her more than $4,600 for security costs this year. She added that “I don’t know” what her campaign staff did, with regard to this week’s campaign finance filing.

Of the statement by Price’s campaign, Grisham said that “I’m going to send it to my lawyer.”

The state regulatory agency overseeing security guard companies told the Bay Area News Group this week that its search of records did not show any applications or licenses related to Efficient Private Protection and Security LLC, or records in Brenda Grisham’s name with the agency.

In fact, the state’s Business and Professions Code does not even allow private patrol operator licenses to be issued to entities registered as limited liability companies. Rather, such licenses can only be issued to a sole proprietor, a partnership or a corporation, a state official said Thursday morning.

Grisham has aired allegations of intimidation since the early days of the recall effort. In August, she complained about receiving at her home what appeared to be an official written correspondence from Price about the recall effort, as opposed to the campaign’s official address.

She also complained about Price and her team having visited the building where Grisham’s nonprofit — an anti-violence foundation named for her son, Christopher LaVell Jones, who was shot to death in 2010 — operates at International Boulevard and 17th Avenue. In a press release at the time, she called it “unprofessional” and “the second time she has invaded by personal space.”

On Monday, she made direct reference to the armed security guards surrounding her on the courthouse’s steps, claiming she’s “had to hide my children and my grandchildren to keep them safe” as a result of “standing up for a cause that everyone should be standing up for — the safety of our community.”

“I’ve been intimidated, I’ve been walked up on,” Grisham said at the press conference. “I shouldn’t have to have this much security, but I do. I have to have a guard sitting in my office every single day to make sure I’m fine, walking me to the bathroom.”

Immediately after the press conference, the spokesman for Price’s campaign called the allegations “a lie” and “disingenuous at best.” He said Price walked through the business center as part of an anti-human trafficking effort aimed at curtailing prostitution and violence in a part of East Oakland known as “the Blade.”

Price was “actually doing something really good for Oakland, yet it’s been weaponized by this campaign, which has big dollars behind them, to make it look as if it’s something else,” Fitzgerald said.