Group backing recall of Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton remains mysterious

For more than a year, a group has been saying that it intends to pursue a recall of Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton. It has been soliciting donations through its website since September, but it hasn’t released much information about itself thus far.

If the group is successful, Becton would be the third Bay Area district attorney ousted from office since 2022.

Earlier this month, Richmondside requested an interview with the group and asked questions about the recall effort through email. No one agreed to be interviewed, but an emailed response signed “the recall team” said the group has been filling out the necessary paperwork that would allow canvassers to begin collecting the signatures required to initiate a recall election. Once these recall petition filings are approved by the Contra Costa County Elections Division, the team said it would host a press conference to “formally announce the details.”

Getting approval to circulate its recall petition would be just the first step. To get a recall of Becton on a ballot, the group will also need to gather signatures from 10% of Contra Costa County’s registered voters in 160 days. Contra Costa County’s Registrar of Voters told Richmondside there are about 729,500 registered voters in the county, so the recall team will need to gather, at minimum, about 73,000 signatures.

In a press release posted in September, the group indicated it is pursuing a recall because it thinks Becton hasn’t been open and honest and has been too lax when it comes to prosecuting those accused of crimes.

“We are frustrated by [Becton’s] continuous empty promises to victims and their families that justice will prevail while she permits criminals to roam free,” reads the press release. “Her lack of transparency regarding crime in this county and her attempts to keep offenders out of jail have left us disheartened.”

The recall team’s efforts come during a backlash against reform-minded Bay Area district attorneys. Since 2022, voters have removed San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price from office.

Voters ousted Boudin, who had run on a platform of reforms such as eliminating cash bail and reducing the number of people in prison for non-violent offenses, a little more than halfway through his term in 2022.  About 55% of voters chose to remove Boudin. 

Price, who had been Alameda County’s first Black chief prosecutor, was recalled in the November election, with about 63% of voters voting to remove her. Like Boudin, Price ran on a reform platform that included ending the practice of charging juveniles as adults. She served less than two years.

Becton, who is Contra Costa County’s first Black and first woman chief prosecutor, has also pursued reforms during her tenure. She instituted diversion programs that seek rehabilitation instead of imprisonment for some low-level nonviolent crimes and obtained grants for juvenile diversion programs that she told the San Francisco Chronicle she intends to extend to offenders up to age 25. 

Unlike Boudin and Price, Becton has had a long tenure. She worked as a judge in Contra Costa County Superior Court for more than 20 years before being appointed as the county’s district attorney in September 2017 following Mark Peterson’s decision to resign after admitting to using campaign funds for personal use. Since then, Becton has won two elections, one in 2018 and another in 2022.

Becton declined a request to be interviewed for this article.

Three Bay Area district attorneys targeted by recalls belong to prosecutor reform group

Boudin, Price and Becton all belong to the Prosecutors Alliance of California, the country’s first reform-minded law enforcement association. Its mission statement is to “improve the effectiveness, fairness, and compassion of their state and local prosecutorial systems.” Critics of Boudin, Price and Becton see this approach as soft on crime and blame them for perceived or actual increases in crime rates.

Available data from the U.S. Department of Justice shows mixed results as to whether crimes have increased or decreased under these reform-minded district attorneys. Under Boudin, data shows that reported violent and property crimes decreased significantly when compared to the years preceding his taking office. 

Under Price, data covering 2023, her first year in office, shows that both reported violent and property crimes increased significantly from previous years. Department of Justice data covering the entire county for the present year, Price’s last year in office, is not yet available, but violent crime, particularly homicides, have been decreasing this year in Oakland, Alameda County’s biggest city, according to the city’s data. 

Under Becton, the average rate of reported violent crime has gone up about 12% while property crime has gone down about 19%, according to Department of Justice data, when comparing the three full calendar years before she took office, 2014-16, to the five full calendar years after she took office, 2018-2023. 

It’s unclear whether having a reform-minded chief prosecutor decreases or increases crime rates. One study published in 2022 that examined 65 major cities in the United States starting in 2015 suggests that having such a prosecutor did not affect the rate of homicides and larceny.

Becton recall proponents haven’t publicly identified themselves

It’s currently unclear who exactly is pursuing the Becton recall. In July, the recall team submitted its Statement of Organization form to Contra Costa County. This created a committee that can accept contributions to support a recall effort. On the committee’s form, Richard Coccimiglio is listed as principal officer. Coccimiglio lives in Oakley, is vice president of sales for a large national marketing company, Acosta, and is a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, according to his Facebook profile. 

Coccimiglio’s wife, Nicole Coccimiglio, is listed as treasurer. No one else is listed on the form. Richard Coccimiglio has not responded to multiple inquiries from Richmondside about the recall effort. 

Although the recall team is accepting contributions for this committee on its website, it told Richmondside that it isn’t working with Richard Coccimiglio.

“We would like to clarify that we are not associated with Richard Coccimiglio,” the recall team wrote in an email to Richmondside.

Richmondside asked the recall team why Coccimiglio’s name appeared on the form, but no one responded.

So far, the recall team has only described its members in broad terms. In the September press release, the group described itself as “the victims of crime, their families, local business owners and employees, as well as residents of Contra Costa County,” but it didn’t name any of its members on its website, nor did it respond when Richmondside asked who specifically its members are.

The recall team’s website includes a section describing homicide victims in Contra Costa County, three of whom were from Richmond. It’s unclear if the families of these victims are involved with the recall effort, but some of them, including family members of Carmen Vasquez, Alexandrea Sweitzer, and Thomas Arellano, have been publicly critical of Becton and her team. 

Grandchildren of Richmond resident Vasquez criticized Becton’s office for not informing them before Freddie Lee Taylor, the person convicted of killing Vasquez, took a plea deal and was freed after serving 33 years in prison. Taylor, who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, brain damage, and borderline personality disorder, was offered the deal after a federal appeals court decision questioned his mental competency. 

After being released, Taylor was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Oklahoma, and the recall criticized Becton for this in a Facebook post, claiming, “Nowhere is safe from Diana Becton and her failed policies.”

Alexandrea Sweitzer’s mother, Melanie Sweitzer, has also criticized Becton for choosing not to challenge the constitutionality of a California law that required Contra Costa County Judge Barbara Hinton to limit the sentence of Vincent Lising-Campos, the person who pled no contest to killing Sweitzer, a Richmond resident. He received a seven-year sentence because he was 15 at the time of the killing. 

Stephen Arellano, the father of Thomas Arellano, who lived in Martinez, filed a civil suit against Becton and her office this year in the Northern California District Court over the office’s handling of his son’s killing. Gerald Delgado took a manslaughter plea deal that sentenced him to 13 years for killing Thomas Arellano. The lawsuit, which Judge William Orrick dismissed, alleged that the office “failed to investigate and properly charge Delgado” and “failed to follow the wishes” of Stephen and other family members when entering into the plea deal.

Expert: Recall signature gathering efforts usually fail, but recall elections usually succeed

Getting the approximately 73,000 signatures needed to force a Becton recall election could prove difficult.

Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at UC Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center who has studied recalls in the United States for more than 30 years, told Richmondside that, most of the time, efforts to get enough signatures for a recall are unsuccessful. 

Spivak has been tracking recall efforts and elections nationally since 2011. While he acknowledges it can be hard to measure, he said that recall signature gathering efforts are only successful about a quarter to a third of the time.

Recent recall efforts against California district attorneys have faced challenges in gathering signatures.

Although Price’s recall election wasn’t close, proponents barely got enough signatures to place the recall on the ballot. They needed to secure 73,195 valid signatures and, according to the Alameda County Registrar of voters, they got 74,757 valid signatures.

And it took two tries to gather enough signatures to place a Boudin recall election on the ballot. While the second effort was successful, the first effort failed.

Efforts to gather enough signatures to force a recall election for then Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who is also a member of the Prosecutors Alliance of California, failed in 2021 and 2022. In November, he lost his reelection bid, getting about 40% of the vote against his opponent, Nathan Hochmann.

According to Spivak, funding is crucial to getting the signatures and votes needed to oust a politician from office.

“Money is the biggest factor in getting the signatures you need,” Spivak said.

The recall efforts against Boudin and Price were expensive and relied on large donations and loans from lobbyists. More than $6 million was raised to oust Boudin, including more than $600,000 in contributions from William Oberndorf, who regularly supports Republican politicians, and more than $630,000 from a real estate company run by Brandon Shorenstein, a Democrat. 

More than $3 million was raised to oust Price, including at least 30 donations of $9,000 or more mostly from large companies or their owners. One Piedmont-based hedge fund manager, Philip Dreyfuss, donated $390,000 and loaned $200,000 to the Price recall effort. There are no contribution limits to support or oppose a recall in California.

So far it’s unclear if anyone is financially supporting the Becton recall. The committee still hasn’t gotten approval from the county to begin collecting signatures. Until it turns in the necessary paperwork and gets approval from the county, the committee doesn’t have to report any contributions it receives.

According to Spivak, if a recall effort does get enough signatures to make it to the ballot, it’s very likely to win. Spivak said his data shows that about 62% of recall elections nationwide, and more than 80% of California recalls, have successfully ousted their candidates since 2011.

“Recalls are astonishingly successful,” Spivak said, “especially in California.”