A possible October Surprise in next month’s recall election of Alameda County DA Pamela Price comes in a new report that claims that more than 1,000 misdemeanor offenders walked free because Price’s office missed deadlines to file charges.In the attempt to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, it was considered a win for Price that the recall election was delayed until November 5, likely giving Price some Kamala Harris coattails to keep her afloat. But a story that the Chronicle just dropped on October 10 might make Price’s campaign wish the recall election had come sooner. That Chronicle report today says that Price's office has allowed more than 1,000 misdemeanor cases to expire without consequence, simply because Price’s office missed the one-year statute of limitations deadline to bring charges. Among these cases, per the Chronicle, is “A driver who slammed into three parked vehicles [who] tested at a 0.22% blood-alcohol level, nearly three times the legal limit.” Perhaps more troubling for Price, the information comes from apparent whistleblowers currently working on her own staff. The Chron says they got this information from “documents prepared by current office staffers that were shared with the Chronicle.” Price’s office acknowledged a backlog to the Chronicle, but did not provide their own numbers on how large a backlog. And the Chronicle admits it “could not independently confirm the numbers provided by current prosecutors.”So it is not a slam-dunk truth that Price’s office has whiffed on 1,000 cases in her 20 months in office. But there is clearly some “there” there. According to the so-called whistleblowers, 360 misdemeanor cases are already dismissed over missed statute of limitations deadlines, and another 646 cases appear almost certain to be dismissed for the same reason. So if true, that’s 1,006 dismissed misdemeanor cases, though some of these may be the same suspects with multiple cases.But these missed deadlines also cut into some of Price's signature cases. Price missed procedural deadlines on three Alameda PD officers facing involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez. Two of those officers had their charges dismissed, one still faces charges. Price's office blames prior DA Nancy O’Malley’s office for the backlog. Interim chief of prosecutors Evanthia Pappas told the Chronicle that Price was “was not provided any sort of roadmap or transition when she came in,” and that “As soon as she found out [about the backlog] she has been addressing it, branch by branch, and is currently working on the backlog at Wiley Manuel [Courthouse]."O’Malley insists this is baloney. “I committed a lot of staff whose only job was to look at those [cases], and they were assigned to [work with] different police departments,” she told the Chron. “We got reports every two weeks from the branch heads. And not one person ever said, ‘By the way, we need more help because we can’t get through the cases.’”You would expect finger-pointing, and different versions of events from Price and O’Malley. They ran against each other in the past, and campaigned quite negatively against one another. It is fair to assume that Nancy O’Malley and Pamela Price don’t like each other one bit.So the Chronicle spoke to an independent source in San Mateo County DA Steve Wagstaffe. He said it was “highly unusual” to allow statutes of limitations to expire before charging a suspect. “You have a deadline, you make your deadline,” Wagstaffe told the Chronicle.So this is a bad story dropping at a bad time for Pamela Price. But potentially worse, Price has whistleblowers in her own office talking to the press. And they may have more whistles to blow before the November 5 recall election.Related: Pamela Price Recall Election Date Set, and It Won’t Be Until November 5 [SFist]Image: Alameda County District Attorney's Office via Facebook