Contra Costa DA, sheriff elections test `Blue Wall of Silence'

President Ronald Reagan once quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.' ”

While I disagree with Reagan's sentiment, I do believe the comment carries relevance to the June 7 elections for Contra Costa County sheriff and district attorney. For families of those who have died unjustly at the hands of police, 11 of the most terrifying words in the English language had long been, “The officer-involved shooting is being investigated by the district attorney.”

In the years I spent as an editor with this news organization, I saw variations of those words in stories about officer-involved killings. Regardless of the facts of the case, it used to be nearly always a foregone conclusion that the officer would be cleared of any wrongdoing. I now wish I had done more to call attention to the futility of the investigations.

To be clear, police officers at times must make split-second, life-or-death decisions. It is understandable that the law would grant them the benefit of the doubt in many circumstances where lethal force is used. But benefit of the doubt is a far cry from refusing to seriously scrutinize police killings and apply the rule of law and principle of accountability, particularly when some officers show callous disregard for human life in carrying out the immense powers with which society entrusts them.

Such a culture led to an officer believing he could get away with kneeling on a man's neck for nine minutes until he could no longer breathe. And Derek Chauvin would have almost certainly gotten away with it had the killing not been caught on video, prompting demands for accountability that the government has long failed to provide.

In the reckoning that followed George Floyd's death, some top prosecutors, including Contra Costa's, have shown a willingness — after conducting true investigations that are deliberate, thorough and fair — to finally hold cops who abuse their powers accountable.

But now District Attorney Diana Becton is facing the inevitable backlash from an opponent, longtime prosecutor Mary Knox, and from the county sheriff, David Livingston, who seem intent on returning to the days when cops who abuse their power have little to fear from “independent” investigations.

To her credit, Becton announced in 2018, a year and a half before Floyd's death rocked the nation, that her office would publicly release a report in each officer-involved fatal encounter where no criminal charges were filed, bringing transparency to a process often shrouded in secrecy.

In 2021, Becton's office filed the county's first criminal charges against a cop for an on-duty shooting. Sheriff's Deputy Andrew Hall is now a convicted felon serving time in state prison after a jury convicted him of felony assault with a firearm in the fatal shooting of an unarmed motorist but was unable to reach a verdict on a manslaughter charge.

Compare Becton's push for accountability with Knox and her stunning admission to this newspaper that she had never viewed the publicly available bodycam footage of Hall fatally shooting an unarmed driver, yet she had concluded that the deputy was “justified in using deadly force.” It makes one wonder anew about the thoroughness of all those “investigations” that were conducted into other officer-involved shootings over the years.

Matching Knox's stunning candor is the county's three-term sheriff. In a recent candidate forum, Livingston responded to comments by his opponent, Richmond Police Officer Benjamin Therriault, about the Hall case by saying, “It's unfortunate that a fellow officer would question the actions of another police officer.”

That certainly sounds like an endorsement of the notorious “Blue Wall of Silence” that dictates that police officers should never assert an abuse of power by a fellow officer, even if that abuse takes a human life.

Terrifying words indeed from a government leader who tells us he's here to help.