Otis R. Taylor Jr.:
Vallejo officials are embracing police reform, but they haven’t always shown such concern.
The world is talking about police brutality and systemic racism in America. Even in Vallejo, a city that failed to address complaints of excessive use of force by the Vallejo Police Department for more than a decade, public officials are raising their voices and embracing reform. Don’t be fooled. Before a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd last month, Vallejo’s leaders didn’t seem to care that residents in their own city were being killed by police under questionable circumstances.
“Nobody wanted to intervene until it was popular,” said Melissa Nold, a civil rights attorney who represents people who’ve been beaten, dragged and killed by Vallejo officers. “We’re well aware that this is something that became trendy. And it’s unfortunate, because if this would’ve been trendy 10 years ago, there’s a lot of people that would still be alive.”
Last Friday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a “review and reform agreement” with the city of Vallejo to investigate useofforce procedures, antibias community policing, officer accountability and more.
I’ve been reporting on intimidation by police against Vallejo residents for three years, and I’ve learned that it’s been going on since before the city went bankrupt in 2008. Becerra told me on a conference call that his office would investigate the allegations of intimidation.
“I’m certain that we will be collecting information with regard to some of that activity that you raised,” he said. “I have no doubt.”
According to a news release, Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams first met with the Department of Justice on Nov. 18, six days after he was sworn in last year. Williams and City Manager Greg Nyhoff met with state Deputy Attorney General Nancy Beninati on Jan. 13, according to the release.
I was told this week that Nyhoff was unavailable to comment, and Mayor Bob Sampayan hasn’t responded to my recent emails.
The agreement is presented as a collaboration with the state’s Department of Justice. Why did it take Floyd’s death, nationwide unrest and the June 2 fatal shooting of Sean Monterrosa, a 22yearold San Franciscan, for city leaders to publicly address police violence?
Why weren’t city leaders already speaking out for the families of the black and brown men fatally shot by Vallejo officers?
“I think why now is that phrase, ‘It takes a village,’ ” said City Councilman Robert McConnell, who has advocated for reform. “Finally, the village of the United States is awoken, and it’s unfortunate it took the death of a Midwesterner to make Bay Area people pay attention.”
I’ve seen members of the public sobbing through screams at Vallejo City Council meetings, their bodies trembling as council members fidgeted and frowned. Instead of empathy, city leaders have used armed Vallejo police officers to usher grieving families out of council chambers because they were disrupting city business.
It should’ve been the city’s top priority to address the abuses residents complained about.
Vallejo knew about excessive useofforce problems before police officers fatally shot three people in six months in 2012, including Mario Romero, who was struck 30 times as he sat in his car. The police refused to release his body to his family for a month, and the family had to protest at a news conference to get the Police Department to update them.
The city should’ve requested a collaboration after Adrian Burrell, a Marine veteran, was slammed against a wall in January 2019 for using his cell phone to record an officer detaining his cousin in the driveway of the home Burrell owns. Yesorno question: Is it wrong that a black man standing on his own property was assaulted by a police officer because he was using his phone?
The city should’ve been jumping for help after Ronell Foster was fatally shot in February 2018 by an officer who claimed that he wanted to teach Foster a lesson for riding his bike at night without a light.
Like the families showing up to council meetings, the city should’ve begged for help after police fired 55 shots at Willie McCoy as he slept in a fastfood drivethrough lane in February 2019.
Instead, this is what Vallejo did: Days after McCoy’s death, the City Council voted unanimously to approve the Police Department’s new waterfront headquarters. And days after the release of the troubling bodycam video of McCoy’s death, the council voted unanimously to appoint Andrew Bidou, the retiring police chief, as interim chief, in a move that would’ve allowed him to collect his pension and a salary.
But Bidou was forced to back away from the arrangement, and it wasn’t because city leaders stood up for Vallejoans. No, it’s because the deal violated a provision in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
At least the city managed to dodge a bullet with that one. I’m so upset that I can’t say the same about Monterrosa, the 22yearold who was fatally shot on June 2 by an officer responding to alleged looting. The officer had three other shootings on his record. That’s why it’s so critical that the Department of Justice look into the issues the city has looked past.
“There is this tendency among political leaders to discount these kinds of events, to accept the official narrative of what has happened,” said Jerry Threet, a former San Francisco deputy city attorney who, as law enforcement auditor of Sonoma County, combed the county’s useofforce complaints for three years before his retirement last year. “What the community sees is usually more a valid source of information than what the official story is, but it’s mostly discounted until something that can’t be denied comes to the surface.”
May your soul rest in peace, Big George.