Editorial: Cops’ senseless pinning cost man his life.
The death this month of Mario Gonzalez, who stopped breathing and died after Alameda police officers pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him, was senseless.
Gonzalez, 26, had no weapon. He had not threatened officers’ safety. At worst, he was seemingly drunk in a public park and might have shoplifted liquor. That should not have cost him his life.
Just as Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd was disproportionate to any crime that might have been committed, so too was the manhandling by Alameda police of a disoriented man excessive.
Gonzalez’s death was totally avoidable. Which is why national media attention has moved from Minnesota to the Bay Area’s island city of Alameda.
As the region and the nation consider how to restructure policing in our communities, the video released this week of the April 19 incident should serve as Exhibit A in what not to do. If ever there was a case where mental health assistance, rather than physical police confrontation, was called for, this is it.
Instead, this is a case riddled with questions for which there are currently no good answers.
• Why did police responding to a report of someone under the influence feel their only option was to take him into custody?
• What reason did they have to arrest him? Given that Gonzalez clearly was in no condition to flee and had no weapons, why did police feel they needed to wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him?
• Once they had him handcuffed, why did they continue to hold him in a potentially dangerous facedown position rather than roll him over so he could breathe more easily?
• And once police realized Gonzalez had stopped breathing, rolled him over and began administering CPR, why did they leave his hands cuffed behind his back?
Officers knew during the struggle while Gonzalez was conscious that pinning him face down on the ground posed a danger.
“Think we can roll him on his side?” one officer asks.
“I don’t want to lose what I got, man,” another officer says.
This wasn’t about good policing; this was about maintaining physical control. Even if it meant endangering the life of someone who posed no obvious threat to others.
Officers James Fisher, Cameron Leahy and Eric McKinley have been placed on administrative leave. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Office are conducing parallel investigations. The city has brought in its own outside investigator.
Policing is hard. There are bad folks out there from whom we need cops to protect us. Gonzalez wasn’t one of them in that moment.
Which is why we need police to distinguish between people who are truly dangerous and those who are troubled. Which is why we need to provide officers training they need to make those distinctions and handle not only people who threaten others but also those who need help. Which is why we should also supplement our police departments with mental health experts.
In Alameda, this was the second time in 2½ years that a person was pinned by police and then died. And it follows last year’s improper arrest of a man who a 911 caller thought was having a mental health crisis, an incident in which officers forced him to the ground and handcuffed him.
District Attorney Nancy O’Malley investigated the 2020 case and found officers did not have sufficient reason to detain Mali Watkins. The officers involved required training regarding contacts, detentions, citations and arrests of individuals, O’Malley wrote to the city’s police chief in July. She offered one of her experienced attorneys to provide that training.
What happened since then? City officials, as of Thursday afternoon, weren’t saying. That’s another question that needs answering. Perhaps, if officers had received a little more education, Mario Gonzalez would be alive today.