DA will reinvestigate controversial police killings
New unit is reviewing 6 fatal shootings, 2 in-custody deaths
District Attorney Pamela Price is reinvestigating two controversial fatal shootings by the same Oakland police officer, as well as the death of Mario Gonzalez following his restraint by multiple Alameda officers, in a move that raises the possibility Price now may file murder or manslaughter charges against officers previously cleared by her predecessors as Alameda County DA.
In total, Price's newly formed Public Accountability Unit will review six fatal police shootings and two in-custody deaths, the DA's office told the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday.
The police killings include two by Oakland Officer Hector Jimenez, who 15 years ago shot and killed two men within seven months, including Mack “Jody” Woodfox. Woodfox was unarmed and shot in the back as he fled from a traffic stop. In addition to Jimenez, Price will consider filing charges against the three Alameda city officers involved in the April 2021 death of Gonzalez that drew comparisons to the murder of George Floyd.
News of the investigations comes after a weekend of nationwide protests in response to the brutal beating death of 29-yearold Tyre Nichols by at least five Memphis police officers. Price — a progressive who was elected last November on a justice reform platform — spoke at a rally on Sunday where she told the crowd that “it's a new day” in Alameda County.
“As the district attorney of Alameda County, I refuse to be silent,” Price said at the rally. “I refuse to be complicit in murder, in racialized justice, in a failed system that does not respond to people suffering with mental health crises, that does not provide support to the community, and I understand that when police cross the line and murder and abuse and exploit people that that is a threat to public safety.”
The reviews are a particular rebuke of Price's immediate predecessor, former District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, who found no criminal wrongdoing in either of Jimenez's shootings nor Gonzalez's death.
Gonzalez, an Oakland resident, died after three Alameda officers pinned him down for several minutes. O'Malley declined to file criminal charges, weeks after the county coroner ruled it a homicide, saying Gonzalez had suffered a heart attack brought on by methamphetamine use, as well as the stress from and restraint during the altercation with police.
The officers involved in Gonzalez's death — James Fisher, Cameron Leahy and Eric McKinley — were put on leave but an investigation commissioned by the city last year found they did not violate department policy.
Woodfox's death stands out among the dozens of police killings in Alameda County over the past few decades because of the nature of the shooting and the complicated investigations that followed it. Price, in a statement, singled out the case as “the proverbial `straw that broke the camel's back' for me to move forward and run for this office a second time, to make valuable and needed changes.”
Jimenez was a patrol officer on the night of July 25, 2008, when he and his partner, Joel Aylworth, spotted Woodfox driving a red Buick they said was driving erratically on Fruitvale Avenue. The patrol car trailed for several blocks, its lights flashing and sirens blaring, before the Buick stopped.
Price's office is reevaluating the seconds that followed, when Woodfox ran from the two officers.
Jimenez, in internal affairs interviews, claimed to see Woodfox's hands drop toward his waistband, presumably where a gun was stashed.
Jimenez fired 10 shots across the squad car in the direction of Aylworth and Woodfox. Hit twice in the back, Woodfox crumpled onto the street pavement and was dead before an ambulance arrived. Woodfox was 27 — and, it turned out, unarmed.
Jimenez was a little more than a year into his police career, but already had multiple citizen complaints and another fatal shooting under his belt. Seven months before shooting Woodfox, Jimenez and another officer, Jessica Borello, fatally wounded Andrew Moppin-Buckskin, a 20-yearold who ran from a traffic stop, hid beneath a car and refused police commands to surrender. Police said he was reaching toward his waistband for a gun, but he was unarmed.
Jimenez initially was fired by OPD, but later got his job back, in 2011, through a police union process — a reinstatement that happened even before the Alameda DA's Office had determined whether Jimenez broke any laws.
It took six years for the District Attorney's Office to issue a scant, 10-page report exonerating Jimenez. That report contradicted Oakland police records later released under the state's police transparency law, which concluded Woodfox was not a threat and had been running away when Jimenez shot him in the back.
“There are many shootings that are outrageous but they don't meet the requisite criteria for criminal prosecution. But Woodfox is one that I think she should take a very hard look at. No one really ever has,” said civil rights attorney Jim Chanin, who represented the Woodfox family.
Jimenez went on to become an OPD homicide detective. He remains at the department in the criminal investigations division. Attorneys with the law firm that has represented him did not provide comment.
BART police officer Johannes Mehserle is the only Alameda County officer this century to be charged with murder. Mehserle killed Oscar Grant in 2009, claiming he mistook his own gun for a Taser. A jury later convicted Mehserle of the lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter.
An analysis by this news organization found that of the 110 police killings Bay Area-wide from 2015 to 2020, zero officers were criminally prosecuted. O'Malley later charged San Leandro Officer Jason Fletcher with manslaughter in the April 2020 death of Steven Taylor inside a Walmart. Fletcher pleaded not guilty and is out of jail while awaiting trial.
The Alameda County DA's Public Accountability Unit — led by Senior Assistant District Attorney Kwixuan Maloof, a former San Francisco public defender — is also reviewing the fatal shootings of Cody Chavez by Pleasanton police in 2022; Caleb Smith by Hayward officers in 2021; Joshua Gloria by Fremont officers in 2021 and Agustin Gonsalez by Hayward police in 2019.
The unit is also looking into the death of Vinetta Martin in Santa Rita Jail in April 2021. Martin's death was classified as suicide.