Suit to put Richmond police on trial
A civil case is shining a spotlight on the department and whether officers could have prevented the shooting death of Rashanda Franklin.
More than three years after Lawyer McBride allegedly cut in front of his exgirlfriend’s car, walked up to her window and fired bullets into her face, killing her in front of her two young sons, his murder trial is expected to begin on Dec. 8.
McBride, 46, has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, shooting into an occupied vehicle and stalking, but it’s the concurrent civil case that is shining a spotlight on Richmond police and whether they could have prevented the death of Rashanda Franklin.
Just 12 hours before she was slain, the young mother had pressed a newly installed panic button on her cell phone to summon police as her exboyfriend banged on her front door. Two Richmond police officers arrived, but after 20 minutes they released McBride, despite a recent violent domestic violence incident in which he punched Franklin.
That decision, which lawyers of Franklin’s surviving children said violated state laws and department policies, is at the heart of a lawsuit in Contra Costa Superior Court and will delve into the East Bay police department.
“The officers had reason to know that McBride had a record of criminal violence, including previous brutal attacks against Rashanda,” the lawsuit alleges. “However, the officers falsely told Rashanda there was nothing they could do to protect her, in violation of numerous laws and policies intended to protect victims of intimate partner violence. They uncondi
tionally released McBride and enabled him to stalk, shoot and kill Rashanda the next morning.”
Franklin, 29, was shot to death on the morning of April 4, 2017, as she drove her two sons to school. McBride is charged with cutting her car off at a stop sign, walking up to her driver’s side window and shooting her in the face as her sons Eric and Aiden Porter, 9 and 5 at the time, looked on. The elder boy told officers he thought his mother was “snoring,” but she had been shot through the esophagus and throat and was drowning in her own blood, according to the lawsuit.
Nearly 20 months later, a former Richmond police captain reached out to Franklin’s mother, Barbara Harris, and told her that officers failed to protect her daughter the night before the shooting.
“When I found out she had called for our help the night before and that the officers had not done anything to help her, I knew we had let her down,” retired Capt. Mark Gagan told The Chronicle in a December 2018 article on the case. “Everything I know about this incident now reinforces that we did not do enough to help her.”
The 23year department veteran was fired in November 2017 after being accused of leaking a police report to the media and then lying about it to investigators, but he won his job back the next year before retiring in September 2018.
He needed to get it off his chest, said Andy Schwartz, the attorney for Franklin’s youngest son, Jasiah. The three boys and their guardians are suing the city of Richmond. Lawyers for the city declined to comment on the case citing the ongoing litigation.
“Capt. Gagan is a hero,” Schwartz said. “Hopefully, some good will come from this lawsuit so this won’t happen again.”
At about 7 p.m. on April 3, 2017, McBride pounded on Franklin’s front door, yelling at her. She had been so scared for her safety, she installed a “panic button” app on her cell phone that allowed her to hit one button to reach 911 through a security company. Two officers arrived a few minutes later. They briefly cuffed McBride by the front door, but did not conduct a background check or check on his violent history with Franklin, the lawsuit alleges.
The officers spent less than 20 minutes in the house repeatedly telling Franklin there was “nothing they could do,” the lawsuit alleges, before releasing him.
Gagan and the attorneys said the officers responding to the 911 call missed numerous steps, including writing a domestic violence police report that could be forwarded to county prosecutors, obtaining an emergency restraining order based on an alleged history of abuse and invoking a tool called the lethality assessment protocol, which police use to determine whether a victim is at risk of being killed or badly hurt.
Officers should have been aware that in the months before the 911 call, police had responded to a domestic violence attack on Franklin, also in front of the kids’ school, where McBride allegedly pulled her from her car and punched her in the face, the lawsuit alleges.
“I hate to say it, but I think it was just easier (for the officers). It was the easy way out, there’s no other explanation,” said attorney Stewart Tabak, who is representing two of Franklin’s sons. “I don’t know any other way she could’ve cried out for help.”
After her death, Richmond police and officials tried to cover up the officers’ failures, the lawsuit alleges, including issuing misleading comments to news organizations and the family.
Behind the scenes, Richmond police command staff were called into a meeting to review the incident, which normally would be investigated by the Office of Professional Accountability, the lawsuit alleges. The meeting included captains, the assistant chief, a police union representative and an attorney the city contracts to defend police actions.
The lead captain asserted in the meeting that officers did everything correctly and “blamed the victim, bringing up irrelevant allegations about her history,” the lawsuit alleges. Participants were not told all of the facts and shown only two brief snippets of police body camera footage, according to the lawsuit. Subsequently, Richmond police made public statements saying an internal investigation had concluded and determined the case was handled properly.
In the city’s response to the lawsuit filed this month, it pointed toward Franklin as being responsible for her own death in one of its defenses.
“Defendant alleges that Decedent and/or Plaintiffs had full knowledge of all the risks, dangers, and hazards, if any there were, and nevertheless voluntarily and with full appreciation of the amount of danger involved in his/their actions and the magnitude of the risk involved, assumed the risk of injuries and damages to herself/themselves,” wrote the city’s contracted attorney Noah Blechman.
Schwartz said he was shocked to see that defense used.
“It’s upsetting to see something like this in a case of domestic violence that ended up in the death of the victim,” he said. “I think we were past the point in our lives where we blame the victims of domestic violence.”
Blechman told The Chronicle in an email these general defenses were boilerplate, and “we are certainly not blaming Ms. Franklin (or her children) for her own death.”
“Mr. McBride is solely responsible for her death, but this is how these answers are pled in a general sense and it’s unfortunate that Plaintiffs attorneys are trying use that to try to further their case in the media,” Blechman said.