San Francisco Chronicle

Decade of grief, quest for justice in police killing

- By Joshua Sharpe

Jeralynn Brown-Blueford could barely understand the teenager on the phone through his sobbing. It was the middle of the night in May 2012, and the young man had news about her son, who was two weeks from graduation at Oakland’s Skyline High School.

“Alan …” the caller said, unable to continue for a moment before he revealed that Brown-Blueford’s son had been shot.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Yeah,” the teenager said.

In the terrible swirling hours that followed, Brown-Blueford learned that her 18-year-old son, Alan Blueford, had been shot and killed by Oakland police. The mother and father, Adam Blueford, joined the ranks of families across California who have lost a loved one to violence by police and received a lifelong inheritanc­e of grief and confusion.

From 2016 to 2021, the most recent period for

which California Department of Justice data is available, police in the state killed nearly 1,000 people. African Americans like Alan Blueford, as well as Latinos, are overrepres­ented in the numbers. Officers are almost always cleared by local district attorneys, as was the one who shot Alan Blueford. And the loved ones left behind struggle with declining public interest as new police killings overtake older ones.

A decade after Alan’s death, his parents remain determined to turn their continuing pain into advocacy that can help other families from enduring what they have. They see it as a mission in their son’s name.

“We’re not gonna let his name die,” Adam Blueford said.

The first story

Alan Blueford was a senior who played football and had a part-time job in the cafeteria at Skyline High. He was saving up for his first car and had been thinking about going into an X-ray technician program at Merritt College in Oakland. He intended to pay his way through school to be a physical therapist one Xray at a time. He was following a bit in his mother’s footsteps; she worked in health care.

Blueford had also been “testing life,” as BrownBluef­ord put it. “Some good decisions, some notso-good decisions.”

As police would point out to reporters after the shooting, Blueford was on juvenile probation stemming from a burglary case. He had also worked hard to graduate on time and had recently told his father he was ready to calm down.

Shortly after midnight on May 6, 2012, Blueford was walking down the sidewalk in East Oakland with two other teenagers when two officers stopped them. The officers would later say they believed one of the three — not Blueford — had a handgun in his waistband, according to a judge’s summary in a court filing associated with the parents’ suit against the city.

While police were searching for the weapon, Blueford ran away. Officer Miguel Masso, who’d been with the agency since 2008 after a couple years as an officer in New York City, pursued him on foot for five blocks.

What happened next remains in dispute because, though Masso had a body-worn camera, it wasn’t on. Masso, who left the Police Department a few years after the shooting and didn’t respond to a message sent through Facebook, told investigat­ors Blueford turned around mid-stride and pointed a handgun at him, court records say. Masso said he was terrified and thought shooting Blueford was the only way to survive, according to an Alameda County District Attorney’s Office report that cleared Masso.

Police said they found a gun nearby with Blueford’s thumbprint on it, though his family disputed he had a gun when he was shot.

Masso also shot himself in the foot, but when Oakland police told the public about the killing, they accused Blueford of shooting Masso. That version of the story appeared in initial media reports.

Blueford’s mother was also quoted, saying she couldn’t believe the story police were telling. Though police would walk back that statement, making it clear Masso shot himself, Blueford’s parents found many people never heard the correction and judged their son as someone who got what he deserved.

‘Shattered in a billion pieces’

The parents hired attorneys to help pry informatio­n from the city. They hired investigat­ors. They sought records from the Police Department and were told state law stood in the way. They sued the city. Oakland officials defended the officer’s actions.

Meanwhile, the mother and father struggled to make it from one day to the next.

Adam Blueford, who had always considered it his role to watch out for his family of seventurne­d-six, felt like he had failed. He wondered what he could have done differentl­y. He wondered about his son’s last seconds. He figured his son ran because he feared an arrest could keep him from walking at graduation. The father couldn’t imagine his son pointing a gun at a police officer, especially when the teenager was so looking forward to the future; Blueford didn’t buy it.

He worried for Alan’s siblings. He worried about the cost of litigation.

“I just wanted to keep our family together,” Blueford said.

He especially worried for his wife, who spent days in bed and forgot to change clothes and shower.

“I felt like I was shot in my heart, and it was shattered in a billion pieces,” Brown-Blueford said.

She stayed in bed because her home — and the world itself — was full of things that reminded her of her son. She suffered the particular pain of missing someone who seems simultaneo­usly everywhere all the time, and nowhere ever.

Alan’s voice

Brown-Blueford forced herself to go out to rallies and protests and meet other families who had lost someone to police killings. She felt less alone, and she encouraged the families not to back down from demanding more informatio­n about their loved ones’ deaths.

The camaraderi­e and shared purpose helped, but Brown-Blueford kept finding her way back to the bed and gnawing depression.

The parents decided in 2014 to accept a $110,000 settlement from the city, though it involved no admission of wrongdoing by Masso or the Oakland Police Department. They were beaten down by the fight.

Then Brown-Blueford had a dream.

Her granddaugh­ter had fallen in the deep end of a pool. Brown-Blueford dove in and pulled the girl to safety. Then the grandmothe­r, not a good swimmer, started to sink. She heard Alan’s voice. “Kick! Kick! Kick!” he yelled. “Move your arms!” And she did. She started to swim. “Yes, you can do it,” her son said. “You can live.”

She woke up covered in sweat.

Her son’s voice had made her more determined to find a path she could live with. While praying and studying the Bible with a minister, Brown-Blueford found comfort she hadn’t believed was possible. She decided she wanted to help people the way her minister helped her.

“Alan’s not here,” Brown-Blueford said. “I’ve got to be his voice.”

She became a minister and a chaplain, working with people in hospitals. She spoke at rallies and events, sharing her story and advocating for more transparen­cy in California law enforcemen­t.

The mother and father threw themselves into the Alan Blueford Center for Justice, which they had started building up within a year of their son’s death with a goal of helping other families who’ve lost someone to police violence with various support, including connecting them to attorneys. The parents also started an annual holiday toy drive in their son’s name for kids in need.

In 2018, Brown-Blueford helped push for the passage of SB1421, the landmark legislatio­n that made previously confidenti­al police records available to the public.

That law would help Alan Blueford’s parents finally see records they’d sought since 2012. The Oaklandsid­e, a local news outlet, filed suit, alleging that city officials had ignored repeated requests for public documents related to Blueford’s death. In 2021, the outlet received several records, which revealed for the first time that Masso had been found in violation of policy for failing to notify dispatch of the foot chase, failing to turn on his bodyworn camera and failing to keep enough distance from Alan Blueford in the chase.

Blueford’s parents were heartbroke­n and alarmed to learn that the policy violations had been kept from them. “One reason my wife wanted to settle the case was they said that Masso hadn’t done anything wrong,” Blueford said.

Asked why the violations hadn’t been shared with the family, Oakland police spokespers­on Kim Armstead said the informatio­n had been confidenti­al until the passage of SB1421.

‘Where we are now’

At the same time, there was vindicatio­n for the parents in the police records. They had always believed there was more they weren’t being told, and they were correct. They now take the lessons they’ve learned and use them to try to help others.

Brown-Blueford was named a 2021 fellow in the Mothers Against Police Brutality Legacy Fellowship, along with mothers from across the country.

The fellows were chosen because each had been “directly impacted by police violence, and they have emerged as change agents for justice in their home communitie­s,” according to Mothers Against Police Brutality. The fellowship is a twoyear program featuring classes, lectures and various support, including leadership developmen­t meant to help continue and amplify their advocacy.

On Dec. 19, the Bluefords are hosting their annual toy drive in honor of their son’s birthday at their center on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. It would have been Alan’s 29th birthday.

The Bluefords still grieve. The holidays are always hard. Brown-Blueford struggles to cook without her son there in the kitchen, as he always was, tasting the food and telling her what it needed. Other family members, including Adam Blueford’s mother and sister, who both died shortly after Alan Blueford, are missing, too.

“Although there’s family members who aren’t there, we often thank God for them, too,” BrownBluef­ord said, “because they are a huge part of where we are now.”

 ?? Salgu Wissmath/The Chronicle ?? Jeralynn Brown-Blueford holds a poster of her son, Alan Blueford, killed by Oakland police in 2012.
Salgu Wissmath/The Chronicle Jeralynn Brown-Blueford holds a poster of her son, Alan Blueford, killed by Oakland police in 2012.

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