3 officers charged in 2021 death in Alameda
Alameda County prosecutors filed involuntary manslaughter charges against three officers in the death of Mario Gonzalez, a man they arrested in Alameda in April 2021 and pinned to the ground until he went limp, according to court records.
The decision to file felony charges reverses the decision of the previous district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, who cleared the officers — Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy — of criminal wrongdoing in 2022. Shortly after taking office the next year, DA Pamela Price reopened investigations in the county into eight police shootings or in-custody deaths, including the Gonzalez case. But on Thursday, she said she “walled” herself from the Gonzalez case and left the charging decision up to a Public Accountability Unit of prosecutors.
When asked why she “walled” herself from the case, she cited “technical reasons” and did not elaborate.
Her office filed the charges just as the criminal statute of limitations was set to expire. All three officers were still employed in law enforcement as of Thursday, Leahy and McKinley at the Alameda Police Department and Fisher as a Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputy. They are scheduled to be arraigned May 30.
Gonzalez’s death incited protests in Alameda and drew national attention during a period of societal introspection about police use of force. The 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis prompted calls to reduce and defund police forces, and cities throughout the country confronted intense scrutiny any time officers’ actions led to an injury or death.
When Price won election in 2022, she promised to take a hard line on investigations and prosecutions of police misconduct, while also seeking lighter prison sentences for all defendants — particularly those younger than 25. Early in her tenure, Price rolled out the Public Accountability Unit to oversee reviews of officer misconduct cases.
Price is now facing a recall election. Addressing reporters at her office near the Oakland
Coliseum on Thursday, she stressed the importance of “not having a double standard” when investigating and prosecuting law enforcement.
“We won’t be able to administer justice if the community doesn’t trust that the system is going to work for everybody on an equal basis,” Price said at the news conference.
Alison Berry Wilkinson, an attorney who represented the three officers during the previous criminal and administrative investigations, criticized Price for “waiting until the eleventh hour” before the statute of limitations was set to kick in, days after the Alameda County Registrar of Voters confirmed the pending recall. Wilkinson will serve as Leahy’s lawyer in the criminal prosecution.
“There is no new evidence,” Wilkinson said in a statement to the Chronicle. “This is a blatantly political prosecution.” She added that the officers’ actions were “reasonable, necessary, and lawful,” and attributed Gonzalez’s death to drug toxicity.
“We are confident a jury will see through this charade and exonerate the officers,” she said.
The encounter between Alameda police and Gonzalez unfolded on April 19, 2021, before officers tried to make an arrest.
Police had approached the 26year-old man at a small park on Oak and Powell streets after receiving two calls about a suspicious person.
The first caller reported that a man was standing outside his front gate and muttering to himself, while the second caller said Gonzalez was lingering at the park with baskets of what might be stolen bottles of alcohol.
McKinley arrived at the park to find Gonzalez standing beside two Walgreens baskets with bottles. For nine minutes, McKinley tried to engage the man, who appeared to “have trouble putting thoughts and sentences together,” according to O’Malley’s 2022 investigation.
Fisher arrived as backup, and the two officers tried to handcuff Gonzalez, who resisted by bending at his waist and straightening his left arm in front of his body, O’Malley wrote in her report.
Roughly 11 minutes into the encounter, the officers forced Gonzalez to the ground and struggled on top of him, with help from a civilian parking employee who held Gonzalez’s legs. After getting the handcuffs on, the officers continued pinning Gonzalez, who kept resisting, O’Malley wrote in her report. Leahy arrived during that time and took over for the parking employee, who was still trying to restrain Gonzalez’s legs.
After 3 minutes and 39 seconds of restraint with handcuffs on, Gonzalez became unresponsive, the former district attorney’s report said. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Autopsy findings released by the Alameda County coroner in December 2021 ruled Gonzalez’s death a homicide. The findings said he died of “toxic effects of methamphetamine” combined with the “physiological stress” of restraint. A second autopsy conducted at the request of Gonzalez’s family in a federal civil rights lawsuit found that Gonzalez died of “restraint asphyxiation,” not from methamphetamine.
Investigators hired by the city of Alameda published a report in May 2022 that determined that the three officers conformed to department policy, though it did not completely exonerate them. Certain crucial details of the encounter remained unconfirmed due to the limitations of body-worn camera footage, the report from Renee Public Law Group said.
Last December, the city of Alameda agreed to pay $11 million to Gonzalez’s family to settle the civil rights suit.