Alameda officers in death case on leave
Gonzalez’ death caught on video prompts new push for reforms
Alameda police are again under fire following the death of Mario Gonzalez, who was pinned to the ground for five minutes by officers before becoming unresponsive, in a case that has drawn comparisons to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last spring.
Gonzalez’s death — which occurred just a day before Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of Floyd’s murder — marks the second time since late 2018 that a person was pinned by Alameda police and then died. And it comes less than a year after the arrest of a Black man who a 911 caller thought was having a mental health crisis drew outrage and protests after Alameda officers
forced him to the ground and handcuffed him.
But while the police treatment of Mali Watkins, who said he was dancing and exercising, sparked a citywide discussion over police practices in Alameda — including whether mental health professionals, rather than officers, should respond to some 911 calls — debate over possible reforms has dragged on since Watkins’ stop by police last May.
“The death of Mario Gonzalez should be a wake-up call for the city of Alameda,” said LaDoris Cordell, a retired judge and former independent police auditor for the city of San Jose. “Law enforcement should not be first responders to individuals in mental health crises.”
Watkins’ arrest prompted District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to tell then-Alameda Police Chief Paul Rolleri in a July 2020 letter that officers required training “regarding contacts, detentions, citations and arrests of individuals” and to offer a deputy district attorney to provide that service.
It is not clear if the department took O’Malley up on the offer. As of press time, city of Alameda officials did not respond to questions about what training, if any, took place.
On Wednesday, Alameda officials identified three officers who were put on administrative leave following Gonzalez’s death April 19 as 10-year veteran James Fisher, Cameron Leahy and Eric McKinely, each with the force for about three years.
The officers are on leave as the Alameda District Attorney’s Office and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office conduct parallel investigations into the events leading up to Gonzalez’s death.
The city of Alameda has brought in its own outside investigator.
Gonzalez’s family has said the body camera video shows the officers’ “murdered” him and accused the Police Department of lying. The initial police statement said Gonzalez had a medical emergency during a scuffle with officers.
Footage released Tuesday shows a five-minute period during which officers try to handcuff Gonzalez as he lies facedown in what appears to be bark-covered dirt in a home’s front yard. At one point, an officer asks if they should roll Gonzalez on his side, but another officer says, “I don’t want to lose what I got, man.”
One officer is seen with his knee on Gonzalez’s backside. Once they realize he is no longer breathing, they flip him on his back, check for a pulse and begin CPR. Gonzalez was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Attorney Andrew Lah, who also reviewed the body camera footage, said the video raises the question of why Gonzalez wasn’t “put into a position of recovery.”
“You are supposed to roll someone over because of the risks of someone going unconscious,” said Lah, a former managing attorney with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he oversaw police misconduct probes and criminal civil rights cases.
“It is one of too many cases of positional asphyxia,” he said, “That risk is exacerbated when you put weight on top of someone who is already handcuffed facedown, which is what the officers appear to be doing in the video. There are a number of other questions about the detention and decision to use force that need to be investigated.”
The tactics seen in the footage of officers’ encounter with Gonzalez are similar to those used on 40-yearold Shelby Gattenby, who died in December 2018 after being Tased and pinned by Alameda officers.
Gattenby had called police about 2:30 a.m. Dec. 5, claiming to hear people following him. When officers arrived, he ran away, got inside a patrol car and tried to remove a locked rifle, police said.
Officers Tased him repeatedly, while another officer used his body weight to pin him down on his stomach, according to body camera footage and media reports. Gattenby stopped breathing and was taken to a hospital, where he died eight days later. The city last year agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by Gattenby’s mother.
In the wake of Gonzalez’s death, the Alameda City Council has called for a special meeting May 8 to accelerate recommendations from a community committee that include responses to 911 calls, establishing a non-police response to mental health calls and revising the Police Department’s use of force policies.
“This is not an Alameda police problem. What happened last week in my view is an Alameda community and leadership problem,” Councilman John Knox White said Wednesday. “There are no other options on the table once calls come in. For decades, we have told our police if you get a call you respond and take care of it.
“They should not have been there last Monday, except we did not give them the tools. Every city in the East Bay is trying to figure this out. I wish we had moved faster. I think we, the council, need to take responsibility on this.”
Cordell, the former independent police auditor for the city of San Jose, said the Gonzalez case “is a textbook example of why law enforcement should not respond to individuals in the midst of mental health crises.”
Although Gonzalez was not threatening anyone or being aggressive, Cordell said officers made a decision to arrest him on suspicion of shoplifting alcohol, a misdemeanor that could have resulted in a citation or a warning.
“They saw Mario as a criminal and not as someone in need of help,” she said. “They did what law enforcement are trained to do — they escalated the situation with the use of force.”