Families of people killed by Vallejo police say department has gone rogue

ACLU asks state to investigate shootings of civilians by Vallejo police

An exterior view of the Vallejo Police Department.

Oct. 18, 2024 3 AM PT

•The Vallejo Police Department has been racked with problems in recent years, including allegations that its officers have killed and assaulted people.
•Families of some people killed and the ACLU have asked a state commission that certifies police officers to consider pulling some officers’ badges.

WEST SACRAMENTO — Civil rights advocates and family members of people killed by officers of the Vallejo Police Department made a passionate plea Thursday for a state oversight board to launch investigations into whether the officers should lose their badges.

“Murder is murder,” one emotional mother, Angela Sullivan, told members of an advisory board for the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. She described how her son, Ronnell Foster, was killed in 2018 when he was shot seven times by a Vallejo police officer.

Her mother — Foster’s grandmother — “died four and a half months later from a broken heart,” she said.

Another parent, Eugene Moore, told commission members that his son Jeremiah Moore “should be alive today.” Moore had autism, he said, and was shot and killed by police in 2012 while unarmed.

Another man, Kori McCoy, told the commission about his brother, Willie McCoy, who was shot to death in 2019 after officers roused him from sleep in his car. McCoy’s car was hit, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, with more than 50 bullets fired by multiple officers.

The Vallejo City Council later approved a $5-million settlement with McCoy’s family, part of more than $13 million the city has paid in settlements to victims of police misconduct, the ACLU said.

But many of the officers involved in these and other killings remain on the job, part of what the ACLU in a statement called “a shameful history of brutality and police corruption has made national headlines.”

In addition to bringing families to testify at Thursday’s meeting, the ACLU filed a formal complaint with the Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training this week. After hearing the family members testify, commission officials said they plan a review.

The Police Department in Vallejo, a city of 122,000 on the industrial northern fringe of San Francisco Bay, has been racked with problems in recent years. Last year, the department paid a nearly $1-million settlement to a former police captain who alleged that he was fired after revealing that officers were routinely bending the corners of their badges to commemorate when an officer killed a civilian. The city commissioned an investigation into the alleged badge-bending, but has refused to release the report on it, despite ACLU lawyers’ efforts to make it public.

In 2023, the California Department of Justice sued the Vallejo Police Department, alleging that its officers engaged in a “pattern and practice of excessive and unreasonable force, using enforcement strategies that disproportionately impact people of color, and performing unconstitutional stops, searches, and seizure.” Earlier this year, the DOJ entered into a settlement agreement with the department, announcing that the department had pledged to continue working toward reform.

Among other reforms, according to Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, the department pledged to hold officers and supervisors accountable for unreasonable use of force, including by referring officers who break the law to internal affairs for further investigation.

But the ACLU and families of those killed by police want the commission, which is charged with making sure police officers meet minimum standards, to weigh in too. Under new legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, the commission has the authority not just to discipline officers within a single department, but to take away their certification to work in law enforcement in California. The law is designed to prevent officers who commit misconduct in one city from moving to another and getting a job there.

Officials with the city of Vallejo did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’re calling on POST to use its authority to conduct decertification investigations of nine current and former Vallejo police officers for allegations of misconduct outlined in our complaint,” said Marshal Arnwine Jr., legal policy advocate for the ACLU of Northern California. The group said the allegations include not just killing people, but also assaulting and allowing police dogs to maul them.

Allowing officers guilty of such practices to remain in law enforcement sets “a dangerous precedent for what is acceptable,” Arnwine said.