Weeks before that deadline, between January 11 and 20, the records in five of the shootings were destroyed. Based on the timeline Dailey provided in her deposition, it appears that Vallejo destroyed hundreds, if not thousands, of additional pieces of evidence between the change in its retention schedule and when the police transparency law took effect 21 days later. A 19-year-old man has been arrested for the brutal killing of a 78-year-old woman in Vallejo last year, police announced Thursday after a year-long investigation. Officials said the suspect car reached speeds of up to 120 mph. The purge violated a city policy that requires written approval from the city attorney and clerks offices, according to Brown, who testified that the proper form and signatures were never obtained. At the time, Mustard was in charge of the evidence section and had in-person access to the departments evidence room when escorted by evidence personnel, Dailey testified. Whitney testified that Bidou asked for his opinion. In July 2020, the city announced that officers had disposed of the windshield through which Det. Just days into her transfer to the evidence unit two years ago, Vallejo police assistant Tina Encarnacion made her way to a tall metal cabinet known as the homicide bookshelf, and pulled case 12-11085. The city appointed former Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano to conduct the investigation. Officers found a teen who had been shot when police responded at 5:52 p.m. to a report of multiple shots fired in the 200 block of Maine Street in south Vallejo, police said. The detective conducted interviews of shooting officers in each case, meaning he likely appeared in several of the videotaped interviews that were destroyed at his direction. George Simpson told him the supervisors were watching Netflix, but when Whitney asked Bidou to investigate whether anyone was logged into Netflix that night, Bidou refused. 2023 FOX Television Stations, until WED 9:00 AM PST, Mendocino County Coast, until WED 4:00 AM PST, Santa Lucia Mountains and Los Padres National Forest, from WED 2:00 AM PST until WED 8:00 AM PST, Carquinez Strait and Delta, from THU 2:00 AM PST until THU 8:00 AM PST, Carquinez Strait and Delta, from WED 1:00 AM PST until WED 8:00 AM PST, North Bay interior valleys, East Bay Interior Valleys, Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Lucia Mountains and Los Padres National Forest, High Stakes: Sports Betting in California. Copyright 2023 Informed California Foundation. Another piece of evidence was lost in the Monterrosa shooting: footage from a drone that recorded the killing, according to public records. Brown has since left Vallejo to join the Napa Police Department. California Highway Patrol spotted the stolen vehicle headed eastbound on Interstate 80. December 9, 2022 In January 2021, officials for the city of Vallejo intentionally and with approval from a senior attorney for the city destroyed key evidence in multiple police killings and one non-fatal shooting, documents obtained in a public records lawsuit filed by Open Vallejo show. state, and local issue that our lawmakers and citizens must address together. He is well-liked and respected by his peers and by members of the community we serve. Has the Bay Area moved on? John Whitney said the chief knew officers bent their badges after shootings as early as 2014. shot and killed 53-year-old Peter Mestler, shot and killed 44-year-old Marshall Tobin, records from the departments badge manufacturer, fired on Aug. 16, 2019, for erasing data on his city-owned cellphone. OAKLAND, Calif. Phil Norawong went out to dinner with two friends in Oaklands Chinatown. In April 2019, Whitney was acting chief of police while Bidou was out of the state. Knight is one of the lead attorneys defending the city in the resulting lawsuits, court records show. Our schools need to be a safe place for our children, Vallejo Police Department Interim Chief Jason Ta said. In a subsequent deposition on Dec. 21, Senior Vallejo Police Assistant Stephanie Dailey, the civilian employee who manages the evidence section, said she was unaware of that policy until the week of her testimony. To uncover how the evidence came to be destroyed by a department already under investigation by the state attorney general over the number and nature of its police shootings, Open Vallejo amended its public records lawsuit, deposed multiple city employees, and prompted the release of hundreds of pages of logs, reports, and internal communications. The responding officers found an adult male suffering from a gunshot wound in the street. And we will be having additional staff and security on campus tomorrow," said Vallejo City Unified School District Superintendent, William Spalding. One suspect was described as a juvenile armed with a handgun. Nyhoff told Whitney he wanted to schedule a meeting the next day with him, then-City Attorney Claudia Quintana and then-Mayor Bob Sampayan to review the video of when Jenkins was stopped. Officers bent the tips of their star-shaped badges following their involvement in a shooting for more than a decade. Following the ruling, Vallejo began disclosing some audiovisual records. Jenkins was arrested and taken to jail, but the Solano County District Attorneys office didnt charge her with a crime. McConnell appeared willing to revisit the question of how long Vallejo retains records of police shootings. Whitney testified that Bidou had intended to have the badges repaired, but he was concerned that the bill would raise questions about why so many officers needed their badges repaired. Former Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams launched an independent, third party police misconduct investigation into badge bending. But in an interview five days before the city filed that motion, Brown said that a lawyer for the city told her and others not to destroy police records during a meeting about the DOJ agreement. The motion filed last month by Open Vallejo seeks an order prohibiting the city from destroying additional records until it produces public records that are still being withheld. They found bullets that had apparently been missed by the citys forensic technicians lying on the back seat, according to Melissa Nold, who represents the family in a civil rights lawsuit against the city. An investigation is underway after a Vallejo High School staff member was shot, injured while trying to break up a fight right outside of the school. He was taken to the hospital with a non-life threatening injury. His work has been published in ProPublica, the Appeal and Oaklandside. Shooting in Oakland hotel parking lot puts man in critical condition The most important news and best events in Solano County. Many of those records would have become public under the new law. Detectives from the Major Crimes Section responded and took over the investigations. (The city subsequently released photographs and recordings from that case.). Built with the Largo WordPress Theme from the Institute for Nonprofit News. Whitney also said he was disturbed that a 2017 incident when officers attacked a man who was repairing his fence was not investigated. Last March, experts and a lawyer for the family of Willie McCoy examined the Mercedes in which the 20-year-old was shot 38 times by Vallejo police in February 2019. Before we return, dispose, or destroy any of this Evidence we wanted to clear this with the City Attorneys Office, Mustard wrote, copying two other members of the Vallejo police command staff. The Vallejo Police Department Detective Division is investigating the motive and circumstances of the shooting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Kevin Rose hours later, Rose found some problem with the SD card that prevented him from viewing the files; a subsequent examination by the U.S. Secret Service revealed that the footage had been overwritten with zeros. VIDEO: Vallejo police release body cam video of controversial shooting at Taco Bell. Vallejo Mayor Robert McConnell, who as a councilmember voted in 2018 to change the retention schedule, called the destruction of records unfortunate in an interview Saturday. With a new law poised to force the release of shooting records, a lawyer and a detective made a decision no court can reverse. If its determined that the city of Vallejo said, Oh gosh, we better get rid of these records, the judge said, you will not convince this court that it was the legislatures intent that that should be an out afforded to public agencies.. Ms. McCarthy refused. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact the Vallejo police detective division at (707) 648-4524. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the stop in May 2019. Check out Bay Area safety tracker, Tracking the drought: Map shows conditions across SF Bay Area, Bay Area Life; Sundays at 6:30 p.m. on ABC7, Oakland student charged for accidentally shooting 13-year-old at school, police say. Click here to become a sustaining member of our newsroom. Mustard supervised both the Monterrosa and McCoy investigations. Open Vallejo The transcripts detail Whitneys version of events and corroborate previous court testimony in an unrelated case, further illustrating who knew about the tradition inside one of Californias most deadly police departments. In an emailed statement to the I-Team, the Broadmoor Police Department writes in part: "A thorough investigation of Officer McMahon's background for the Broadmoor Police Department was completed by a background investigator with more than 20 years of civilian and high-level military law enforcement and background investigations experience. She certainly shouldn't have been charged with any crime and booked in the county jail, and that we needed to conduct an internal affairs investigation effective immediately.. In court filings last year, Knight asserted that the destruction was inadvertent.. We all know he shouldn't have something like that there's no keeping track of shootings and having it on your uniform.. She said a lot of these civil rights cases shouldn't be happening, and implored me to help fix the police department.. This is the second shooting in front of Vallejo High on Nebraska Street since September. The city also agreed to produce some audio and video records it previously claimed did not exist for a price. AR 15 assault rifle and Glock style pistol. In December 2020, concerned about the pace of production of the subpoenaed records, an attorney with the state DOJs Civil Rights Enforcement Section emailed Vallejo officials and asked that they complete production by Feb. 15, 2021. Would dismantling Interstate 980 repair damage to Black neighborhoods? The school will have increased security, with the added presence of Vallejo Police Department personnel. But that was not always the case: Vallejo changed its retention policy just three weeks before a landmark police transparency law, Senate Bill 1421, made those and other police records public. In a motion filed on behalf of the city, Knight stated that the review by the California DOJ did not change the citys timeline for destroying records, and that the DOJ had not requested the now-purged evidence. In late 2016, Tribble was promoted to lieutenant. No city employee has been disciplined for the purge, according to Browns May 5 testimony. Whitney testified that Sgt. The 2012 killing of 23-year-old Romero, the father whose death led to enduring protests, remains one of Vallejos most costly and highly contested police shootings. at a house in Vallejo the night of Feb. 21. Ned Hamson Expand search. Biden: Putin made 'big mistake' by suspending US arms treaty, Watch: Rescuers save small dog trapped in rubble following earthquake in Turkey, South Carolina woman killed in Kroger parking lot spit at suspect prior to shooting: police, Son arrested in Santa Rosa after mother assaulted with hammer, Georgia woman who lost toe after pedicure says she's now 'a walking PSA': What you need to know now. The detective told investigators that he mistook a hammer in Monterrosas sweatshirt for a gun. However, evidence logs and internal records obtained by this newsroom indicate that Vallejo has gotten rid of evidence in at least two dozen other shootings since 2000. For example, Vallejo initially claimed, in September 2019, that it did not possess audiovisual files for older incidents, including the 2017 killing of Angel Ramos. Police in Vallejo are investigating after a man was found fatally shot in a vehicle late Wednesday afternoon, in the city's seventh homicide of the year. In 2013, the Vallejo Police Department took over the childrens section of the local library to expand its evidence storage. Assistant City Attorney Knight stated in court filings that the destruction happened inadvertently and that the evidence should have been retained due to Open Vallejos pending public records requests. A female minor, who was also a passenger, died while being transported to the hospital, the D.A. We will utilize all of our available resources to investigate this matter and assist the school in providing a safer environment. Vallejo police have arrested a man for spray-painting threatening messages towards President Biden and President Obamaon various structures across the city. This button displays the currently selected search type. The incident stemmed from a carjacking in Vallejo on Feb. 22. D.A. 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