ACLU hosts community meeting to offer support for Vallejo police reform

VALLEJO – Community members and families affected by police violence discussed how to utilize legal support offered by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California to reform the Vallejo Police Department at a meeting on Thursday night.

More than 80 residents attended the meeting, which is one of the first steps in an ACLU plan to bring a sustained focus of the group’s resources to address police violence in the city. Representatives of the civil rights organization presented a set of policy tools that the group could use to support community efforts to bring about a number of systemic police reforms.

ACLU NorCal criminal justice program director Yoel Haile said that police reform in Vallejo is a project that will require action from a number of leverage points and the meeting was an opportunity for ACLU representatives to listen to the community, hear what the needs are and find ways to match those needs with the resources that the organization can offer.

A significant portion of the presentation was dedicated to officer decertification through SB2, the  police decertification bill which was signed into law in September 2021. The bill created a process to permanently decertify police officers who engage in violent or abusive acts in order to prevent those officers from being rehired by other departments.

The group also suggested how to advance the California Department of Justice police reforms through a consent decree, which would increase pressure on the department to institute the reforms as a judge would review the department's progress and set legal consequences if the reforms are not implemented.

Another way that ACLU attorneys said they could offer support was through the ordinance passed in Vallejo to create a police oversight and accountability commission.

“There are some things that could be much stronger about the ordinance that was created,” said Avi Frey, deputy director of the ACLU NorCal’s criminal justice program. “For example, their findings are not binding. They can only make recommendations as to what should be done as a result of the investigation. They can't insist on discipline.”

Frey said that in order to make the police oversight and accountability commission stronger the city may need to make changes to its charter. “That's a big political effort,” he said. “And that's also something that we could invest our resources in, if that's what the community is interested in.”

As an example of some of the work that ACLU has already engaged in, Frey said that the organization is currently suing for the release of an investigation conducted by former Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano into the Vallejo police practice of bending the tips of their badges to commemorate officer shootings. The report was used to assess the need for disciplinary actions against officers involved in the practice but was never made public.

“I'm sure you all have heard the same thing that I've heard,” Frey said, “Which is the whispers in the wind, that Giordano’s report didn't get it right. We are suing to try and make that public so that we can make clear, make transparent, that there was no justice in what the Vallejo Police Department did in response to badge bending.”

Several community members and families who have lost loved ones to police violence expressed skepticism about the approaches presented by the ACLU representatives.

David Harrison, cousin of Willie McCoy, who was killed by Vallejo police in 2019 when six officers fired 55 shots into McCoy’s vehicle after finding him unresponsive in a Taco Bell drive-thru, expressed concerns that the decertification process in SB 2 called for the police department to report complaints and provide information to the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).

“If you have a police department that is involved in badge bending,” said Harrison, “do you want to trust them to open an investigation into itself?”  

Marshal Arnwine Jr., the ACLU representative who presented information on SB 2, mentioned that members of the public can apply to serve on an advisory board that decides whether to recommend decertification.

However, community members pointed out that the POST commission that ultimately decides whether to adopt the advisory board's recommendations has a majority of members of law enforcement, with only four others on the 15-member commission.

“We get triggered when it sounds like we are going to be set up for failure,” said Kris Kelly, co-chair of the Solano County chapter of the ACLU and sister of Mario Romero, who was killed by Vallejo police in 2012. But Kelley said she is optimistic about the resources that the regional ACLU can bring to the community, “This is just the first step, the dialogue is open and that creates some sense of hope,” she said.

There was a sense of frustration among members of the community who felt that many of the possible avenues to reform had a limited chance of success. Civil rights attorney Melissa Nold offered an explanation for some of the tension in the dialogue.

“The anger of this community isn't directed at you good folks,” Nold said to the ACLU representatives. “We know that you're here trying to help.”

“We have got five, six impacted families here whose loved ones were murdered,” Nold added. . “I think we want to focus on what the ACLU can do to support getting rid of some of those systems that are in place where decertification won’t work.”