Attorneys in civil rights case against Vallejo police seek to depose Solano judge

VALLEJO – Civil rights attorneys representing a woman who was Tased by Vallejo police during a traffic stop in 2019 are seeking to depose a recently appointed Solano County Superior Court judge, alleging that during her previous job in the Vallejo City Attorney’s Office she worked to conceal evidence of Vallejo police misconduct.

The attorneys are seeking to depose Judge Kelly Trujillo, who was appointed to the court by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year. Trujillo was an assistant city attorney in the Vallejo City Attorney’s Office from 2012 to 2020, where she worked closely with the Vallejo Police Department during its most violent and controversial period.

Vallejo civil rights attorney Melissa Nold alleged that after she filed several high-profile lawsuits against Vallejo police in 2019, Trujillo ordered the department to destroy records related to complaints against Vallejo police officers in violation of requirements to preserve evidence. Nold also alleged that Trujillo worked with Vallejo police to conceal the practice of officers bending the tips of their badges after a shooting.

“I’ve never heard of a judge being called as a witness in a matter like this,” Nold told the Sun, “but I’ve also never heard of an Assistant City Attorney turned judge being caught red handed concealing and destroying records either.”

Trujillo and the Vallejo City Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

Nold is seeking to depose Trujillo and potentially call her as a witness at trial in a lawsuit filed by Deyana Jenkins in 2019. Jenkins was pulled over on April 15, 2019, three months after six Vallejo police officers killed her uncle 20-year-old Willie McCoy by firing on him 55 times after he was found unresponsive in a Taco Bell drive-thru.

Jenkins’ lawsuit alleges that Vallejo officers Colin Eaton and Jordon Patzer – two of the officers who had killed McCoy – held her at gunpoint, dragged her out of the car, threw her on the ground and Tased her. A bystander recorded the events on a cell phone. Jenkins was arrested and taken to jail, but the Solano County District Attorney’s office didn’t charge her with a crime.

When she filed Jenkins’ lawsuit, Nold also represented McCoy’s family and Adrian Burrell, a U.S. Marine veteran who was attacked by a Vallejo police officer for filming a traffic stop from the front porch of his home. Those lawsuits alleged Vallejo police had a long pattern of ignoring complaints and misconduct.

Nold alleged that despite the pending litigation, Trujillo worked to destroy or withhold evidence from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

“There were multiple preservation of evidence requirements she intentionally violated and she ordered the record destruction for those claims/complaints despite knowing that,” Nold said. Nold also alleged that Trujillo and Assistant City Attorney Katelyn Knight worked to withhold “a significant amount” of evidence related to Vallejo police complaints of misconduct.

“Prior to this year I was aware of 25-30 people who filed claims in the last 10 years alleging misconduct/excessive force but the real number is actually maybe triple,” Nold said. “I haven’t finished analyzing the data I’ve received but I’ve never heard of most of the names despite having requested ALL of them at least 5 separate times in different cases."

The concealed evidence, Nold alleged, affected the outcomes of several civil rights cases, including McCoy and Burrell as well as Ronell Foster, who was killed by Vallejo police in 2018, and Angel Ramos, who was killed by police in 2017.

Trujillo was often included in Vallejo police use of force review board meetings that evaluated whether officers’ actions in shootings were in department policy, according to public records released by the city. For example, she was part of the board that cleared Officer Zachary Jacobsen for killing Ramos and a board that cleared Officers Matt Komoda and David McLaughlin for firing on a car that was backing up toward them in 2016. In both incidents, police officials later testified that the officers had their badges bent to mark the shootings.

Nold also alleged that Trujillo was included in meetings about badge bending when police officials decided not to investigate it or document who was involved.

The practice was later publicly revealed by former police Capt. John Whitney, who sued the city alleging wrongful termination and testified in a deposition that he was alarmed by numerous issues in the department that he felt weren’t properly investigated, including badge bending and the incident with Jenkins.

Whitney testified that then-police Chief Andrew Bidou was aware of badge bending since at least 2015 but took no action to investigate it. Whitney said that after the officers shot McCoy, one of them, Ryan McMahon, was placed on leave to investigate alterations to his gun. An internal affairs investigator noticed that the tips of McMahon’s badge were bent, apparently representing the shootings of McCoy and Foster. McMahon was fired for endangering another officer during the McCoy shooting but is seeking to get his job back through arbitration.

According to Whitney’s deposition, Trujilo was present in a meeting with high-ranking police officials to discuss the investigation into McMahon, but badge bending was not discussed except for the observation that McMahon’s badge had two bends in it. The practice would not be thoroughly investigated until the following year, after Whitney was fired and disclosed it publicly. The city has refused to release the results of its investigation.

It’s not the first time that Vallejo has been accused of withholding evidence in civil rights lawsuits. Last year, the Vallejo Sun reported that McMahon had been placed on a performance improvement plan for a series of incidents in 2018, but Nold said the records were not disclosed to attorneys representing McCoy until after she found out about them from the Sun. In 2022, the city attorney’s office acknowledged that records in five police shootings had been “inadvertently” destroyed at their direction, despite pending public records requests for the material.

Nold said that because of Trujilo’s alleged role in covering up misconduct in the Vallejo Police Department, she and other prominent attorneys raised objections to her appointment as a judge last year. “But Governor Newsom decided to appoint her to fill the empty seat anyway,” she said.