Community members voice frustration with pace of Vallejo police reforms

VALLEJO – Vallejo community members expressed intense anger, frustration and distrust of the Vallejo Police Department at a presentation to the City Council on Tuesday about the department’s work toward meeting the reform recommendations from the state Department of Justice.

The oversight agreement between the DOJ and the Vallejo Police Department to institute 45 reform recommendations is set to come to a close on June 5. Vallejo police Chief Jason Ta and Capt. Bob Knight presented the results from the department’s three years of reform work on Tuesday.

Immediately following the presentation Askari Sowonde was first of many public commenters who demanded more expedient police reforms. “You did not talk about what you are going to do to the police officers who continuously murder the families in our community,” Sowonde said.

Angela Sullivan expressed her grief and anger over the killing of her nephew Ronell Foster in 2018 by then-Vallejo police Officer Ryan McMahon. She said McMahon’s career should have ended there but the department’s lack of accountability allowed him to take part in another killing a year later when six officers fired 55 rounds into Willie McCoy’s car after he was found unresponsive in a Taco Bell drive-thru.

She reminded the council that the bent tips of McMahon’s badge, discovered in the McCoy investigation, likely commemorated the killing of her nephew.

“He never posed a threat, everything he did was pulling away from that man.” she said of Foster. The shooting occurred when Foster fled after McMahon attempted to stop him for riding his bicycle without a light. “He went from Taser to flashlight to gun, he used them all!” Sullivan said. “That was hate that killed my child, that was bigotry and racial hate that killed him.”

McMahon was fired from Vallejo police in October 2020 for endangering another officer’s life during the McCoy shooting.  McMahon has since been hired by the Broadmoor Police Department.

In the Vallejo police presentation, Ta and Knight described the department's progress toward the 45 reform recommendations from the DOJ with a colorful bar graph that depicted different stages of completion from “not started” to “substantially complete.” Knight said that during the first year of DOJ oversight the department’s efforts mostly involved planning and determining the scope of the work required to institute the recommendation.

Knight said that in the second year, the department undertook the community input components that are required for many of the policy changes. They also began to create officer assignments for various portions of the recommendations.

“What we found toward the end of the second year was that we were facing a pretty significant workload,” Knight said. This led to Ta’s decision to establish a task force of four full-time officers dedicated to implementing the reforms, which began work in November, Knight said.

Prior to establishing the task force, only three of 45 of the recommendations had been completed and approved by the DOJ, Knight said. In the last six months, the task force was able to secure final approval on five more recommendations, he said.

Ta said that for the purpose of the presentation, the department created their own metrics to show their progress toward final DOJ approval on the incomplete reform recommendations. He noted that the DOJ does not use this system to track the department's progress.

According to those metrics, of the remaining 37 incomplete recommendations, four recommendations had been submitted to the DOJ but had not yet received final approval. Thirteen of the recommendations are undergoing final review before submission to the DOJ, and 18 of recommendations are partially complete or in progress.

Knight asserted that “91% of the recommendations are nearly complete or had been deemed substantially compliant (final approval) by the DOJ.”

Councilmember Charles Palmares questioned Knight about this figure and the department’s presentation of the data. He pointed out that the graph did not show a time frame and although the bars suggested some degree of partial completion it is not clear how long it will take to complete the recommendation.    

“To me it seems a little misleading to say that it’s nearly complete when it may take a while,” Palmares said.

Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz said that although the police department is short staffed and had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic during the three-year DOJ timeline, the progress that the department has made is not sufficient. “This is the most important thing the police department has to do,” she said. “We have lost credibility, we have lost total credibility.”

Loera-Diaz asked for more regular reporting and draft copies of the policies the department is working on to make it possible for the council to track its progress. She then requested that the council agendize a discussion at the next meeting regarding the contract with the OIR Group to oversee the police department.

In early 2021, the council had directed staff to hire the police consulting firm, which drafted the 45 recommendations, to serve as independent auditor of the department until the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission could be established. City staff disregarded the council’s direction without informing the council and later claimed that the OIR Group’s testimony as an expert witness in an unspecified use of force lawsuit posed a conflict of interest.

Loera-Diaz also requested that the council agendize a discussion at the next meeting about extending the DOJ oversight of the police department for five more years as requested by community members and the Solano County American Civil Liberties Union.

Palmares advocated for the council to set a time period for the police department to bring regular reports to the council on their progress toward implementing the DOJ recommendations. He said that it was not clear if the reports should come every 60 days or quarterly as Loera-Diaz mentioned.

Mayor Robert McConnell said that the council already approved a resolution in connection with the OIR oversight contract that required the department to report on their progress every 60 days. But since the contract was never executed, the council has received no reports.  

The council members all thanked the members of the public who participated in the public comment period. Councilmember Cristina Arriola had a votive candle burning at her seat on the dais. Councilmember Diosdado “JR” Matulac encouraged participants to apply for vacant seats on the city’s commissions to experience the process of creating policy first hand.

“Thank you to the speakers who came here this evening,” said Councilmember Rozzana Verder-Aliga. “I know it is difficult for you to come back and hear a report that is not to our satisfaction. I understand the frustration, no words will ever alleviate the pain of losing a loved one.”

At the close of the meeting, McConnell stressed the urgency of the police reforms to staff, addressing City Manager Mike Malone and City Attorney Veronica Nebb. “I think you have heard not only from this council but from the citizens as well, the absolute necessity to move this forward as rapidly as possible,” he said. “As far as I am concerned this is the number one priority.”