Families of people killed by Vallejo police criticize progress on mandated reforms

VALLEJO – Families of people killed by Vallejo Police officers attended the Vallejo City Council meeting on Tuesday for the second time in a month to call for an overhaul of city policing ahead of the police department’s update on mandated reforms.

The Vallejo Police Department provided an update to the council during Tuesday’s meeting on its progress on reforms required under a 2024 settlement agreement with the California Department of Justice. It was the final meeting before the council’s summer break.

The update included some “achievements” made by the agency, according to police Chief Jason Ta. The department has achieved the desired standard of “substantial compliance” on 17 of the 45 reforms required, according to the first evaluator report by Jensen Hughes.

The department discussed how each new policy under these reforms requires multiple steps to be completed. For example, the stop and search policy is currently being updated, and a new community policing policy is underway.

The department also described work underway to improve data gathering, such as to include new data in next year’s reporting of traffic stops on collisions and demographics of people who drive in Vallejo. This will be done as part of the 2025 Racial and Identity Profiling Act stops report, according to the agency. 

Vallejo families arrived Tuesday evening saying they want city leaders to continue hearing about the losses of people killed by police officers. 

Several said they were motivated to attend following two incidents this month, as footage obtained by the Vallejo Sun shows a Vallejo police officer speed past the scene of a motorcycle crash where Marcus Kutterer died July 14 while fleeing the officer.

The agency also this week released footage of the July 20 incident where Vallejo police officers shot and killed Rommel Delfin Querol after he opened fire on them with an AR-15 ghost gun, the first fatal police shooting involving Vallejo officers in six years. 

The demands for action Tuesday included to fire City Attorney Veronica Nebb and to fire officers named in the recently-released badge bending report, the investigation into the practice of officers bending the tips of their badge after a shooting. Others called for the city to release bodycam footage surrounding Kutterer’s death. But others said they do not expect to see substantial change from the city administration. 

In an interview before the meeting, Kori McCoy, whose brother Willie McCoy who was killed by Vallejo police in 2019, said he does not think the city, county or state will bring about real change in Vallejo policing. He added he doesn't think the councilmembers are committed to getting to know the people impacted by the officer-involved killings.

“There are people on the City Council who know who the families are and are well aware of the things alleged, and they have no interest in getting to the core of what those things are,” McCoy said. 

“I think it’s more important as a family member to be present. It’s more just to show we’re not going anywhere.”

Cat Brooks of the Anti Police-Terror Project said she thinks there is a growing groundswell of organizing underway as people ask questions and keep talking about the people killed by Vallejo police officers, particularly following Kutterer’s death.

“You know, Antoinette [Saddler] literally told them last time we were here ‘If you don’t do something people are going to die,’” Brooks said. Saddler’s brother Angel Ramos was killed by a Vallejo police officer in 2017 who was implicated in the badge bending report.

Brooks said that despite the required reforms, “There’s no structural change within. A lot of the people in the police department have been here the whole time, just like the people in Oakland Police Department had always been there.

“I expect business to continue as usual. I expect the streets to grow again,” she said. “We have to change the entire way we do business, we have to stop pretending we can change anything with policing.”

In public comment, more than 10 spoke criticizing the department and city. 

“When and in whose case are you going to take this seriously … to care about Black and Brown bodies being killed by this police department?” asked Michelle Monterrosa, sister of Sean Monterrosa. “No one wants to raise their kids here and be afraid. I really thought that after Sean, this shit would stop! No one has ever reached out to us families, to sit down with us.” 

Saddler said Kutterer had four children and a sister, and said the city should implement a no-chase policy for police.

Saddler also noted findings from the recently released RIPA report for 2024, which showed that Black people were overrepresented in traffic stops in 2024 compared to their share of the Vallejo population.

Kris Kelley, whose brother Mario Romero was shot and killed by Vallejo police officers in 2012, called the reform report “ridiculous” and said the police officers who bent badges and “falsified evidence” were not held accountable.

“Nebb made sure all the evidence was destroyed in the case,” Kelley said. “She is a big part of why things are going the way they are. We’re tired, we’re pissed off, we’re grieving … you have been warned. This cannot go on.”

While the council did not take action on the informational item, most of the councilmembers spoke addressing the families and the department’s presentation. 

Mayor Andrea Sorce said the council has been trying to get an update on police reform on the agenda for at least six months. She said she was concerned to see “the unwillingness of the city to even acknowledge how we got here, framing the settlement agreement as some kind of voluntary thing, when the Attorney General sued the city and that’s how it started.”

“There is actual good work happening, there are policies being changed, there are good officers practicing good policing for the city,” Sorce said. “That’s not going to be enough if there isn't the work done to repair the damage – that has to come from intent from this body and the entire leadership of the city … to do the work that hasn’t been done for the last 15 years.”

Councilmember Charles Palmares also criticized the presentation of the reform update, saying the city must improve its messaging around reforms by “acknowledging what’s happened, and also what this reform means to folks.”

“How will this help people and protect people in the end? I think that’s what’s missing here,” he said. 

Vice Mayor Diosdado Matulac agreed, saying “We can say whatever we want, but unless the actions happen and the reforms happen, we need to do a better job.”

Councilmember Tonia Lediju told the public that the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission and Public Safety Subcommittee are part of the work to address the mandated reforms. She said she also wants to know how the evaluator group is working closely with the department reporting “on a weekly basis” about the reform work underway. She said she wants the subcommittee to more closely review the 2024 profiling report compared to national trends.

“Reform’s not good enough, we have to transform,” she said. 

Sorce thanked the families for sharing their experiences. “Nothing can compare to what it takes for someone to come to a meeting like this and have to relive that trauma and speak before us,” she said.

The first-year evaluator report by Jensen Hughes as required under the settlement agreement with the state DOJ, completed Jan. 30, is available online. It said that the DOJ and the evaluator are both concerned about the agency’s ability to achieve overall compliance on all reforms, given the current pace.