Family files civil claim over student’s violent arrest at Fairfield High School

FAIRFIELD – The family of Maurice Williams, a 16-year-old student at Fairfield High School, filed a claim against the city of Fairfield on Friday alleging excessive force and civil rights violations by a police officer over a violent arrest at the school last month.

The law firm representing the family, Burris Nisenbaum & Curry, said in a press release Monday that Williams was “violently assaulted”. 

“The officer punched Maurice Williams in the head at least seven times while he was on the ground and repeatedly pulled his locks, even after handcuffing him,” the attorneys said in the press release.

The incident happened on May 20 at around 12:30 p.m. when police officers were called in to assist with breaking up a fight between two students.

Williams was being escorted off-campus and was struggling with an officer when Officer Bianca Camacho Brown rushed to Williams, body slammed him, straddled him and repeatedly punched him in the face, body camera footage shows.

“The officer appears to have anger issues that raise serious questions about her suitability to serve as a police officer, particularly when interacting with high school students,” John Burris, an attorney for the family, said in a statement.

Videos of the incident went viral and drew widespread concern and outrage. 

A police statement released a day after the incident included further video and characterized Brown’s blows as “distraction strikes” intended to overcome Williams’ resistance. On May 22, police Chief Dan Marshall issued a second statement saying that the officer was being reassigned and the department was starting an investigation into the incident. 

“There is a serious question about the Fairfield Police Department training and policy standards, especially when they initially dismissed Officer Camacho [Brown]’s head strikes as ‘distraction strikes,’” another of the family’s attorneys, Ben Nisenbaum, said.

Days after the incident, a second video surfaced of Brown violently pulling 18-year-old Maia Hamilton by the hair out of her car last year. 

On Tuesday, a protest was held during a Fairfield City Council meeting. Dozens of speakers implored the council to take action to hold the officer accountable. 

“What was even more disheartening [than the arrest] was watching Fairfield PD scramble to justify a clear abuse of power caught on camera,” a Fairfield High School student identified as Tiana said.

“I implore the city of Fairfield to stand up to this corruption, take action and stop enabling and excusing this violent behavior before it escalates and someone is seriously injured or killed by Officer Camacho [Brown] and the blood lies on your hands,” she said.

Several speakers pointed to Brown’s previous tenure with the Vallejo Police Department and its repeated allegations of civil rights abuses, comparing Brown’s hiring to Dustin Joseph, a former Vallejo officer who was hired by Fairfield after allegations of serious misconduct. 

Joseph, along with his partner Sean Kenney, shot and killed Mario Romero in 2012. Joseph later transferred to Fairfield. Joseph was then implicated in Vallejo’s badge bending scandal – when officers bent the tips of their badges to mark shootings – drawing protests in Fairfield.

Romero’s brother, Kris Kelley, also spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, and said that Joseph had violent encounters at Vallejo schools before he killed her brother.

“Both of the officers murdered my brother in front of my family,” Kelley said. “That's the story of Dustin Joseph. That name should sound familiar to you guys.”

"The family deserves respect,” Kelley said of Williams’ family. “It's bad enough to be a victim and then to be revictimized over and over and over again, by a false narrative, by racists, by people who don't care about what happened."

According to court records, Brown is also married to Vallejo police Lt. Jodi Brown and was served divorce papers a day prior to the Fairfield High School incident. 

Jodi Brown has been with Vallejo police since 2013. Bianca Brown joined the Vallejo Police Department in 2019. At the time, Jodi Brown was going through a divorce from her previous marriage, according to court records. 

Court records show Bianca and Jodi Brown were married on Aug. 10, 2021. Around that time, Jodi Brown was promoted to sergeant. Bianca Brown left Vallejo police to join Fairfield months after they were married, on Dec. 3.

There is no evidence that has been made public that Bianca Brown was involved in misconduct in the Vallejo Police Department.

While the Vallejo police policy manual does not expressly forbid marriage between officers,  it would have complicated their working environment and required exceptions for assignments to avoid any conflicts of interest.

The Vallejo Police Officers Association blamed Bianca Brown’s departure on then-Chief Shawny Williams, who they said led to the female officer workforce being cut in half. The union frequently clashed with Williams and blamed him for a decline in the number of officers, while actively blocking Williams’ attempts to recruit new ones.

Jodi Brown has had a controversial tenure in Vallejo and elsewhere. She was fired by Richmond police in 2013 and hired in Vallejo three months later, according to records obtained from the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. 

She was once suspended because she was in two car crashes while on duty within a week in 2017. In one of the crashes, she was involved in a pursuit but waited 47 minutes to report it, which the department found was an “unreasonable time delay.” In the second, the investigation found that she was at fault for not properly yielding after a stop.

A lawsuit filed last year alleged that Brown lost a pair of gold-plated handcuffs inscribed with her name and badge number during an encounter with 21-year-old Robert Baker. 

After that, police searched the home of Baker’s parents leaving it in shambles and damaging property. Police later pursued Baker on a motorbike, causing him to crash and break his leg, and falsely reported the family car had been involved in a robbery, leading to Baker’s family being detained at gunpoint in San Francisco, the lawsuit alleges. 

Bianca and Jodi Brown’s marriage lasted nearly four years and they were separated in September. Jodi Brown then filed for divorce on Dec. 17.