Judge dismisses lawsuit by former Vallejo deputy police chief

FAIRFIELD – A Solano County Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit by former Vallejo Deputy Police Chief Joseph Gomez on Thursday that alleged he was fired for his attempts to address incidents of officer misconduct.

The lawsuit brought claims under a whistleblower statute designed to protect employees who report or refuse to participate in illegal activity. 

Gomez’s attorney Kevin G. Little argued in court filings that Gomez had engaged in a protected action when he began processing a backlog of officer misconduct investigations that were approaching a statutory deadline beyond which officers can no longer be disciplined.

Little argued that the backlog of investigations was part of an intentional system designed to circumvent the disciplinary process. The delay would ultimately interfere with legislation mandating public disclosure of officer misconduct as well as reporting required under the state’s officer decertification process, Little wrote.  

However, Judge Alesia Jones did not agree that the delayed investigations amounted to a violation of the law and ruled that the lawsuit did not meet the basic requirements for a valid whistleblower claim under the statute. 

Little did not reply to a request for comment on Jones’ ruling.

Gomez was hired as Vallejo’s deputy chief in June 2023, a month before the city declared a public safety staffing emergency with staffing levels at a historic low of 72 sworn officers. Gomez had previously worked at the Fresno Police Department for 32 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant, and served as chief of the Selma Police department for just over a year. Gomez left Vallejo in March 2024, just nine months after he was hired.

Gomez sued the department last year. The lawsuit claimed that Gomez was recruited and hired specifically to reform administrative and accountability processes within the department. That work included completing performance evaluations that were over a year behind some of which had allegedly been lost by a captain who had taken the evaluations home.

Gomez alleged that he also discovered a number of officer misconduct investigations were approaching the one-year statutory deadline. The suit claims that Gomez worked diligently to review the investigations and determine if discipline was necessary.

But according to Gomez’s lawsuit, he faced pushback from department members who allegedly preferred to allow the misconduct cases to expire, eliminating the possibility of disciplinary action.

The suit alleges that captains who wanted Gomez’s position as deputy chief engaged in a campaign of harassment in which they followed Gomez’s every move and complained to then-interim Chief Jason Ta about any attempt Gomez made to hold members of the department accountable for misconduct. 

The lawsuit points out that the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association is unusual in that captains are protected members of the union while most police unions do not represent the department’s upper management.  

According to the lawsuit, then-union President Michael Nichelini filed a grievance against Gomez for doing administrative and personnel work that was the responsibility of captains under the union’s contract. 

Gomez said that he was never told about the grievance and only learned about it in a meeting with union representatives and the city attorney. When Gomez asked Ta why he was never told about the grievance, Ta became angry, according to the lawsuit.

Gomez alleged that Ta restricted his supervisory duties and then suspended him. After the suspension, the city offered him a $100,000 severance package in exchange for his resignation, according to the lawsuit.

Gomez asked Ta to explain why he was being let go. But instead of providing specific examples of performance issues, Ta only said that Gomez was “not prepared” and had failed to build “trust in the agency,” according to the suit.

The lawsuit alleges that Ta’s reference to “building trust” basically meant that Gomez was disliked because of his attempts to reform accountability processes at the department.

When Gomez refused to accept the resignation offer, the city fired him, according to the suit.

The court’s ruling last week did not address whether Gomez’s termination was a result of retaliation because Jones found that his claim did not meet the initial requirements of the statute.

In her ruling, Jones pointed out that the lawsuit only alleged that misconduct investigations were approaching the deadline but had not yet expired. Therefore, Gomez could not claim that he had reported or refused to participate in a violation of the law to establish the basis for a valid whistleblower claim.

“As Plaintiff does not sufficiently allege that he disclosed a believed violation of law to an authority he does not sufficiently allege that he suffered an adverse employment action due to such a disclosure, either,” Jones’s ruling states.

Jones also did not accept Little’s argument that the department’s alleged practice of delaying misconduct investigations until the deadline approaches does not allow for adequate consideration and results in a number of downstream legal violations related to reporting requirements, public transparency, and due process protection for police officers. 

“To construe completion of a task before its deadline as violative of the deadline vitiates the purpose of the deadline.” Jones’s ruling states.

The Vallejo Police Department has a history of improperly handling internal affairs investigations. Former Vallejo police Capt. John Whitney testified that the department kept a separate filing cabinet for certain misconduct complaints that the department illegally withheld from attorneys requesting information to support a criminal defense.

The separate filing cabinet came up in the criminal case of Robert Baker in November. Baker was charged with evading police officers twice. The first time, Vallejo police Lt. Jodi Brown attempted to detain Baker for sitting in a parked car without a valid driver’s license but he drove away with her golden handcuffs attached to his wrist.

Officers searched Baker’s parents’ home for the handcuffs, then, weeks later chased Baker down on a motorbike until he crashed and broke his leg. Baker’s attorney had requested the personnel files of officers involved in the interest of showing a pattern of misconduct. The judge noticed that certain files were missing from what he had seen in previous cases and questioned the city’s attorney. 

The city’s attorney confirmed there had been a separate filing cabinet but claimed that the files had since been combined and the missing files were an oversight. 

The Vallejo Police department is currently updating its personnel complaints policy. A draft of the new policy is slated to be presented to the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission Monday evening for initial review. 

The department highlighted a number of changes in the proposed policy, including the use of complaint tracking software with the ability to monitor complaint expiration timelines.

The current policy and the newly proposed policy require supervisors assigned to investigate personnel complaints and alleged misconduct to “proceed with due diligence to investigate the complaint within one year.”