State DOJ announces new reform agreement with Vallejo police under court supervision

VALLEJO – California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a new agreement with the Vallejo Police Department on Monday to complete an overdue reform program under court oversight.

Bonta filed the five-year, 144-page stipulated judgment between the state Department of Justice and the city of Vallejo in Solano County Superior Court on Monday and outlined its terms during a press conference at Vallejo City Hall.  It will include an oversight and reform evaluator who will lead the department in implementing 45 reforms that the department was supposed to complete in the last three years under a previous agreement with the Justice Department and adds several new reforms. 

According to Bonta, when the prior three-year reform agreement, which did not include court oversight, expired in June of this year the department was in substantial compliance with 20 of the 45 reforms. 

“Progress for sure,”  Bonta said, “but also not enough. We can’t allow for lapses, we need to keep moving forward if we are to continue to make that progress. We cannot allow for complacency because the people of Vallejo deserve a police department that can guarantee that their civil rights are protected.”

The court supervised agreement lays out ten new reforms that include measures to address unreasonable force,  hold supervisors accountable to complete adequate investigations, conduct outreach in the community, reduce bias in traffic stops, and audit use of force by officers. 

The new agreement calls for cooperation with the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission on the creation of new or amended policy. It requires new and enhanced training programs to eliminate bias in investigatory stops and the reforms will create new policies for responding to mental health crises. 

However, the police commission has still not been formally established, despite that the City Council passed an authorizing ordinance in December, as it has been subject to a meet and confer process with the Vallejo Police Officers Association.

In response to questions from reporters about investigations of past incidents of police violence, Bonta said that the new reform process is designed to address policy and procedure issues systematically to improve outcomes going forward. But he said that there are existing legal pathways for prior incidents to be investigated. 

Bonta said that his office is closing in on completing its review of one high-profile investigation under his office, into the 2020 killing of Sean Monterrosa. The criminal investigation into whether Detective Jarrett Tonn was legally justified to kill Monterrosa has been under investigation by the Justice Department for over two years, one of many investigations into police shootings across California that have languished under Bonta’s oversight. 

Bonta also said that he was “disturbed” by a video posted to TikTok on Friday which showed an officer punch a woman he pulled out of a car after a crash, and said that the incident would be investigated. Police said that the crash happened after the driver and a passenger fled after shoplifting approximately $2,000 worth of merchandise from a nearby store and ran a red light while being chased by the officer, causing the crash, which injured another driver.

Bonta’s step to add court oversight to the Justice Department’s reform efforts in Vallejo were praised by some longtime observers of the department.

"Attorney General Bonta and The City of Vallejo are to be commended for reaching a stipulated consent decree regarding Vallejo PD's systemic History of police misconduct,” said John Burris, an Oakland civil rights attorney who has brought numerous lawsuits against the Vallejo Police Department over the last 20 years.  "However, make no mistake that this is just the beginning."

“The history of consent decrees nationally has demonstrated that there is general resistance among the rank and file, including union leadership,” Burris added. “Change is hard, and the leadership must hold officers accountable; otherwise, the consent decree will not be worth the paper that it is written."

The reforms under the agreement mainly require the department to reform its policies, improve training, and add oversight. 

One of the new reforms under the agreement will seek to reduce bias in stopping and detaining people by creating a new policy that limits the use of pretextual stops and revises training to reiterate that race, gender, and other criteria are not to be used as a factor in effecting a stop unless officers are responding to a credible description of a specific suspect. 

Officers will also have new limitations on when they can conduct searches during consensual encounters and in particular will be prohibited from conducting searches with consent unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has contraband or evidence related to why they were detained. The department will also conduct an ongoing audit of instances when officers point firearms at members of the public.

Interim police Chief Jason Ta said that the department is also looking to proactively evaluate use of force rather than waiting for complaints. He said that some of the reforms will be challenging to implement given the department’s ongoing staffing shortage. 

The City Council recently declared a state of emergency because of the depleted staff and the city is seeking help from the Solano County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol, but both agencies have said that they can’t step in until the city has a contract agreement in place with the police union.

Ta also said that true reform in the department will take a culture shift, a lengthy process that can take years, but he said that there has been progress.

“When we look at culture, we’re looking at a totality of what’s happening, we look at trends, we’re looking at statistics such as complaints that we have, litigation and officer-involved shootings that we have had,” Ta said.  “All of those metrics have improved significantly.”

But the union has already blocked some aspects of the reform efforts, including the hiring of a police auditor in 2021, and obstructed efforts to recruit officers to the department ahead of the departure of former police Chief Shawny Williams last year.

Vallejo city leaders expressed their commitment to following through with the reforms, including Mayor Robert McConnell, who recently suggested that the department could divert officers away from the reform efforts to fill in holes in patrol. He called on the union and other city leaders to support the reforms.

“I know the new chief, deputy chief, and many of our honorable officers strongly support this,” McConnell said. “I now call upon the leader of the Vallejo Police Officers Association, future Vallejo council members, future mayors, future staff and all candidates for council, and indeed the entire populace to not only support what needs to be done, but to even do it faster than anticipated five years."