Vallejo confirms police had separate filing cabinet that hid officer complaints from courts

VALLEJO — An attorney for the city of Vallejo confirmed to a Solano County Superior Court judge on Monday that Vallejo police kept a separate filing cabinet for internal affairs, preventing defense attorneys from accessing complaints of officer misconduct relevant to their defense.

The revelation came about in the criminal prosecution of Robert Baker, who is charged with evading police twice. Baker’s defense attorney James Mulgannon sought relevant police internal affairs files for their defense during a hearing last month. 

Mulgannon pointed out that former Vallejo police Capt. John Whitney testified in a civil rights lawsuit earlier this year that the department kept a separate filing cabinet of complaints against officers that were resolved without a formal investigation and illegally withheld from criminal defendants. Mulgannon sought assurances that the practice was not ongoing.

But during the November court hearing, Judge John Ellis said that there were files missing from what Assistant City Attorney Kristoffer Jacob had disclosed to him but that he had seen disclosed in previous cases. This prompted Ellis to ask Jacob about the existence of the secret filing cabinet. 

On Monday, Ellis said that Jacob confirmed the existence of the separate filing cabinet to him in a private session.

Ellis said that Jacob assured him that all the files from the separate internal affairs cabinets had since been consolidated into one and all relevant files for the case at hand had been looked for and disclosed. Jacob said that the omission of a file in Baker’s case was “an unintentional oversight.” 

That did not convince the defense.

Mulgannon requested an affidavit from the city swearing under oath that all files from the separate filing cabinet were found and made disclosable. But Ellis denied his request.

“If you don’t trust them, I don't know what to tell you,” Ellis said.

Neither Ellis nor Jacob provided details about the separate filing cabinet, like how many files it contained, the time period for its existence and its full chain of custody.

“The city of Vallejo concealing complaints made against officers and not bringing them to court is something that is a violation of the law,” Mulgannon said in an interview. “It goes absolutely against all the public policy interests.” 

“What we got today was an admission that they were doing that, which is huge,” said Mulgannon. 

“What we didn’t get is any information as to how long files have been kept secret from the public,” Mulgannon said. “We didn’t get any information on what steps were actually taken to ensure that those previously kept secret are now being included in the Pitchess discovery.”

The “Pitchess” motion allows defense attorneys to access secret personnel records of police officers who are testifying against their clients in order to impugn their testimony. The records are first examined by a judge, who determines whether or not to disclose certain personnel records, which can then be used by the defense attorney. 

The existence of a secret separate filing cabinet for internal affairs meant that complaints of officer misconduct and related personnel files could have been kept hidden from judges and defense attorneys for years, preventing accused individuals from receiving a fair trial.

In Baker’s case, Sgt. Jodi Brown attempted to arrest him using her golden handcuffs after she found him sitting in a parked car. Baker drove away with them still attached to his wrist. Vallejo police searched his parents’ home two days later looking for the handcuffs. A month after that, officers chased Baker on a dirt bike and tried to run him off the road, causing a crash where he broke his leg.

The officers involved in those incidents, including Brown, Officer Bryan Glick and Corporal Colin Eaton, have faced a string of civil rights complaints in their time with the Vallejo Police Department.

Eaton, for example, was one of six officers who shot Willie McCoy in 2019. Two months later, he and another officer Tased McCoy’s cousin, Deyana Jenkins, during a traffic stop. In 2023, he was seen on a viral Tiktok video punching Maiya Green’s head into the ground during an arrest.

Melissa Nold, who represents Baker in the criminal case as well as a civil rights lawsuit, said that pertinent information from the officers’ personnel records were still not disclosed to the defense.

Nold, who also represents Jenkins in a civil rights lawsuit, has said that the city disclosed 150 claims and citizen complaints that were concealed from her previous plaintiffs going back to 2010, including McCoy’s family. Nold has filed new claims accusing the city of defrauding her clients in previous litigation.

Whitney testified about the separate filing cabinet in a deposition for Jenkins’ lawsuit. Prior to Whitney’s testimony, attorneys believed it was possible it was just problematic record keeping that meant not all files were being disclosed, said Nold. 

“We're open to the possibility that it's just this really dysfunctional system that they have in place,” said Nold. “But then he [Whitney] clarifies that, oh no, this was intentional.”

“That's why I'm shocked that there's an admission,” Nold said. “Municipalities don't admit to wildly criminal things. Maybe they think because it was in the past.” 

But Nold said that previous criminal defendants who had records withheld from their defense attorneys could reopen their cases, including people who have committed genuine wrongdoing.  

“That just opens the door for anybody that's ever been convicted of a crime when the Vallejo Police Department was the arresting officer, and everybody that's ever sued them in a civil case against the police department, to reopen those cases because of the fraud,” she said. 

“Maybe they don't realize the implication of the whole Pandora's box that they opened.”