Vallejo police search for golden handcuffs could expose years of due process violations

VALLEJO – A Vallejo police lieutenant’s efforts to recover her gold-plated inscribed handcuffs could lead to revelations about years of misconduct by the Vallejo Police Department. 

In a hearing last week, a Solano County Superior Court judge ordered the city to explain whether complaints against police officers were improperly withheld from criminal defendants. The order came in the criminal proceedings against Robert Baker, 23, who is accused of evading police twice last year. 

In the first incident, then-police Sgt. Jodi Brown attempted to handcuff him while he was seated in a parked car using her gold-plated handcuffs, which were inscribed with her name and badge number. Baker fled with the handcuffs still attached to his wrist.

Weeks later, Vallejo police Corporal Colin Eaton and Officer Bryan Glick chased Baker for allegedly speeding on his dirt bike. He was knocked off the bike, breaking his leg.

Initially, Baker was not arrested or charged for either incident. Meanwhile, police searched his family home looking for the handcuffs, destroying multiple doors and dumping the contents of moving boxes and kitchen cabinets all over the floor. Police also issued an alert for Baker’s family’s car, which led to the family being detained at gunpoint in San Francisco, according to a civil rights claim. Baker was charged with two counts of evading police in November, weeks after his family filed their claim, but was not charged for the theft of the handcuffs.

Brown, Eaton and Glick each have a history of complaints and discipline. Brown, who has since been promoted to lieutenant, was once suspended for failing to report an on-duty car crash, sued for Tasing a 71-year-old disabled man, and was the subject of harassment complaints from fellow officers. 

Eaton and Glick were two of the six officers who fatally shot Willie McCoy in 2019 and Eaton has faced a string of civil rights complaints since then. Leaked documents obtained by the Vallejo Sun show that Eaton was rejected by three previous law enforcement agencies because of “fraudulent” conduct before he was hired in Vallejo.

Baker’s attorneys are attempting to compel the city to produce misconduct complaints against Brown, Eaton and Glick, a right of criminal defendants under California law. In a motion seeking the records, defense attorney Dan Russo argued that Baker was “targeted, attacked and physically harassed” by the three officers “as a means of exacting revenge for previously embarrassing Sgt. Jodi Brown when she attempted to illegally arrest him.”

Whether the city has complied with motions to disclose evidence of misconduct has recently been called into question. A former police captain testified in a separate civil rights lawsuit earlier this year that Vallejo police kept a separate filing cabinet for certain complaints that weren’t turned over to defendants. During a hearing last week, defense attorney James Mulgannon of the Maas & Russo law firm argued that the city should affirm that it is not withholding any material.

But when Judge John Ellis reviewed the city’s disclosures on Friday, he found that a complaint against one of the officers that he’d seen during a previous case wasn’t there. He then ordered the city to explain the separate filing cabinet during an upcoming hearing.

The city attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Assistant City Attorney Kristoffer Jacob indicated in court that he would appeal the judge’s order, according to Mulgannon.

The missing golden handcuffs

The search for the golden handcuffs started on April 15 of last year. Brown encountered Baker just after she had terminated a pursuit of two burglary suspects in a blue Hyundai Venus, according to an incident report included in court filings. A resident called police to report that they had seen two men jump a fence. Brown was headed there when another officer told her about a parked car nearby that “appeared to be suspicious.” Brown then encountered Baker in the driver’s seat of a parked silver Honda.

According to body camera video included with court filings, Brown stopped and, from her car, asked Baker what he was doing. He said he was waiting for a girl. Brown asked where she lived and he said he didn’t know. Brown got out of the car, asked for Baker’s ID, and he gave it to her. She took it back to her car. When another officer drove past, Brown said, “This guy’s totally related.”

Baker had a valid state ID, but did not have a driver’s license. Brown returned and, while he was still seated in the car, ordered him to put his hands behind his back, then behind his head. Baker asked why he was being detained, and Brown grabbed his arm through the car window, twisted it and yelled, “I’m not playing a game, do you understand what I am telling you? Put your fucking hands behind your head.”

She then put her golden handcuffs on one of his wrists. Baker pulled forward and drove away, the handcuffs still hanging from his wrist.

Melissa Nold, Baker’s attorney in his civil rights case, said that Baker dropped the handcuffs as he was driving away.

The next day, officers went to Baker’s parents’ South Vallejo home and asked a neighbor who lived there. A day after that, Brown and other officers searched the home. No one was home, so they broke down the doors of their house, gate and garage, and dumped boxes and kitchen drawers onto the floor

In an affidavit submitted to the court to obtain a search warrant, Brown said that Baker took her handcuffs in a “robbery by force.” She said she “found his behavior suspicious and believed he may be there to pick up the armed suspect who recently fled from the police.”

Police boarded up Baker’s parents’ home, and it took a week for them to get back in. Baker's parents, Kellyann and Jamal Colter called the Vallejo police watch commander and received a call back from an officer who did not identify herself but was apparently Brown. The officer said that she had personally searched the house and left a copy of the warrant inside. According to the couple, the officer also claimed that there was an arrest warrant for their son and said that he should turn himself in.

When they finally got inside, they found the warrant, which allowed the police to search the home and a car allegedly associated with Baker for “peerless gold-plated handcuffs with the name Sergeant Jodi Brown #637.”

Nold could find no information about an arrest warrant. Vallejo police had an opportunity to arrest Baker weeks later, when two officers chased him down on his dirt bike on May 3.

Eaton wrote in a police report that he spotted a dirt bike rider speeding in the area of Tennessee Street and Broadway. He wrote that he tried to pull the rider over and chased him for several blocks.

Body camera video shows Glick, who approached Baker head-on, briefly swerve toward him. When Baker moved to avoid him, he lost control of the bike and crashed, breaking his leg. Eaton wrote in his report that he was aware that Baker was the person who fled with Brown’s handcuffs.

Baker was not arrested after the pursuit. Yet Vallejo police continued to claim that he was wanted. On May 18, San Francisco police officers pulled over Baker’s parents and their children and held them at gunpoint, according to the family’s civil rights claim. The San Francisco police officers told them that Brown had reported the vehicle was wanted in connection with a robbery and the driver should be considered armed and dangerous, the claim states.

The family filed their civil rights claim five months later, on Oct. 10 of last year. Court records show that about a month after that, on Nov. 6, Baker was charged with three felony counts of evading a police officer. He was not charged with any theft or robbery related to the handcuffs. Nold said Baker didn’t find out about the charges until earlier this year.

Seeking records of officer misconduct

As part of his criminal defense, Baker’s defense attorneys are seeking to review misconduct complaints against the three officers involved in the two pursuits of Baker. Each one has a lengthy history of civil rights complaints and reports of misconduct.

Brown was fired by Richmond police in 2013, three months before she was hired in Vallejo, according to records obtained from the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Richmond police denied a records request for information about her termination.

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.

In 2019, John Mark Raudelunas — a 71-year-old disabled man — sued Vallejo police, saying that when he tried to report another driver throwing an object at his car and striking him in the head, Brown responded, refused to help, then followed him home and Tased him for no reason. The city settled the lawsuit for $37,500 in 2023.

After Brown was promoted to sergeant, she supervised other officers in the patrol division. In that role, the officers under her supervision complained that Brown had engaged in “retaliation,” “harassment,” and created a “hostile work environment.”

Eaton was disqualified by three previous law enforcement agencies before he was hired in Vallejo because of integrity and judgment issues, according to a background investigator’s report. He owed tens of thousands of dollars in back child support and participated in a sham marriage to profit through his military service, according to the investigator’s report.

In Vallejo, Eaton has been involved in several high-profile use of force incidents and has been sued three times. Eaton was one of six officers who shot Willie McCoy in 2019, and he was sued for pulling over McCoy’s niece Deyana Jenkins and Tasing her two months later. He also was disciplined for stepping on a man’s head during a search in 2020 and was seen in a viral video punching a driver after a pursuit in 2023.

Glick was also one of the officers involved in the McCoy shooting and was criticized by a department superior for not properly investigating a domestic violence call in 2018, leading to the woman being re-victimized by the same man hours later.

Eaton and Glick are two of the five current and four former Vallejo officers whom the American Civil Liberties Union has sought to de-certify in a complaint to the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. 

In California, criminal defendants have a right to examine the personnel records of police officers who testify against them to impugn their testimony. The “Pitchess” records are examined by a judge, who rules on whether to allow the evidence into the trial.

However, recent testimony by former Vallejo police Capt. John Whitney indicated that Vallejo police were systematically withholding such records in violation of defendants’ due process rights. Whitney gave the testimony in a deposition in the lawsuit brought by Jenkins, a case also handled by Nold.

Whitney testified that when he became the head of the department’s professional standards division in 2015, he became aware that there were two filing systems in internal affairs: one for investigations the department conducted, and the other for “informal resolutions” of citizen complaints of misconduct, which were kept in the internal affairs sergeant’s office.

For the latter, the department would conduct a cursory investigation into the complaints without reaching a formal conclusion. Whitney said that these records weren’t turned over as required to criminal defendants.

Nold has argued that evidence suggests the practice may be ongoing. Earlier this year, former Deputy Chief Joseph Gomez sued the department and alleged that he discovered a backlog of internal affairs cases that were delayed or ignored despite a one-year statutory deadline, after which the cases are no longer actionable.

Because of Whitney’s testimony, Mulgannon, Baker’s defense attorney, sought an affidavit under penalty of perjury from the city attorney’s office that no material was being withheld during a hearing on Nov. 14.

Judge Ellis reviewed the material submitted by the city, and noticed that a complaint for one of the three officers that he’d seen disclosed in a previous motion wasn’t there. He ordered Vallejo police Sgt. Jason Martinez, who works in internal affairs, to explain the second file cabinet and to track its chain of custody to the present day, to ensure it's now being disclosed.

The hearing is scheduled to resume on Dec. 8.

Sebastien K. Bridonneau contributed reporting.