Vallejo police union president’s lawsuit against city dismissed

VALLEJO – A federal judge granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by the Vallejo Police Officers Association on Friday, finding that VPOA President Lt. Michael Nichelini had not adequately shown that city officials retaliated against him or that his civil rights were violated during a series of disciplinary proceedings that led to Nichelini’s termination in 2021.

The lawsuit, which also named Nichelini as a plaintiff, sought $10 million in damages. It alleged that city officials had targeted him and former VPOA President Sgt. Mat Mustard in an effort to place officers preferred by then-Chief Shawny Williams on the VPOA board.

But the 27-page order by U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd found the allegations that the city had created an official policy to try and dismantle the VPOA leadership to be “speculative and conclusory” and that the VPOA had alleged “no facts to support their conclusion.”

The lawsuit claimed that Nichelini’s free speech rights were violated and that he was unfairly painted as a “racist cop” after he shared an image of a 1907 police badge in a VPOA newsletter that he did not notice had an image of a swastika engraved on it. Nichelini was fired for sending an email to a reporter that was interpreted as threatening, but his termination was later overturned by an arbitrator, who found that Nichelini was engaged in protected union activity.

Drozd found that Nichelini had failed to state specific actions by city officials that violated Nichelini’s civil rights, that Nichelini had not adequately supported the claim that he had been “painted as a ‘racist cop’ with career-ending consequences” and that his due process rights had not been violated because he was adequately notified of disciplinary actions against him and given an opportunity to respond.

The judge gave Nichelini 21 days to amend the lawsuit to address the issues, but Nichelini’s claims of retaliation and violation of privacy were dismissed entirely.

Nichelini's attorney Grant Winter argued during a brief phone call that a judge granting a motion to dismiss the lawsuit did not mean the lawsuit was dismissed, but would not elaborate and declined to say how he planned to proceed with the case.

Nichelini joined the Vallejo Police Department in 2006 after a decade in the Oakland Police Department. He followed his father, Robert Nichelini, who was employed by the Oakland Police Department since 1971 and left to be Vallejo’s chief in 1995. Robert Nichelini retired in 2012.

Michael Nichelini had a controversial tenure in Oakland and was subject to several excessive force allegations.

Oakland’s Citizens Police Review Board recommended that Nichelini be suspended for two days for a May 2, 2004, incident when he used profanity while ordering a teen out of his truck after citing him for a suspended license, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Then an internal affairs investigation sustained two policy violations for an incident when Nichelini responded to a sideshow on Nov. 14, 2004, and recommended that he be placed in a position with minimal citizen contact and that his fitness for duty be evaluated.

After Nichelini was hired in Vallejo, his father falsely claimed that when he hired his son in Vallejo that he had faced no discipline during his time in Oakland.

“There was no discipline from either case,” Robert Nichelini told the Vallejo Times-Herald in 2006, referring to the two incidents in 2004. “He has a perfect record. (Oakland) didn’t want him to leave. His background is clean.”

Williams was hired as Vallejo’s new police chief in 2019 following the shooting of Willie McCoy and the departure of Chief Andrew Bidou.

Nichelini became the VPOA president in early 2020, replacing Mustard, and quickly gained a reputation for antagonizing reporters that he perceived as negatively covering the department.

Nichelini sent the email containing the image of the historical badge with a swastika – which did not have an association with Nazis at the time the badge was engraved – in early 2020. His attorney said that Nichelini found the image on Google and used it to illustrate the email without realizing that it had an image of a swastika on it.

After Vallejo police Detective Jarrett Tonn shot and killed Sean Monterrosa in 2020, Nichelini was placed on leave for allegedly destroying the windshield of the truck that Tonn had fired through in the days after the shooting. An internal investigation later cleared Nichelini of having any role in the windshield destruction.

Nichelini also alleges that he was retaliated against when he was given a 40-hour suspension for allegedly harassing civil rights attorney Melissa Nold during a September 2019 City Council meeting. Nichelini used his cellphone to record Nold during the meeting, but Nichelini’s attorneys argued that he was monitoring the meeting and wanted to capture portions that would not be on his body-worn camera.

Nichelini’s attorney in his arbitration proceedings, Michael Rains, said that the arbitrator reduced Nichelini’s suspension to a written reprimand.

Finally, Nichelini was fired for sending an email from the union’s email account to then-San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor following his announcement that he was leaving to take a newspaper job in Atlanta in late 2020.

“Looks like 2021 will be a little bit better not having your biased and uniformed [sic] articles printed in the newspaper that only inflame the public…you have never looked for the truth in any of your writings…We will warn our Georgia colleagues of your impending arrival,” Nichelini wrote in the email to Taylor.

Williams initiated an internal affairs investigation for the email, and alleged that Nichelini had sent “an inappropriate and potentially threatening email to a member of the media,” according to Nichelini’s lawsuit.

While the termination was later overturned in arbitration, Drozd found that Nichelini did not show retaliatory intent by city officials.

Williams resigned from the department in November. Nichelini returned to duty in December.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include comment from Grant Winter.