State Commission to Investigate Complaints About Vallejo Police Shootings

The state commission with the power to remove law enforcement certification will investigate complaints against nine Vallejo police officers who fatally shot people in cases going back more than a decade after family members of those killed asked for help at a public meeting on Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a 49-page complaint to the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) earlier this week, detailing seven police killings dating from 2012 to 2020.

The ACLU and family members want POST to decertify five current Vallejo police officers – Colin Eaton, Jordon Patzer, Bryan Glick, Mark Thompson, and Jarrett Tonn – and four former Vallejo officers: Anthony Romero-Cano, Ryan McMahon, Sean Kenney and Dustin Joseph.

“We understand that the politics in place provide protections for these officers as far as truly giving accountability for their actions,” said Kori McCoy, older brother of Willie McCoy Jr., who six Vallejo police officers shot and killed in 2019. “But what you all can do is protect people in the future from not allowing these officers to relocate and appear in another community when their true agenda is to hurt people. ”

The Vallejo Police Department was an outlier for police violence and misconduct for several years. Some officers admitted in court testimony to bending the tips of their star-shaped badges to commemorate shooting someone. Despite public outcry, few have faced discipline. The State Department of Justice launched a review of the department just days after the department’s last fatal shooting in June 2020. Attorney General Rob Bonta ended the DOJ’s oversight of the department earlier this year, entering into an agreement with the department over a series of reforms and steps toward accountability.

“Everything that’s in this 49-page document that we were handed by the ACLU is or will be investigated,” Joyce Dudley, the commission’s chair, told those in attendance Thursday.

Under SB 2, passed in 2021, POST can start an investigatory process and ultimately suspend or revoke an officer’s certification for serious misconduct, preventing them from working in law enforcement anywhere in the state. To date, no officer whose last agency of employment was in Vallejo has been brought up for POST discipline, according to POST’s website.

For more than an hour, family members of those killed by police used the public comment portion of the public meeting to tell commissioners how the loss of their family members has impacted their lives. And they raised ongoing concerns about these officers continuing to patrol the streets of Vallejo and other California cities.

Some of the families have been on a sustained campaign for accountability, from large-scale protests in Vallejo and on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento, including Sean Monterrosa’s sisters getting arrested while protesting outside the governor’s home. Several elected officials assured them that their concerns would be investigated, but no such investigation has yielded sufficient results for them.

Vallejo’s internal investigations found officers’ use of deadly force was within policy in all of the cases raised in the ACLU complaint. Reviews by the prosecutors concluded in all cases that officers should not be criminally charged.

Marshal Arnwine Jr., an attorney with the ACLU speaking with the family members, said POST is an administrative body that can determine whether an officer should lose their law enforcement certification in California.

“Just because someone may have not been criminally liable or not civilly liable, that’s totally separate,” he told KQED. “POST focuses solely on, does this officer’s conduct rise to a level that we could take their badge?”

Lawsuits in response to those officer’s actions have cost the city of Vallejo more than $13 million since 2011.

Many of the families have exhausted any other options to demand accountability for officers, including the family of Jeremiah Moore, one of three people shot and killed over five months by then-Vallejo Police Officer Sean Kenney.

Eugene and Lisa Moore, Jeremiah Moore’s parents, said they don’t believe their son pointed a weapon at police.

Holding a picture of Jeremiah before the commission, the Moores said their son had autism, and they want better training for police for people who are neurodivergent.

“There is a steady pattern of disregard for human life at the hands of the VPD. All of these officers deserve to be in prison for murder,” Lisa Moore said. “However, we appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this complaint. Our family and those families of other murdered children are hopeful that their pain will be mitigated somewhat by your action.”

Kenney also shot and killed Anton Barrett Sr. and Mario Romero in 2012, a year when the Vallejo Police Department’s deadly use of force was dozens of times higher than the national average. Anton Barrett Sr. was holding a wallet when Kenney shot him. Mario Romero was killed in his parked car in front of his family’s home. Then-Vallejo police officer Dustin Joseph was also involved in that shooting.

“I sit here today and all these families and people behind me who have lost so much in the city of Vallejo. They sit on my shoulders. They sit on my heart,” Romero’s sister Kris Kelly told the commission in an emotional testimony.

In 2017, Vallejo hired Ryan McMahon, a Sausalito police officer who was on a ride-along with Kenney the night he killed Jeremiah Moore.

The following February, McMahon shot and killed Ronell Foster during a traffic stop that started because Foster was riding a bike at night without a light. Foster fled, McMahon caught up to him, and in the ensuing struggle, McMahon beat Foster with a flashlight, Tased him and shot him seven times, once in the back of the head.

“Decertification is just the start, but Ryan McMahon would be the first one, and the best one for you to start with,” Angela Sullivan, Foster’s aunt, told the commission. “It’d be the easiest case. Murder is murder.”

Not more than a year later, McMahon, along with five other officers, would fire a total of 55 times at Willie McCoy Jr., who was unresponsive behind the wheel of a car in a Taco Bell drive-thru with a handgun in his lap. McMahon was the only officer disciplined in that shooting, eventually being fired for endangering another officer.

That firing was eventually sustained in mandatory arbitration, making it the only successful termination of an officer in Vallejo in recent years. During that time, McMahon was hired by the Broadmoor Police Department in San Mateo County. He later left that job following reporting on the extent of his poor job performance in Vallejo.

Vallejo attempted to fire Det. Jarrett Tonn, who shot and killed Sean Monterrosa amid protests and looting after the police murder of George Flyod in Minnesota days earlier. Tonn was fired a year after the shooting, but that decision was reversed in arbitration.

Since their brother’s killing in 2020, Ashley and Michelle Monterrosa have become advocates for police reform and advocated for SB 2, which created the commission they spoke to Thursday.

“None of us want the officers who harmed our loved ones to continue to harm our communities and our families,” Michelle Monterrosa said.

After each family member spoke, Dudley thanked them, offering words of support. In between testimony, she reached out to Lisa Moore, placing her hand on her arm as a gesture of empathy.

“I did feel listened to,” Lisa Moore said. “I believe that they’re taking their mission seriously. This is something that definitely needed to happen.”