“‘No responsive records’: how Vallejo hid killings by police”

Thanks to diligent work by reporters Geoffrey King and Laurence Du Sault at Open Vallejo, many of that city’s public servants were held accountable for their role in the destruction of key evidence in multiple police killings.

The nonprofit, public interest newsroom filed a public records lawsuit that revealed the evidence purge, which directly violated the 2019 California “Right to Know Act.” The act was designed to make police records open to public scrutiny. The records purge also potentially violated an ongoing investigation by the California attorney general into the Vallejo Police Department’s “number and nature” of police shootings.

This isn’t the first time Open Vallejo has exposed corruption behind the Vallejo police force. In 2020, the newspaper reported on the Badge of Honor Scandal, in which a secretive clique of officers bent the tips of their badges each time they made a kill in the line of duty. This violates the law enforcement code of ethics present in the Vallejo police department’s policy handbook, which states the badge is a “symbol of public faith.” This scandal exposed a lack of integrity in the Vallejo police force, a theme present in this series of stories, as several of the same officers were involved in both.

In the more recent investigation, the reporting team at Open Vallejo unveiled the city’s pattern of obfuscation. Reporters detailed the violent deaths of four men in Vallejo police custody, all concealed by the city until the lawsuit by Open Vallejo. The team obtained lists of purged items such as firearm evidence, witness and officer interviews, fingerprints, victim clothing, audio and video recordings and more. The purged files included six police shooting cases that took place in 2012 and 2013. Various personnel of differing status in the city and police hierarchies played a role in the destruction of the files.

Using public records, the reporters traced the chain of command responsible for the destruction of this key evidence, revealing at worst intentional and at best ignorant behavior on the part of several of the city’s employees. In the days following Open Vallejo’s initial reporting, city officials announced a third-party investigation into the evidence destruction. Open Vallejo has filed a motion to prevent the further destruction of additional records still being withheld.

The pursuit of transparency by Open Vallejo reporters King and Du Sault is chronicled in a highly detailed and thoroughly investigated series of reports that seek to hold public officials accountable to the public.

Article by: Leyla Shokoohe