You might recall that just 10 miles south in suburban North Vallejo, around nine months ago, a police officer shot a local 18-year-old named Rogers Vaughn in the back as he tried to run away.
(The young man survived the shooting. Still, Vaughn’s attorney tells the Press Democrat that it’s been a “long road to recovery” for the now-19-year-old, including “walking for a while with a cane” and “a lot of mental and emotional injuries he’s also had to overcome.”)
By springtime, disturbing video footage released by the Napa County District Attorney’s Office — thanks to a record request filed by the Vallejo Sun — appeared to confirm that Rogers Vaughn had been armed with two guns as he tried to escape the cop who pulled him over. He could be seen dropping both as he fled, per the officer’s requests to “Drop the gun!” The officer shot him anyway.
Now, in a strongly worded announcement in support of the shooter, D.A. Allison Haley says she won’t be filing any charges. The officer’s “use of deadly force was reasonable and lawful,” she says. “Because of this, his actions were justified, and criminal charges against him are neither warranted nor supported by evidence. The District Attorney’s Office has reviewed the case and summarized the findings in a detailed report, which is being released today and can be found on our website.”
The officer in question is named Josh Coleman. He’s a member of the American Canyon Police Department, which is staffed and overseen by the Napa County Sheriff’s Department. And before that, he was a member of the Vallejo Police Department, where he had a history of pulling the trigger. From the PD:
Coleman’s hiring in Napa drew attention because of his history in Vallejo. He was in four officer-involved shootings in a period of about 3½ years there, from March 2013 through October 2016, according to a database built by the independent journalism site OpenVallejo.
The first of those shootings was a fatality; Coleman was one of three Vallejo cops who opened fire on William Heinze, 42, during an armed standoff on Sutter Street in Vallejo.
He also had links to the infamous “badge-bending” scandal, which involved allegations that some members of the city’s police force had a ritual of bending the tips of their badges after on-duty fatal shootings.
On that note: The NorCal chapter of the ACLU won a small victory earlier this month in the org’s ongoing battle against bad policing in Vallejo, when a Solano County judge ordered local police officials to release at least part of their investigative report into the “badge-bending” scandal.
And just last week, ACLU lawyers took another dramatic step: They sent a complaint to the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Training and Standards, asking commissioners to full-on “decertify” nine current and former Vallejo police officers. On Thursday, the state agreed to investigate.
Officer Coleman isn’t named in the complaint, but some of his former colleagues are. The Vallejo Sun reports:
Those officers include current Vallejo police officers Colin Eaton, Jordon Patzer, Bryan Glick, Mark Thompson, and Jarrett Tonn as well as former Vallejo officers Anthony Romero-Cano, Ryan McMahon, Sean Kenney and Dustin Joseph, who later was hired by Fairfield police. All were involved in at least one fatal on-duty shooting. Kenney had three, all which occurred within three months in 2012.
In a 49-page complaint, the ACLU said those nine officers “all have been alleged to commit serious misconduct in the use of deadly force that resulted in death or serious bodily injury” resulting in settlements of more than $13 million.
A local independent newsroom called OpenVallejo is tracking both of these ACLU campaigns closely; I recommend following their X feed for updates.
