Vallejo City Attorney Claudia Quintana suggested in a recent published report that the news media is actively working against the city to make a buck for people who sue.
With her comments to the Libertarian magazine Reason, Quintana joins members of the city’s police and other officials who have pushed back against growing criticism of the police department over the death of Willie McCoy, 20, shot by six officers outside a local Taco Bell last February.
“While everyone in the city of Vallejo believes that there is room for improvement on many fronts, I believe recent media stories may be reflective of a certain investigatory bias seeking to influence judicial and settlement outcomes for pending claimants or lawsuits,” Quintana told Reason.
Reason is just the latest national media outlet to publish a piece on Vallejo with a focus on the city’s numerous officer-involved shootings, the various excessive force claims against the city, and the millions of dollars in settlements Vallejo has paid out because of the Vallejo Police Department.
The city has paid $7 million to settle legal claims since 2011, according to public records. McCoy’s family has retained the services of civil rights lawyer John Burris, whose office has several active legal claims against the city.
McCoy was shot more than 20 times by six officers who fired a total of 55 bullets. The officers had been called to the scene because McCoy was unresponsive in his car, with a gun in his lap. The video shows McCoy slumping forward in his seat seconds before officers began shooting.
The Times-Herald reached out to Quintana for comment almost an hour after the Reason article was published online early Thursday morning. The next day, she sent an email questioning this newspaper’s honesty.
“I am disappointed in the antagonism regarding my actions that is reflected in your stories,” Quintana wrote. “I see this as a change over several years of a positive relationship.”
“I would like to help you disseminate good, correct information for your readers, which I thought was a goal that I would like to support and help you in,” she continued. “However, if this is not your goal, I find myself questioning why I should be spending the time to research and answer your questions.”
In a follow-up email on Saturday, Quintana said she wouldn’t be able to make the Times-Herald’s Saturday deadline for comment and that she would be providing comment next week.
The day before Quintana’s comments were published the Vallejo Police Officer’s Association shared a Times-Herald article from June 8 in which civil rights attorney Melissa Nold, who works for Burris’ firm, said during a police forum that she didn’t want to run the city into bankruptcy but she would to stop the loss of human life.
“These kinds of threats and self-serving plans of action are careless and reckless and are caustic to the health and well being of this City,” the VPOA wrote. “Remember the old saying….if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
That caused Nold to respond, saying the association was misquoting her “in an attempt to defame my character.”
“Consider this a legal warning officers: If my name is mentioned on your page one more time I will consider it evidence in upcoming federal litigation as part of a pattern and practice lawsuit against the City of Vallejo for constitutional violations under 42 U.S.C. 1983,” she added.
Since the fatal Feb. 9 officer-involved shooting of McCoy, there have been calls from inside and outside the city to reform the Vallejo Police Department. Days before McCoy was shot and killed, Adrian Burrell, a Bay Area artist and filmmaker, posted a video to his Facebook page showing Vallejo police Ofc. David McLaughlin tackling and handcuffing Burrell while he attempted to film a McLaughlin perform a traffic stop.
Burris’ office filed claims — which are precursors to lawsuits — with the city on behalf of Burrell and McCoy’s family.
To address increasing demands for action, City Hall announced in late April that it was inviting in the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service to help Vallejo “enhance the culture, policies and practices” of the Vallejo Police Department.
The city followed up in May by the hiring of former Oakland police chief Howard Jordan as a special police adviser to Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff over the coming year. Jordan will work with the DOJ, and also assist Nyhoff on the selection of a new police chief.
Tension boiled over during the May 14 Vallejo City Council meeting as McCoy’s relatives, along with the family members of Angel Ramos and Ronell Foster, demanded the council take action against the police department. Ramos and Foster were also shot and killed by Vallejo officers.
Shouting from the audience toward each other and at the council caused Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan to call for a recess. However, police declared the families an unlawful assembly, ordering everyone out of the chambers. The families were escorted from the council chambers by a dozen police officers, many wearing riot helmets.
However, 20 minutes later the meeting resumed, with many of the families thinking the gathering had ended for the night. This prompted the Open Vallejo organization to file a Brown Act cure and correct demand on Thursday.
Quintana has also spent time disputing an article written by independent journalist Scott Morris. Morris looked through the city’s legal settlements involving Vallejo police and compared the data against other police departments.
“Vallejo is paying far more for each officer than dozens of other cities, even those with notorious police departments and numerous lawsuits,” Morris wrote in his article. “From 2013-2018, Vallejo paid out $6,184,587 in civil rights cases. That amounts to $9,370 per officer per year, thousands of dollars more than other agencies nationwide.”
Morris posted on his Twitter page that Quintana had disputed the $6.1 million sum, claiming the inclusion of the Denise Huskins settlement skewed the results. Huskins and her now-husband were given $2.5 million to drop their 2016 federal defamation and civil rights case against the city, filed after a police information officer falsely accused them of faking their own kidnapping.
Meanwhile, Vallejo police during a special June 4 council meeting presented their fiscal year 2019-20 budget. They acknowledged the need to improve its “public relations with small segments of community.”
