With much hope and optimism from the community, Shawny Williams became the first Black police chief for the Vallejo Police Department in November 2019, only months after local media revealed the agency to have one of the highest rates of police shootings in California, disproportionally targeting Bl ack men. Williams wasted no time in implementing reforms; banning chokeholds, making body cameras mandatory and instituting new de-escalation policies as well as hiring more Black officers in a San Francisco Bay Area department that had been historically white, patrolling a diverse city of 126,000 where 19 percent of residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census. But Vallejo police officers turned on him with officers sending him threatening letters as well as making verbal threats, forcing Williams to step down as chief in November 2022 after only three years at the helm, according to a lawsuit filed against the department last week. Shawny Williams (left) became the first Black police chief of the troubled Vallejo Police Department in 2019 before he was forced out in 2022 for attempting to make reforms. His departure resulted in an increase in police violence like what happened to Gonzalo Romero Hernandez (right), who filed a lawsuit last week over a traffic stop in 2023 that led to fabricated felony charges against him and his wife. (Photos: City of Vallejo and Melissa Nold, Esq.) “As Chief Williams began implementing reform within the police department, he faced tremendous backlash from the department command staff and some of the patrol officers, not only due to his reform efforts and holding officers accountable, but because he was African American in a police department and city with a long history of deeply ingrained, overt racism,” states the lawsuit filed by civil rights attorney Melissa Nold on March 19 in federal court. “Chief Williams was subjected to racial animus from command staff members the moment he stepped through the door, being referred to a ‘Black Jesus’ and racially mocked in various ways,” the complaint said. In a telephone interview with Atlanta Black Star, Nold said she has filed at least ten lawsuits against the Vallejo Police Department over the years and said the corruption within the department is astronomical compared to other law enforcement agencies she has sued. “I refer to Vallejo as Vallejo, Mississippi, because we have had some of the most egregious behavior from employees that year after year haven’t been held accountable,” she said, adding that the department was made up of about 70 percent white police officers before Williams’ arrival. “In most places when you have bad actors, you get those people out of the way, make them scapegoats and fire them. Here, we promote them. In other departments with rogue officers, you generally don’t have rogue command staff,” Nold added. Prior to Williams’ arrival, Vallejo police officers had a celebratory ritual where they would bend the tips of their badges after shooting and killing someone in the line of duty, a practice that had lasted for decades before Cpt. John Whitney blew the whistle and ended up fired in August 2019 in retaliation before receiving a $900,000 settlement in 2023. Williams put a stop to that practice when he took over in November 2019. “Celebrating the killing of a human being is never acceptable, and I’m deeply disturbed by these allegations,” Williams said at the time. Williams, who spent 26 years working for the San Jose Police Department before arriving in Vallejo, was paid $408,000 by the city, equivalent to 18 months of salary, which required him to sign a two-year nondisclosure form. “Chief Shawny Williams resigned out of fear for the safety of his family as the result of receiving threats and the City of Vallejo intentionally concealed this information from the public, P.O.S.T. (California Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training) and the California Department of Justice,” the lawsuit states. Much of the harassment against him was enabled by the local police union, whose members overwhelmingly voted they had no confidence in their chief, calling news conferences to complain about him, telling journalists, “he’s the king, he’s not the chief.” But the revelations about Williams’ departure from the department are not even the main argument in the lawsuit because it was filed by a Hispanic couple who were brutally abused by Vallejo police four months after the chief’s departure — after the new chief terminated the department’s body camera program. The male victim in that case recorded police slamming his wife’s face on the street even though she was not resisting before he himself was arrested and abused. Police Abuse Increased Since Chief’s Departure William’s departure was marked by a sharp increase in violence among Vallejo police officers — a return to the violent days before he became chief when the department was making national headlines for shooting and killing a Black man named Willie McCoy 55 times within three seconds after finding him asleep in his car with a gun on his lap as well as assaulting a Black filmmaker named Adrian Burrell after he attempted to record a cop pulling a gun on his cousin. Since the chief’s departure, a white cop was caught on video punching a Black woman in the face who had been involved in a car accident, while others raided the home of a Black family over a cop’s pair of gold-plated handcuffs that she was not even allowed to have. The department was also exposed by the Vallejo Sun in 2023 for destroying evidence pertaining to police shootings. “Vallejo police officers used force during arrests more than five times as much in 2023 as they had at this point last year, using force 198 times through September 2023 compared to 38 times by that point in 2022, according to data released by Vallejo police last week,” according to the Vallejo Sun. “The increase in force incidents this year follows a steady decline under former Vallejo police Chief Shawny Williams, who suddenly resigned in November under pressure from the Vallejo Police Officers Association,” the Sun added. Fabricated Felony Charges The lawsuit pertains to an incident that took place on March 19, 2023, when Vallejo police responded to a minor car accident involving a driver who was transporting a sleeping couple in the back seat, Gonzalo Romero Hernandez and his wife, Daisy Romero. When police arrived, Daisy Romero remained asleep in the back seat of the car, apparently passed out from drinking. Police began yelling at her to get out of the car, and when she did not wake up, they grabbed her by the hair, head, and torso and violently dragged her out of the car, where she woke up “shocked and terrified.” “Then, after being placed in a seated position on the grassy sidewalk, she was violently slammed on the ground face first for no reason, as she screamed in pain as the violent restraint triggered a pre-existing spinal disk injury, pushing her down so violently that she vomited,” the claim states. Her husband protested the treatment of his wife and attempted to record their actions with his phone while demanding the officers’ names and badge numbers, but one cop named Pablo Lopez blocked the camera with his body while smirking at Romero. “After Mrs. Romero was taken to the police car, Officer Lopez and other yet to be identified Vallejo Police Officers waited until Mr. Romero turned his back, then snatched him up off of the ground and slammed him down on his head and face onto the concrete, knocking his phone to the ground, then choked him and slammed his head/face into the concrete multiple times leaving gory wounds on his face,” the claim states. Both husband and wife were charged with fabricated felony assault on an officer resisting arrest, charges that were eventually dismissed by prosecutors. The 53-page lawsuit lists several Vallejo cops as defendants, including Lopez, Rosendo Mesa, current Police Chief Jason Ta, as well as several cops not identified by name but listed as John Does, accusing them of violating the couple’s First and Fourth Amendment rights as well as battery, false imprisonment. It also accuses the police department’s leadership of negligence by inadequately training officers, giving them free rein to violate and abuse the rights of citizens. Nold, the attorney, said she was also the target of death threats by Vallejo police officers who would call her home and follow her as she was driving and take photos and videos of her as she went about her business, but that came to an end when Williams took over as chief. She filed internal affairs complaints against the officers harassing and threatening her. “I never received another death threat after that,” Nold said. Black Police Chief Mocked as ‘Black Jesus’ By Fellow Cops for Stopping Mostly White Department from Terrorizing Residents Forced to Step Down After Threats from Officers, Lawsuit Claims ...read more read less