OAKLAND — The family of Willie McCoy, the 20-year-old rapper fatally shot by six Vallejo officers in the drive-through of a Taco Bell restaurant on Feb. 9, is filing a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Vallejo that asks for federal oversight of the police force.
The wrongful death suit alleges Vallejo officers violated McCoy’s constitutional rights when six officers shot at him 55 times in 3.5 seconds earlier this year. McCoy died after being struck more than 20 times.
Police had been called to the Taco Bell by a report that McCoy was unresponsive in the front seat of his car with the engine running and a gun in his lap.
As part of the suit, John Burris, the prominent civil rights attorney representing McCoy’s family, requested a federal monitor review Vallejo police. Burris pointed to comments by Vallejo’s City Manager Greg Nyhoff at a June 25 City Council meeting that he “just doesn’t feel” the Vallejo police department — which in recent years has had the most shootings involving police of any Bay Area city Vallejo’s size — has a problem with excessive force.
Burris argued Nyhoff’s comments left the city liable for damages and were made to “excuse unlawful behavior,” according to the June 27 filing that also accused the city of ignoring a department-wide “pattern of unconstitutional conduct.”
Federal monitors are a rare move, often considered a last-ditch effort when reforms are badly needed, but they are no stranger to the Bay Area.
For the past 16 years, the Oakland Police Department has been under federal watch as a result of a settlement stemming from the Riders scandal in which officers were accussed of beating and planting drugs on West Oakland residents. Robert Warshaw, the department’s federal monitor and compliance director, tracks OPD’s progress in achieving 52 reform efforts that were part of the 2003 negotiated settlement agreement. Warshaw also has had great influence over the department’s police chief hirings and firings over the years.
The killing of McCoy has put a spotlight on Vallejo police shootings, and came in the wake of other controversies involving the police force. Vallejo officers have been involved in eight shootings since January 2017, more than any police force in Contra Costa and Solano counties. Two of Vallejo’s shootings occurred this year.
By contrast, Antioch police officers have shot four people since January 2017, Pittsburg officers have shot two people, and Brentwood police, Concord police and Danville police have each been involved in one shooting, according to county records.
Days before McCoy was killed, a Bay Area filmmaker posted a video to Facebook showing a police officer tackling him as he recorded the officer make a traffic stop. The officer, David McLaughlin, was put on administrative leave after media reports showing he had pulled a gun on a man in a Walnut Creek shopping center during an argument in a separate confrontation. McLaughlin has recently returned to work.
City officials previously released a 51-page report from independent use-of-force expert David Blake that suggested the six officers who shot McCoy acted “in line with contemporary training and police practices associated with use of deadly force.”
Blake’s report has no bearing on a separate investigation into the shooting by the Solano County District Attorney’s office, which investigates all deaths involving police officers.
This video playlist depicts the Feb. 9, 2019 fatal police shooting of Willie McCoy.
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