The San Jose Police department on Friday released partial records involving 33 uses of force by officers, in response to a lawsuit filed by this news organization after the city failed to comply with a landmark transparency law that took effect more than 19 months ago.
The documents, the largest number released by the department so far, appear to mostly involve fatal and nonfatal police shootings. A preliminary review did not reveal any that include policy findings or discipline of officers.
San Jose Police have balked for months over compliance with Senate Bill 1421, which took effect on Jan. 1 2019. That law requires police to release to the public records of officer shootings and other uses of force, as well as officers’ sexual misconduct and dishonesty. At one point, department officials said it could take up to four years to release complete records. After months of fruitless negotiations, the Bay Area New Group sued the city on July 21, saying the records were not being made public quickly enough.
“It’s regrettable it took a lawsuit to get the San Jose Police Department to begin to comply with public disclosure laws,” said Bert Robinson, senior editor for the Bay Area News Group. “After stalling for the last 18 months, though, the department and the city attorney still have much more to do, including some tasks they refuse to acknowledge or commit to. We await their next steps.”
The suit remains open. No court date has been scheduled.
One of the records describes the harrowing death of a mentally ill woman in May 2014, about 12 hours after an officer used a Taser stun gun to subdue her as she acted incoherently and waved two screwdrivers. She was taken to Valley Medical Center, where staff found she was coated in ammonium biflouride, a chemical compound with many uses, including the cleaning of tire rims. As she was being loaded into an ambulance, one officer later described hearing her call out “Mama! Mama!”
One officer wrote in a report the woman appeared to be caked in mud.
Hospital staff reported a hazardous materials situation and evacuated the emergency room. They later found her mouth was badly blistered, an indication she had swallowed the chemical. A toxicology report showed she had kerosene in her system, along with antifreeze, amphetamines, and morphine. She was not identified in the reports. Police wrote they believe she was Vietnamese and might have been about 40 years old.
The woman’s’ identity could not be immediately learned Friday night. A search of this news organization’s archives did not turn up a story on her death in 2014. There is no indication in the reports that police suspected the use of the Taser contributed to her death.
At most, some of the other files offered modest new glimpses into long-adjudicated police shootings that were ruled lawful by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
In the case of a Jan. 9, 2018, police shooting that killed Thompson Nguyen — as he was seen approaching officers with an ax while trespassing at a South San Jose power plant — the files included photocopies of Nguyen’s journals that indicated he believed police had been long conspiring against him based on previous run-ins and arrests.
SB 1421’s sponsor, Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is sponsoring new legislation that would require police departments to release many additional records, such as instances where police were accused of racism. The existing law is widely credited with breaking down police secrecy in California, opening records that were off limits to the public for 40 years. The state had the most restrictive rules in the country for keeping police personnel records private until last year.
The head of an open government group said Friday that the city’s release of records so soon after being sued shows it could have provided the documents much more quickly.
“It shouldn’t require a lawsuit to force the city of San Jose to comply with the law,” said David Snyder, executive director of the Marin-County based First Amendment Coalition.
“While I’m glad these records will finally see the light of day, it’s a terrible comment on the city’s commitment to transparency and accountability that it took more than a year and half and the threat of a court order to get them to follow California law,” Snyder said.
In November, the department released a few disciplinary findings, showing an officer received a letter of reprimand because a police dog bit a 2-year-old girl during an arrest of her uncle. Two other officers were suspended for shooting at moving vehicles in violation of department policy.
The department moved to fire one of those officers, Ian Hawkley, after he initiated a high-speed, high-risk car chase with a suspect. Internal affairs investigators found that Hawkley failed to notify dispatchers that he was engaging in the pursuit, and did not activate his police-issued body camera. Before the pursuit ended, Hawkley opened fire at the car he was chasing, investigators concluded.
Five days after the pursuit, Chief Eddie Garcia wrote in a letter to Hawkley that he was to “be terminated from your position of police officer,” according to disciplinary records. Hawkley appealed, and eventually cut a deal with the city where he admitted the wrongdoing, and accepted a six-day suspension as punishment.
Records released Friday document two other officers also failed to turn on body cameras in 2017, the year the department began requiring their use.
One officer did not turn on his camera until after a shooting had occurred, and another officer’s camera fell off during a confrontation.
