Under legal pressure from Open Vallejo, the Napa County District Attorney’s Office disclosed new footage Tuesday that shows the moment a former Vallejo police officer shot a teenager following a high-speed chase that ended in a North Vallejo neighborhood.
The disclosure comes six days after Open Vallejo compelled the Napa County Sheriff’s Office to release hours of video from the Jan. 11 shooting by American Canyon Police Ofc. Joshua Coleman. In 2020, this newsroom named Coleman as among a group of officers who participated in the city’s “Badge of Honor” ritual, in which officers bend the tips of their star-shaped badges to commemorate shootings.
The new disclosure includes 15 video clips from residential surveillance cameras, seized by investigators, which captured the brief foot chase and shooting from multiple perspectives.
The new footage shows Coleman shoot 18-year-old Rogers Vaughn from behind while the teen was running away and attempting to discard his weapons.
Coleman told Vaughn to put his hands up and drop his guns several times during the foot chase, which lasted less than 30 seconds. Vaughn dropped one gun in a driveway, but kept running away from Coleman.
“Drop the gun, drop the gun,” Coleman yells. “Drop the gun or I’ll shoot you.”
Seconds later, Vaughn threw his second gun in another yard at approximately the same time that Coleman fired his Glock 17 pistol. Neighbors standing with their dog on the street appeared to witness the entire incident, the video shows.
The videos released last week did not include footage of the shooting because Coleman’s body camera battery “had run out of charge,” according to Napa Sheriff’s Capt. Brian Kenner. They instead captured Coleman giving medical aid to Vaughn, who survived the shooting, in the minutes after Coleman shot him. The disclosures also show law enforcement agents arresting and interviewing a second man, 18-year-old Jozan Amarion Hill.
The Napa County Sheriff’s Office at first claimed the records were exempt from disclosure but reversed course after Open Vallejo successfully argued they should be released under Assembly Bill 748.
The 2019 California transparency law requires agencies to disclose audio or video recordings of a shooting by law enforcement within 45 days, unless doing so would substantially interfere with an active criminal or administrative investigation.
The Napa County District Attorney’s Office said last week that it did not possess any recordings, instead referring this newsroom to the Solano County District Attorney’s Office, whose Major Crimes Task Force conducted an initial investigation because the shooting occurred in Vallejo.
But the Solano County District Attorney’s Office declined to release the footage, stating that it had transferred the files to a Napa County District Attorney investigator.
Open Vallejo is currently suing Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams over her alleged failure to adhere to AB 748 and other public records laws.
Solano County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Monica Martinez declined repeated questions about whether that agency possesses a copy of the records disclosed Tuesday.
Napa County prosecutors eventually located the files but did not commit to releasing them until Open Vallejo shared its analysis of AB 748 and a copy of the pending lawsuit against Abrams. A spokesperson for the Napa County District Attorney responded the next day to confirm the agency would release the footage.
The January shooting in Vallejo is the second shooting in as many months by an officer linked to badge-bending. In late November, Vallejo Police Cpl. Matthew Komoda shot and wounded a 17-year-old, who police say was armed.
The Vallejo Police Department is one of the most lethal law enforcement agencies in the country, data shows. A 2020 analysis by Open Vallejo found that as of June 2019, almost 40% of officers then employed by Vallejo had been in at least one shooting; a third of those had been in two or more. Nationwide, almost three-quarters of police officers reported having never fired their weapon in the line of duty, according to a 2016 Pew Research survey of 7,917 sworn officers.
The January shooting is Coleman’s first since leaving the Vallejo Police Department, and his fifth overall, Open Vallejo research shows.
Rogers Vaughn was previously misidentified in court records as Demarea Vaughn Rogers III. This post has been updated.
