On the night of Aug. 6, 2020, Nakia Porter stopped her car on a dead-end road in Dixon to switch places with her father on their drive home to Sacramento, her two young children and niece in tow. What happened next remains in dispute.
Solano County Sheriff’s deputies Dalton McCampbell and Lisa McDowell pulled up behind Porter, handcuffed her, threw her to the ground, knocked her unconscious, and then took her to jail without sufficient justification, Porter’s federal lawsuit alleged. When Porter asked why she was being arrested, the deputies cited a non-criminal infraction and said her license plates were mismatched.
On Monday, Porter and her family reached a $17 million settlement with Solano County — a sum three times the largest civil rights settlement paid by the city of Vallejo since 2000. Their attorney, Yasin M. Almadani, called the size of the settlement “historic” in an interview Monday.
Porter suffered a traumatic brain injury and psychological trauma that has prevented her from continuing her career in computer science, Almadani told Open Vallejo. Her children, niece, and father have also suffered psychological trauma.
“It’s a loss that’s hard to measure and difficult to ever fully compensate for,” Almadani said.
The settlement does not include non-monetary obligations, such as policy changes, according to Almadani.
“The parties acknowledge that all claims and causes of action relating to the incident are disputed, including with respect to the underlying facts,” Solano County spokesperson Matthew A. Davis wrote in a statement to Open Vallejo Tuesday. “The County made the decision to settle after careful evaluation of the risks, costs, and time associated with protracted litigation.”
The $17 million settlement comes as county and city officials move to deepen the role of the Sheriff’s Office in Vallejo. On Sept. 23, Solano County approved a more than $11.2 million contract that will allow sheriff’s deputies to patrol the city, following a state law passed last year to address staffing shortages at the Vallejo Police Department.
Vallejo has been facing the consequences of its own troubled policing history in recent years. As of October 2020, the city and its insurers faced an estimated $50 million in liability relating to Vallejo police-related claims, according to a study by the city attorney’s office.
The previous month, the family of Vallejo police shooting victim Ronell Foster reached a $5.7 million settlement with the city, after Open Vallejo revealed that the officer who killed Foster, Ryan McMahon, had engaged in a Vallejo Police Department ritual in which officers would bend the tips of their badges to mark killings in the line of duty.
In 2022, the city of Vallejo agreed to pay $2.8 million to the mother of Angel Ramos, after Ofc. Zachary Jacobsen shot Ramos dead at the family’s home. Vallejo police falsely claimed Ramos had a knife, according to the lawsuit. Two years later, the city agreed to pay a $5 million settlement to the family of Willie McCoy, who Vallejo police shot dead after he fell asleep in his car at a Taco Bell, a gun allegedly in his lap.
Vallejo police have not killed anyone in more than five years, after the California Department of Justice launched a review of the department prompted by the “number and nature” of shootings by officers. In June 2022, a Solano County deputy fatally shot 28-year-old Jason Thompson as he suffered an apparent mental health crisis in Vallejo.
