Open Vallejo (https://openvallejo.org/tag/shawny-williams/)
The Vallejo city attorney’s office has long resisted public scrutiny of the police department’s frequent shootings. With a new law poised to force the release of shooting records, a lawyer and a detective made a decision no court can reverse.
The Vallejo City Attorney’s Office hopes to identify the authors behind two pseudonymous social media accounts, confidential records obtained by Open Vallejo show.
If Nichelini is reinstated, “it should raise concern from the streets of Vallejo to the attorney general’s office about how seriously the police department is taking reform,” Otis R. Taylor, Jr., the reporter who received the menacing email, told Open Vallejo.
In 2020, the California DOJ endorsed 45 reforms for Vallejo police. The department has implemented just two of them.
The City of Vallejo has signed a $100,000 consulting agreement with former Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, whose tenure included the fatal shootings of Stephon Clark and Darrell Richards.
The Vallejo Police Department is hiring a new deputy chief, promoting multiple officers to the upper echelons of its command staff, and disbanding two key programs — all while the police chief is expected to be out of the office for weeks, Open Vallejo has confirmed.
Half a century ago, Vallejo had twice as many patrol officers per resident as it does today.
The Vallejo Police Department’s flawed handling of fatal police shootings allowed six officers to use deadly force again before their first cases were decided. Experts say the department’s system “isn’t even basement standard practice” and needs oversight.
Vallejo Police Department policy requires written authorization before officers launch drones. When an Open Vallejo investigation found no evidence that the rule was being followed, the department decided to change it.
As Vallejo moves to fire the detective who killed Monterrosa, newly-released records raise questions over officials’ handling of investigation.