ALAMEDA — The three Alameda officers who pinned Mario Gonzalez down for several minutes before he died violated no department policy when they stopped, detained and attempted to arrest Gonzalez, an investigation for the city of Alameda has found.
However, on the key question of whether officers used inappropriate force after pinning Gonzalez to the ground, investigators concluded that they did not have enough evidence to determine whether officers acted in line with department policies, citing “the limits of the body camera footage.”
The report, conducted by the Renne Public Law Group, was commissioned by the city after the April 2021 encounter in which Gonzalez lost consciousness minutes after the officers tried to handcuff and subdue him after pinning him to the ground at a public park.
The findings confirm previously released accounts by the officers and witnesses, as well as body-worn camera footage that shows officers encountered Gonzalez in Scout Park, and then, believing he was intoxicated, attempted to arrest him, wrestling him to the ground before kneeling on his shoulder and holding him down for five minutes until he lost consciousness. He was taken to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
Gonzalez’ death — which drew comparisons to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and sparked large protests in the Bay Area — remains the subject of two federal lawsuits filed by Gonzalez’s family, who claim officers unjustifiably detained Gonzalez and used unnecessary force against him.
The officers — James Fisher, Cameron Leahy and Eric McKinley — who were placed on administrative leave after Gonzalez’s death, will be able to return to active duty, a city spokesperson said. The report also recommended that a parking technician who held Gonzalez’s legs during the encounter be exonerated for his conduct.
“According to all the officers, they believed that, even after being handcuffed, Gonzalez was still resisting and they did not have him secured,” the report says. “Also, they did not believe that Gonzalez was in distress because Gonzalez was communicating and resisting up to the point he became nonresponsive. They interpreted the noises he was making as signs of exertion in resisting.”
The finding that the officers’ actions did not violate Alameda’s police department policies raises questions about the limits of police use of force, especially in cases where the subject is either intoxicated or in mental distress. It notes that department policy says that subjects shouldn’t be restrained on the ground for an “extended period” but fails to define that term. Gonzalez spent five minutes on the ground during the encounter.
Adante Pointer, an attorney representing Gonzalez’s family in one of the lawsuits, called the report’s conclusion a “paid opinion” that categorized Gonzalez’s medical distress as “resistance.”
“He was trying to breathe,” Pointer said. “Me looking at the video, I see cops who were overly aggressive and ignored warning signs of a person who had difficulty breathing and going into medical distress.”
One of the officers later told investigators he declined to call for backup from the city’s mobile mental health crisis response team because “he did not think they were available at that time,” the report says, and “Gonzalez was too intoxicated to be able to interact with the crisis team staff or voluntarily elect to accept their services.” The report notes that officers are not required to call a mental health crisis team.
The report’s findings come despite a ruling by the Alameda County Coroner’s Office that Gonzalez’s death was a homicide. That office determined Gonzalez died from being pinned by police, in conjunction with having methamphetamine in his system. But a third-party autopsy contracted by Gonzalez’s family blamed his death on “restraint asphyxia” and noted that Gonzalez did not have enough methamphetamine in his system for it to be a factor in his death.
Last month, the Alameda County district attorney’s office found the officers not criminally liable in Gonzalez’s death.
The death marks the second time since late 2018 that a person was pinned down by Alameda police and then died. In the earlier incident, 40-year-old Shelby Gattenby died after being stunned and tackled by Alameda officers, who were responding to a report Gattenby was acting paranoid and believed he was being followed.
Authorities said Gattenby tried to remove a locked rifle from a police patrol call during a struggle with officers. The city paid $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Gattenby’s family.
Source: www.mercurynews.com