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A thread about Vallejo Police Department, one of the most nefarious yet overlooked police departments in the United States. Please take the time to read and share, our city needs all the exposure we can get.
Over the past decade, Vallejo Police Department has murdered a sickening total of 18 people. They’ve shot & injured a total of 31 over that time period and we have the highest rate of shootings per capita of Northern California despite being on the smaller side of population
2013-2014 alone, VPD officers murdered 9 people in shootings. To provide contrast, in San Francisco (which has 7x the population that Vallejo has) officers murdered a total of 3 people during that same period- only a single THIRD of the murders VPD committed.
2012- Mario “Papaya” Romero, 23. Unarmed and shot 40 times by VPD while sitting in his car in front of his own home while his family pleaded for them to stop. He had numerous wounds in his palms as he was holding his hands up in surrender when the officers were shooting him.
2018-Ronnel Foster, 33, was simply riding his bike when Vallejo police officers decided they needed to give him a lesson on “bike safety” and fatally shot him in his back.
2019- Willie “Willie Bo” McCoy was a 20 year old talented rapper. He fell asleep in a Taco Bell Drive thru and, in his sleep, scratched his shoulder only to be shot 55 times by six VPD officers.
2012-Jeremiah Moore, 29. VPD claimed he had a rifle but a witness in the neighborhood said he was unarmed & moving his arms when confronted & killed by VPD. Jeremiah was on the autism spectrum and would often flail his arms uncontrollably when nervous.
2010-Guy Jarreau Jr, a 34 year old Napa Valley College student, mentor, and community activist, was making an anti violence music video when VPD shot him. He was unarmed & had his hands up in surrender.
2020- Sean Monterrosa, 22, was on his knees with his arms up surrendering after being approached by police during the riots. As the police car backed away, VPD Officer Jarret Tonn shot him from the backseat of the vehicle.
And sadly, these gentlemen aren’t the only victims of VPD’s reign of terror. The list goes on.
Vallejo is top three on the list for most diverse cities in America so we have plenty of people from many different backgrounds out here, it’s what makes us so unique. However, as a city, we also have many low income communities
Despite that, most of our police officers are white men that come from wealthier (predominantly white) surrounding cities that have no connection or stake in our communities at all. They don’t care about our people, especially our black & brown communities.
Now let’s talk policy. Vallejo is one of the only police departments to utilize the “zipper drill” method of of firing during conflicts. It involves starting to shoot low on the target’s body & “zipping” up their body with bullets continuously until you reach their head.
The reason barely anyone uses this method for policing anymore is because of how impractical &, consequently, fatal it is. See this excerpt of an article by http://theappeal.org from a former officer explaining why it’s nonsensical to utilize it.
VPD officers are literally trained to shoot to kill. It’s engrained in their very policy. This coupled with the evident prejudices that a lot of the officers have towards black & brown people has been a recipe for disaster.
After murdering people, reports show that when Vallejo police supervisors reviewed shootings for policy violations, officers that harm/kill people are often praised for utilizing this method “successfully”.
To add on, not a single officer has been punished for the use of deadly force within the past decade. Some are repeat offenders (“The Fatal 14”) & still working on our streets. Some even received promotions.
Why? Because the people that are responsible for investigating these cases are often times dirty cops themselves. Evidence will come up missing, the victims are always blamed, and families have been fighting for years for justice but it is never given.
And while these families mourn the loss of their loved ones whose lives were snatched ruthlessly by VPD- the pigs have celebratory barbecues & beers to commemorate their murders & bend their badges to represent how many people they’ve killed. They are literally hunting us.
To add insult to injury, despite the general consensus of the community being against it, 46% of our city budget is being allocated to those fucking pigs. Not to fix our communities, improve our educational programs - they’re choosing to funnel money into killing our people.
So I’m making this tweet in hopes of reaching a wider audience. Right now the community of Vallejo is finally rising up, but we need as many people as possible to know about & help further our cause and get justice for the families of VPD’s victims
We won’t be hunted anymore. We won’t be silent anymore and soon every single one of those murderers will feel the wrath of a community that has been been oppressed for far too long.
Here are some pages to follow that have a lot more info on protests happening in the city and more #fuckthefatal14 #fuckvpd
