Investigation shows: California police kept death in custody secret for seven years | California

California law enforcement officials tried to keep a death in police custody secret for seven years, calling the case an “accident” and refusing to release basic information to reporters and the victim’s family, according to an investigation released Monday.

Darryl Mefferd, 49, died on December 8, 2016, while being arrested by police in Vallejo, a city of 125,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The case was uncovered by Open Vallejo, a local nonprofit news organization that provided its records to the Guardian.

The afternoon before his death, Mefferd appeared disoriented and dehydrated and made paranoid comments, so his niece, Courtney Mefferd, took him to a local hospital. He was given vitamins and a sedative and declared “stable,” medical records show. At around 11 p.m., he was eager to be released and left the hospital against doctors’ advice.

Outside the hospital, Mefferd encountered Vallejo Police Department (VPD) Officer Jeremy Callinan. Callinan had responded to the hospital’s call for help regarding a patient who had escaped from the facility, but the officer instead found Mefferd and took him into “protective custody,” according to police records. When Cindie, Mefferd’s sister, arrived at the hospital, she saw Callinan lead her brother into a police vehicle, she told Open Vallejo. She said she asked the officer to let her take her brother home, but the officer refused, saying he would take Mefferd to a mental health crisis center instead. “They’re going to kill me,” Cindie recalled her brother saying as he was driven away.

What happened next is still unclear. The Solano County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Office investigated the death, but a report from the sergeant in charge of the investigation contained conflicting accounts.

“The first information I had was that (Mefferd) got into a physical altercation” with Callinan as he was getting out of the police car outside the crisis center in the nearby city of Fairfield, the Solano sergeant wrote. A Solano detective called to the scene described the encounter as an “altercation” and said when police arrived at the center, they found Mefferd “on the ground with Ofc (Officer) Callinan,” the sergeant wrote. “When officers turned (Mefferd) over, they found he was not breathing.”

The sergeant said he shared this account with the family, but later “learned that the report of a physical altercation with police was unsubstantiated” and that “the officer was helping the deceased to the ground when he stumbled during the escort.” The sergeant said his new understanding of what happened was based on statements Callinan made to other investigators.

The sergeant summarized Callinan’s account to investigators as follows: “Ofc Callinan was able to provide some support to (Mefferd) as (Mefferd) fell to the ground. Ofc Callinan got down on one knee while the other knee was bent and resting on (Mefferd).”

The sergeant wrote that Callinan “never applied his body weight to Mefferd,” “who was responsive for several minutes before losing consciousness.”

A Solano detective who reviewed Callinan’s body camera footage said it confirmed Callinan’s statement, the sergeant wrote, even though the video was “partially obscured by clothing.”

Mefferd was taken to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead around 1 a.m. on December 8.

Review of a “random” decision

The autopsy performed by the Solano County Coroner also raised questions about Mefferd’s cause of death.

The coroner classified the death as an “accident” and attributed it to a “lethal dose of methamphetamine.”

But when Mefferd was under medical observation for about eight hours before his death, his doctor had classified the drug diagnosis as “uncomplicated.”

The autopsy also revealed that Mefferd suffered blunt force trauma to his knees, torso, arms and face, three contusions to his head and a large contusion to his buttocks. Mefferd’s family says he suffered no trauma or injuries prior to his arrest.

Experts who reviewed the case for Open Vallejo expressed concern that the officer may have held Mefferd in a prone position outside the crisis center, meaning Mefferd was face down.

Authorities, including the U.S. Department of Justice, have warned for years that holding a person in such a position poses a risk of fatal cardiac arrest because the person has difficulty breathing. This risk is even higher for people who have used certain drugs, including methamphetamine.

Dr. Victor Weedn, former chief medical examiner of the US state of Maryland, who investigated the case, told the news agency that he believed the death was not due to an overdose, but to a heart attack while he was being restrained: “Other than that incident, there is no reason at all for trauma… I really believe that we are talking about (cardiac arrest caused by prone restraint) here.”

Dr. Michael Freeman, a medical examiner, said the medical examiner’s office did not conduct a “full investigation” into Mefferd’s death, although there was evidence of a struggle and injuries. He noted that the sergeant who wrote the investigative report did not appear to conduct any further interviews or directly view the body camera footage.

The pathologists said the coroner should have classified the death as homicide and not as accidental.

Spokespeople for the Vallejo Police Department and the Solano Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. Callinan did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Fairfield Police Department said their involvement in the case was limited, but that when their officers arrived at the scene, they “saw a person lying on the ground and performed CPR for several minutes until medical personnel arrived and took over.”

“They are covering it up”

News of Mefferd’s case will increase scrutiny of the VPD, which has a long history of scandals, including an exceptionally high number of police killings and allegations that some officers commemorated their killings by bending the tip of their badges.

Mefferd’s case is not the only one in which police are fighting to keep police records secret. California police are required to disclose records when officers’ use of force causes “serious bodily injury” or death, but Open Vallejo was repeatedly denied the records until it sued the city and a judge ordered Vallejo to comply with public records disclosure laws. The station’s lawsuit revealed four deaths in VPD custody last year – all unarmed black men who died during their arrest after police used force against them.

These four cases were also classified as “accidents” by the coroner. According to the newspaper, three of the victims were held in a prone position.

And although the judge ordered the city to release files on police cases involving “aggravated assault,” the city still has not released files on Mefferd’s death. Open Vallejo learned of the death only through a source who pointed out that the case was not included in the news organization’s database of VPD deadly force incidents. The Vallejo District Attorney’s Office recently argued, citing the autopsy, that Mefferd’s case did not qualify as “aggravated assault.”

There is growing criticism of the way sheriff-coroner’s offices and medical examiners in the U.S. investigate deaths in custody. A recent Associated Press investigation documented hundreds of cases of people who died in police custody after officers used physical force, but whose deaths were ruled “accidental” or “natural” by pathologists.

When deaths are classified as accidental, police departments are subject to less stringent reporting requirements. This makes it much easier for officers and their departments to evade responsibility.

“They’ve been trying to cover this up since the coroner told me he’s no longer with us,” said Mefferd’s niece Courtney. “It’s so disgusting and frustrating. I’ve screamed his name, tried to tell his story and get him justice… And for so long I’ve told myself it was my fault that I never should have taken him to the hospital, that if I hadn’t taken him he’d still be home with his mom.”

The family wanted to sue the city, but Courtney said civil rights lawyers would not take the case because the death was classified as an “accident.”

Courtney said her uncle lived in Wyoming but returned to Vallejo to care for his mother. He wanted to be a chef and specialized in making pasta from scratch.

His death left deep scars in the family, she said. Darryl’s older brother had recently died, she said. She recalled that on his deathbed he “kept saying, ‘It’s time for me to be with my brother.'”

“This will impact our family for generations,” she said.