OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Attorneys for the family of a San Francisco Bay Area Navy veteran who died while police restrained him are asking the attorney general's office to review the Contra Costa County district attorney's decision not to criminally charge the four officers involved in the December 2020 death.
District Attorney Diana Becton found that Antioch police officers used reasonable force and that they engaged with Angelo Quinto in a manner that was "lawful and objectively reasonable."
John Burris, attorney for the Quinto family, said Becton's decision announced last week takes the officers' account at face value and makes no attempt to resolve discrepancies.
In a statement, the veteran civil rights attorney asked "how it could be reasonable to conduct a prone restraint lasting at least five minutes of a person who was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and not resisting during the rest of that restraint."
Angelo Quinto's family called 911 on Dec. 23 for help calming him down during a bout of paranoia, the result of a street assault months earlier that left him with a traumatized brain injury. They said in their federal lawsuit that officers placed a knee on Quinto's neck — in the manner that killed George Floyd — and that the cause of death was asphyxiation.
In her statement, Becton said that one officer placed one knee on Quinto's shoulder to handcuff him while another officer held on to his legs. "This was the extent of force utilized by the two officers to restrain Quinto," she said.
The Contra Costa County Coroner's Office listed the cause of death as "excited delirium syndrome," a troubling medical diagnosis opposed by the American Medical Association and rejected by other medical groups.
Lawmakers are calling for new methods in how law enforcement interacts with people in a mental health crisis, citing the deaths of Quinto and others.
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