SAN FRANCISCO – A city-commissioned law firm's report found that the three Alameda police officers who pinned Mario Gonzalez to the ground for several minutes before he died in their custody last April followed the department's policies.
Based on those policies, the Renne Public Law Group's report found that two officers were justified under the Alameda Police Department's policy in deciding to arrest Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Oakland resident, in a public park and initially using force.
The report couldn’t exonerate the three officers for using excessive force when Gonzalez was pinned to the ground "due to the limits of the body camera footage" investigators obtained. Gonzalez was pinned to the ground for about five minutes, and the report cited department policy saying people shouldn’t be "placed on his/her stomach for an extended period" without defining what constitutes an "extended period."
Investigators spoke with the three officers, a parking technician who held Gonzalez's legs and the first responders who arrived on the scene after Gonzalez lost consciousness, all of whom worked for Alameda’s police and fire departments. They didn't speak with the 911 callers who lived nearby, and investigators also looked at transcripts of two 911 calls and the officers' body camera footage.
"This report does not address issues relating to potential criminal or civil liability or discuss potential changes to" Alameda police policies, investigators wrote.
Alameda released the report less than a month after Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley announced her office determined it couldn’t prove Officers Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy broke any laws "beyond a reasonable doubt."
The Alameda County Coroner's Bureau autopsy released in December ruled Gonzalez’s death a homicide, determining that he likely experienced cardiac arrest due to the "toxic effects of methamphetamine," while the "physiologic stress" of the officers' restraint "placed further stress" on his heart. An autopsy requested by lawyers representing the Gonzalez family in a federal civil rights lawsuit found that he died of "restraint asphyxiation" and didn't have enough methamphetamine in his system to have caused his death.
Adante Pointer, an attorney representing the Gonzalez family in a lawsuit, told KCBS Radio in an emailed statement that the city report's findings released Wednesday were "not surprising," citing the firm’s ties to Alameda.
"I've represented hundreds of police victims and it's a rare occasion when the internal affairs investigation finds the officers did anything wrong despite law and the video evidence to the contrary. This is more of the same and why the problem of police abuse continues," Pointer wrote in an email.
According to the report, two Alameda residents called police last April 19, reporting a man in Scout Park. One said the man was talking to himself and seemingly "tweaking," adding that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Another said he appeared to be breaking security tags off two alcohol bottles in Walgreens baskets.
McKinley determined Gonzalez was intoxicated after speaking with him for about nine minutes, deciding alongside Fisher to arrest him. The report said Gonzalez "resisted" arrest for about three minutes before he and the officers fell to the ground, becoming unresponsive after approximately five minutes on the ground.
The officers said Gonzalez made noises on the ground, which they "interpreted" to be "signs of exertion in resisting." The report determined that his "verbal expressions" could've been interpreted as "signs of distress," but investigators said there was insufficient evidence to prove whether or not they acted improperly.
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