Methodology There were three primary phases to our review process. After receiving some initial background information and familiarizing ourselves with recent history in the city and the Department itself, we made an initial two-day site visit in July of 2019. This gave us the opportunity to meet in person with the interim Chief of the Department – who had only recently been appointed and who himself came to the job with an outsider’s perspective (having spent his whole law enforcement career in another nearby jurisdiction). We also met at that time with Vallejo officials from outside the Department, gaining insight from them about the city and about the challenges the Department has faced in recent years – structurally, culturally, demographically, economically, and legally. We heard about the varying perspectives that comprise community sentiment about the Department – from the support it enjoys among a faction of local leaders to the pointed criticism it has experienced from activists in the wake of several inciting incidents. And we spoke with a representative from the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice. Invited by city officials to offer potential assistance, he was in the midst of facilitating an organized program of community engagement and planning, and offered useful observations about Vallejo’s recent history and dynamics. Finally, we met several other Department members to gain information about Department processes and hear their views on VPD’s formative history as well as its current circumstances. This included members of the command staff as well as lower-ranking officers and a representative of the officers’ labor association. Predictably – and usefully – these individuals brought distinctive experiences and opinions to the discussion, but a number of common themes emerged nonetheless. With this visit as a foundation, our next step was to make a request for documents across various categories. This included (but were not limited to) the following: •
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Activity reports from a randomly chosen two-day period, as a window into the volume and nature of enforcement work on an “average” series of shifts; Reports, memos, recordings, and/or other documentation relating to a sampling of recent use of force incidents;
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