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The embattled former police chief of Vallejo, a San Francisco Bay Area city that has attracted national attention over police violence, has said that he endured a steady procession of racist remarks from colleagues and online harassment and threats that ultimately led him to resign.
By the time Chief Shawny Williams tendered his resignation in 2022, he said he had received a slew of threats – at his office, at his home, and in his email inbox. Most demanded he step down. But even after resigning, the threats still came by mail to his home and a second property he owned outside the state.
“They were hostile, toxic,” Williams testified in a deposition on Wednesday. “I had safety concerns.”
Williams made the statements as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Vallejo police department brought by Deyana Jenkins, whom officers pulled from a car and tased during a traffic stop in 2019. The incident occurred months after six Vallejo police officers shot her uncle, Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old rapper, 55 times while he was asleep in his car. The killing attracted widespread attention and thrust a spotlight on the department’s use of force.
The deposition, first reported by the Vallejo Sun, offers a window into what Williams describes as a pattern of hostile, threatening and retaliatory behavior that ended his brief attempt to impose accountability on a department known nationally for unchecked violence and resistance to reform.
Vallejo police officers have repeatedly drawn concern over their practices, perhaps most notoriously for the ritual of “badge bending”, in which officers reportedly fold back a tip on their badges after killing someone on duty.
Williams took over the department in 2019 with a mandate to reform it. His three-year stint coincided with a national reckoning over police violence, sparked by nationwide protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
But Williams said he experienced harsh backlash for his efforts to impose accountability on the department’s use of force.
“He was our first Black police chief in a department that’s always been known as a racist police department,” Melissa Nold, the lawyer representing Jenkins in the federal case, told the Guardian. “To hear that he was run off because he was doing reform and discipline – that’s very concerning. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible that the people being reformed have that much power.”
In his deposition, Williams said a colleague made several disturbing statements, including: “This Black Jesus can’t save us.”
He described “racial hostilities or comments” made to him by a former police captain. Williams also said the city attorney threatened him, but did not describe how.
The Vallejo police department did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.
Williams also received several anonymous threats, through the post and online. Three weeks before resigning in October of 2022, he received a “Halloween card threat” that said “quit today” and emitted a deafening screech that “filled the hallway” and kept blaring until the battery ran out.
A secretary opened the letter. When Williams heard it he “actually thought it was some kind of domestic violence occurring outside the building because it was so loud”.
Williams also said that he received anonymous threats, after an officer who shot an unarmed 22-year-old in 2020 later rejoined the police department.
Officer Jarrett Tonn shot and killed Sean Monterrosa after an alleged looting incident at a Walgreens during a George Floyd-inspired protest. Williams dismissed Tonn after the shooting.
But an arbitrator reinstated Tonn in 2023, after Williams left the force. Tonn was promoted to sergeant in September of this year, according to the Vallejo Sun. Afterwards, Williams said he received messages that said “some bad things were coming”.
Williams said he asked the department to investigate the threats and raised concerns to city manager Mike Malone. But the city failed to act, and Malone appeared uninterested in helping him, Williams testified.
“One of the things that I guess exacerbated my concerns was [Malone’s] statement that this is not going to stop – or ‘They’re not going to stop until I fire you or you quit,’” Williams said in the deposition. “And he said that over half a dozen times.”
By “they”, Williams said the city manager was referring to the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association (VPAO), which serves as the bargaining unit for all ranks of police officer except the chief in its negotiations with the city. The VPOA did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.
“My resignation was a result of a pattern of constructive termination hostility,” Williams testified. “There was racial animus, retaliatory things that were happening that just made it unbearable or impossible for me to perform my duties in a safe environment.”
