An unarmed man trying to evade police led them on a low-speed chase through the streets of Danville in 2018. He had been spotted earlier wandering in a residential neighborhood, but he hadn’t committed any crime.
As police used two patrol vehicles to try to block his path, Laudemer Arboleda steered his car through an opening between them. Officer Andrew Hall, who was driving one of those patrol vehicles, had rushed around the back side of his car with his gun drawn and stepped into the opening. He then fired into the windshield and passenger-side window as Arboleda’s car passed by.
Arboleda was struck nine times. It was the shot that went through his heart and left lung that killed him. It was a senseless killing — followed by a dysfunctional response by Contra Costa County’s two top law enforcement officials.
David Livingston, the county’s law-and-order sheriff, defended Hall, cleared him of wrongdoing and put him back out on the street — only to have him kill again this year in another probably avoidable confrontation in Danville.
Meanwhile, Diana Becton, Contra Costa’s reform-minded district attorney, took 2½ years, until after the second fatal shooting, to charge Hall with voluntary manslaughter in the first case.
Neither shooting should have ever happened. The video in the first case shows Hall dangerously and needlessly firing into a moving vehicle. He should have been permanently removed from duty. Sadly, he wasn’t.
Real police reform won’t happen in Contra Costa with these two politically opposite officials in charge. One provides a knee-jerk defense of the status quo; the other gets bogged down to the point of near paralysis.
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After Hall fired through the windshield at Arboleda in 2018, Livingston defended his deputy. “This is about a dangerous and reckless person trying to run down and murder a police officer,” the sheriff said in a statement about two weeks after the killing.
But dashcam and body camera videos released a year later show otherwise. Arboleda wasn’t trying to run down, much less murder, the officer. He was trying to escape. It was Officer Hall who ran into one side of the opening between the patrol vehicles as Arboleda’s car was coming by.
By the time Hall fired his weapon, the car was already starting to pass him. If Hall’s life had been in danger, which it wasn’t, firing through the windshield and passenger-side window of the passing vehicle would have done nothing to protect him in that moment.
As for the sheriff’s claim that Arboleda was “dangerous and reckless,” actually he was a troubled 33-year-old man with a history of paranoid schizophrenia, which Livingston’s officers did not know at the time. That day, the worst thing he had done, other than try to flee, was ring doorbells and behave suspiciously as he walked around a residential street, prompting a call to police.
The sheriff’s office investigation cleared Hall of wrongdoing, finding that his actions were “legal, proper, and in congruence with Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff Policies and Procedures.” Hall was returned to patrol in Danville. Where, on March 11, he killed again.
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The case of Tyrell Wilson is a somewhat closer call — but it’s exactly the sort of situation where de-escalation could have avoided a fatal shooting.
Wilson, 32, had reportedly been throwing objects from the Sycamore Valley Road overpass onto Interstate 680. He was about a block away when Hall pulled up in his patrol car.
Editor’s Note: This video has been edited for length and to remove content some viewers might find disturbing. To watch the full video released by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office click here.
Videos show that, within 45 seconds, Hall calls on Wilson to “come here.” Wilson keeps walking away through the middle of a large intersection with Hall closing the distance. Wilson pulls out a knife as he backs away. Hall draws his gun and repeatedly orders Wilson to drop the knife. Wilson takes a small step in Hall’s direction, taps his hand to his chest, looks up and says, “Kill me” — and Hall fires.
“Officers are forced to make split-second decisions to protect themselves and the public, and that’s what happened here,” Livingston said in once again defending a fatal shooting by Hall.
But, in Danville, a city that’s 81% White, two men with mental health issues, two men of color — Arboleda was the son of immigrants from the Philippines, Wilson was Black — are now dead. Arboleda’s death was completely avoidable; Wilson’s probably so.
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One can’t help but wonder whether either case would have ended differently with less aggressive police tactics — or if either Arboleda or Wilson were White. Yet, when John Burris, the lawyer for Arboleda’s family, suggested the dead man’s skin color might have been a factor, Livingston accused the attorney of “reaching for his well-worn race card.”
He made similar comments after LaDoris Cordell, a retired Santa Clara County Superior Court judge and former independent police auditor for San Jose, raised concern in a commentary this month that 84% of sheriffs in California are White males and none are African American.
Livingston responded, “Cordell found it necessary to drag race into the argument by suggesting there are just too many White people in the ranks of sheriffs. Her comments are offensive.”
That misses the point. It’s not that there are too many White people. It’s that there aren’t enough people of color. We can’t address issues of subconscious bias. We can’t bridge the divide between police and the public, especially in a majority-minority state like California, if we can’t first acknowledge the racial imbalance in leadership.
That’s not playing the race card; that’s recognizing an inequity.
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The same day that Livingston released the video he said exonerated Hall in the shooting of Wilson, the district attorney filed felony charges against the same officer for the Arboleda killing. Becton accuses Hall of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
It took two years, five months and 18 days from the time of the shooting to the filing of the charges. No matter how many excuses Becton might have, and she has plenty, that’s inexcusable.
Becton says she needed to restructure the office to better review police shootings, needed to clear a backlog of cases and had to insist on another review of the shooting of Arboleda because the original review by members of her office was not up to her standards.
“They did have to go back, and they did have to start from scratch,” she told me last week. And, “there’s a lot of work that goes into those sensitive cases.”
Becton also complains about the difficulties of altering the culture of the District Attorney’s Office since she took over in September 2017. “I feel there isn’t an appreciation for the lift that has been necessary for change in this office.”
To be sure, Becton deserves credit for implementing new policies for careful review of police shootings. And, if the original investigation of Hall’s shooting of Arboleda was lacking, kudos to her for insisting on a more-careful review.
But, after nearly four years on the job, the time for excuses is over. There have been 11 fatal police shootings in the county during Becton’s tenure. Only three of the investigations have been completed, she said.
In the end, Becton must not only want to reform the office, she also needs the leadership skills to do so. Because, in the end, justice delayed is justice denied. Just ask the family of Tyrell Wilson.