AFTER A FIVE-YEAR HOLDUP, the City of Vallejo on Tuesday released an investigation into the practice of Vallejo Police officers bending the tips of their badges at celebratory barbecues each time they killed a civilian on the job.
The city’s investigation, conducted by former Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano, concluded that acts of badge bending constituted misconduct but were not connected to fatal shootings. Giordano’s interviews also showed that city officials and high-ranking officers were aware of the practice, although a number of officers denied knowledge of the practice.
At least 14 officers were tagged in the badge bending scandal, which made national headlines after a local news article uncovered the practice in 2020. In his investigation, Giordano cleared eight of the 14 officers of misconduct. The other six were found to have violated department policy by damaging badges, behaving in an “unbecoming” way and failing to report misconduct.
The six officers allegedly found to have violated police codes of conduct were Lee Horton, Terry Poyser, Ryan McMahon, Ken Tribble, Zach Jacobsen and Kyle Wylie. The eight cleared of any misconduct were David McLaughlin, Matt Komoda, Jason Bahou, Jeremy Huff, Mark Galios, Jason Scott, Jarrett Tonn and Todd Tribble.
Tonn, a former detective, had been acquitted for the 2020 killing of 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa, where he claimed he mistook a hammer in Monterrosa’s pocket for a gun. Tonn was fired from the Vallejo Police Department following the shooting, but was reinstated in 2023.
“Members of the Vallejo Police Department have been reminded that such conduct will not be tolerated,” said Police Chief Jason Ta in a statement on Tuesday.
‘A visible scar’
In 43 interviews with city officials and officers, including the 14 officers that had been accused of badge bending, Giordano found the practice lasted from 2003 to 2019. It wasn’t the department’s tradition, but was started up by Kent Tribble from his days with the Concord Police.
Giordano concluded that badge bending was a “discrete” practice and was done in support of “an officer who was willing to pull the trigger.” The scope of Giordano’s investigation sticks almost entirely to interviews with officers and department communications as evidence.
Several of the 41 current and former officers Giordano interviewed denied knowledge of the practice, while others maintained the practice was a show of support.
The practice was called “weird” by several officers. Jason Bahou, an officer who shot and killed a man in 2015 on duty, told Giordano that after a higher-up bent his badge tip, he bent it back.
“It was a visible scar, reminding him of the shooting, a negative event,” Giordano said.
The former sheriff finished the report in 2021, but its contents stayed under wraps, held up by conflicting rulings and laws that kept personnel files private.
“The release of today’s report shows that these failures were real, were repeated, and were harmful,” said Cristal Gallegos, director of Vallejo Housing Justice Coalition, at Tuesday’s Vallejo City Council meeting.
“It’s blunt,” Gallegos added. “Badge bending happened, and command staff knew and didn’t act… our community has lived with this fallout for years.”
Badge bending came to light when Vallejo police gained national attention for the 2019 killing of Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old Black man. He was asleep in his car when he was shot by multiple officers, at a time when the city had one of the highest rates of officer-involved shootings in the state.