Open Vallejo19%
Vallejo to pay $8.5 million over killing of Sean Monterrosa 31%
By Geoffrey King35%
3/23/2026, 3:13:25 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 18.9% saturation with 232 hits. Analysis detected 1,250 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,229 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.4% and a BS Rank of 31% (20,469 of 29,300 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 69.90% of the article peer group.
The Walgreens on Redwood Street where Sean Monterrosa was killed on June 2, 2020, is seen from above on Nov. 21, 2021 in Vallejo, Calif.
(Noah Berger / Special to Open Vallejo)
The city of Vallejo has agreed to pay a record $8.5 million to the family of Sean Monterrosa , a 22-year-old San Francisco man killed by a detective in June 2020.
The payment is Vallejo’s largest civil rights settlement in at least 20 years.
It resolves a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and Det.
Jarrett Tonn, who shot Monterrosa amid civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd.
“We’re thankful that we were able to come to terms on the settlement and avoid the stress and trauma of the trial,” John Coyle, an attorney for the family, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
“It was a long battle for the Monterrosa family, and it’s nice to finally see some form of justice here.”
Tonn declined to comment, as did Vallejo police spokesperson Sgt.
Rashad Hollis.
City Attorney Veronica Nebb did not respond.
Vallejo spokesperson Robert Briseño responded Friday — three days after a request for comment — with an unsigned press release.
“The City of Vallejo offers a sincere apology to the Monterrosa family and community for this tragic loss of life and recognizes the profound loss suffered by the family,” the statement read.
Footage from Det.
Jarrett Tonn’s body-worn camera shows Tonn aiming his rifle at Monterrosa from an unmarked police truck on June 2, 2020 in Vallejo, Calif.
(Obtained by Open Vallejo through a California Public Records Act request)
Tonn, a member of Vallejo’s SWAT team, encountered Monterrosa outside a Walgreens store on Redwood Street shortly after midnight on June 2, 2020.
From the backseat of an unmarked police truck, Tonn fired his M4 Commando rifle five times through the windshield, striking Monterrosa once in the back of the head.
Tonn told investigators he mistook a hammer in the pocket of Monterrosa’s sweatshirt for a gun.
The destruction of critical evidence complicated the post-shooting investigation.
Police allowed the windshield through which Tonn fired to be discarded shortly after the shooting.
Officers also seized a drone that captured the killing on video , but instead of booking it into evidence, the device was first taken to the office of Capt.
Jason Potts and then to that of Police Chief Shawny Williams, according to a chain of custody report Potts wrote more than nine weeks later.
When Williams gave the drone to a detective shortly after 4 a.m., the video files were unreadable.
A forensic examination by the United States Secret Service later confirmed the footage had been permanently overwritten with zeroes.
Vallejo Police Det.
Jarrett Tonn (right) works the scene of an investigation on Aug. 21, 2025 in Vallejo, Calif.
(Geoffrey King / Open Vallejo)
Three days after the shooting, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a collaborative reform agreement with the Vallejo Police Department, which the agency struggled to implement .
Becerra’s successor, Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed a pattern-and-practice lawsuit against the city in October 2023, leading to a settlement agreement imposing sweeping reforms on the department.
An outside investigation into the shooting commissioned by the city found that Tonn had used excessive force and that he and three other officers violated department policies in what investigators called a “reckless approach.”
The city moved to terminate Tonn in 2021, but an arbitrator overturned his firing two years later.
In December 2023, Bonta announced that he would not seek criminal charges in connection with the shooting.
Tonn, who remains on Vallejo’s SWAT team, has since been promoted to sergeant and now oversees the Detective Division.
In October 2024, the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training opened investigations that could strip Tonn and several other Vallejo officers of their law enforcement certifications.
The agency has not announced its findings.
‘A vehicle for change’
A “Justice for Sean Monterrosa” poster by artist Oree Originol is displayed in a window in Vallejo, Calif. on Dec.
19, 2022.
(Geoffrey King / Open Vallejo)
The Monterrosa settlement comes as the California Department of Justice tries to reform Vallejo’s long-troubled police department.
Open Vallejo research shows that from 2000 to 2020, Vallejo police shot someone roughly once every four months, usually fatally.
Although Vallejo officers have shot three people since Monterrosa, none have died.
In 2018, Vallejo was forced out of its municipal insurance pool after 31 years due to “ large and disproportionate ” losses.
At the time, the city’s civil rights settlements rarely exceeded six figures.
Notable exceptions include $2 million to the family of Mario Romero , killed by two Vallejo police officers in 2012, and $2.5 million to Aaron Quinn and Denise Huskins , whose 2015 kidnapping Vallejo police falsely labeled a hoax .
In 2020, less than two months after the Monterrosa killing, Open Vallejo exposed the department’s “Badge of Honor” ritual, in which officers bent their badge tips to commemorate shooting civilians .
Five weeks later, Vallejo agreed to pay $5.7 million to the family of Ronell Foster , whom Ofc.
Ryan McMahon shot and killed in February 2018.
Open Vallejo’s “Badge of Honor” investigation named McMahon as one of the officers who had bent their badges; sources said he collected his first bend for killing Foster.
McMahon also participated in the killing of Willie McCoy , a 20-year-old musician whom six officers shot 38 times at a Taco Bell drive-through in February 2019.
McCoy’s family sued the city; the case settled for $5 million in January 2024.
The family of Angel Ramos , whom alleged badge-bender Ofc.
Zachary Jacobsen shot and killed in January 2017, settled for $2.8 million in November 2022.
Sean Monterrosa’s sisters Ashley (left) and Michelle attend a California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training meeting on Oct. 17, 2024 in West Sacramento, Calif.
Other civil rights cases remain pending, including a lawsuit by Deyana Jenkins, McCoy’s niece, who in 2019 was dragged from her car and tased by two of the officers who killed her uncle nine weeks earlier.
The family of Darryl Dean Mefferd , who died in 2016 after a Vallejo officer sat on him for approximately 10 minutes, filed suit three months after Open Vallejo revealed that the city hid his death from the public for nearly eight years.
Last June, a federal judge denied the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit due to allegations that officials undertook “active and coordinated efforts” to conceal the killing.
The city of Stockton settled a restraint-related death case for $6 million in 2024; Alameda settled a similar case for $11 million in 2023.
For the Monterrosa family, the settlement resolves one battle in a broader struggle over policing in Vallejo.
“The loss of Sean will forever be with our family, and no settlement can ease our pain,” the Monterrosa family wrote in a statement Tuesday.
“We have always viewed this process as a vehicle for change in the Vallejo community, and we are encouraged by the immediate changes that have been put into place within the Vallejo Police Department,” the statement continued.
“Nevertheless, there remains more work to do in Vallejo and in police departments across the country.”
The post Vallejo to pay $8.5 million over killing of Sean Monterrosa appeared first on Open Vallejo .
Speakers
9speakers16%attributed speech1,030writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageJohn Coyle
55 attributed words28% of attributed speech73% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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