MARTINEZ — Contra Costa’s police chiefs’ association has quietly done away with a protocol that mandated a public hearing before a jury for all police killings and in-custody deaths, drastically scaling back public oversight that has existed for nearly a half-century.
A two-page amendment posted to a county website at the start of 2025 says that coroner’s inquest hearings — which for decades have been done for virtually all law enforcement-involved death — will now only occur if certain officials request them. The amendment attributes this change to “advancements in transparency,” implying that the digital age now makes such hearings obsolete.
The change was made by the county’s police chiefs’ association, which also includes the county Sheriff’s office, Probation Department, and District Attorney, a DA spokesman told this news organization. It was the same organization that, in 1984, implemented the inquest policy to ensure all police-related fatalities would receive a “highly credible and impartial” investigation that would “inform the public” and “address the emotional needs of those involved” about what happened, the now-defunct protocol stated.
The final inquest was held in October 2024. It dealt with the 2023 police chase near Crockett that killed Giovanni Gomez, a 15-year-old Vallejo boy, during a chase with the California Highway Patrol. It was ruled an accident and officers testified the stolen car Gomez was driving sped away after they terminated the pursuit.
The amendment cites the proliferation of video evidence that can supplant witness testimony, “including body-worn camera footage from involved officers, bystander mobile phone recordings, and surveillance video from surrounding locations,” and cites recent state transparency laws that allow more public access to such footage. But the laws come with exemptions that are often cited by police departments to delay disclosures for years. This week, the Vallejo Sun news site sued the Vallejo Police Department for the release of records of a police shooting that authorities claim falls under one exemption.
Matthew Guichard, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who served as the presiding officer for the most recent inquest, said he was never informed of the change and didn’t learn of the amendment until a reporter showed him. He said that in addition to the transparency inquests provided, there was another consequence some may be overlooking.
“I will say I believe as a result of the inquests, many fewer lawsuits are filed. I cite that as I reviewed all the inquests I had done and a few more right around 2015,” Guichard wrote in an email. “If memory serves of the 59 I reviewed, there were only nine lawsuits resulting from the subject deaths. In most cases, the inquest was the first time the family and the public heard what happened.”
The inquest jurors were asked simply to pick a manner of death from one of four options — accident, suicide, homicide, or natural causes. The decision carried no criminal nor civil liability. The involved officers and the medical examiner were typically called as witnesses, along with DA inspectors who investigated the incident. While no blame was assigned, the hearings were open to the public and often gave interested parties, including family members of the person killed, their first opportunity for answers.
Inquests will now be be held “at the discretion of the coroner, or if request by the Attorney General, the DA, sheriff, prosecutor, city attorney, or a chief of police,” the amendment says.
For Taun Hall, whose son, Miles Hall, was shot and killed by Walnut Creek police while experiencing a mental health episode in 2019, the inquest was an “awful process” that felt “very old fashioned and unnecessary.” Taun Hall said in an interview that when she received notice in the mail informing her about the upcoming inquest, she didn’t want to “relive the trauma” by attending, but felt obligated because she knew details would be made public either way.
When she attended, she felt the officers’ testimony represented “one side of the story” with no balance.
“It’s very traumatic, especially in my situation where someone was killed by police and he was a victim. And it’s only their version of what happened,” Hall said. But she added that she still saw one benefit.
“Everything that they say is on record and they’re under oath. It can actually be beneficial in cases because now attorneys can use it in depositions,” said Hall, whose family received a $4 million lawsuit settlement from the city of Walnut Creek.
The policy change came on the heels of a calendar year, 2024, that saw fewer police-related deaths than any year since 2011, when the DA’s office started recording the data. The two law enforcement-involved deaths last year were a suicide in the Martinez jail and the fatal police chase of Gomez in West Contra Costa. But 2025 has been a different story.
This year, seven people have been killed by police or died in police custody, including four police shootings, two police chases that resulted in a crash and the recent death of a 72-year-old woman in Brentwood that has been embroiled in controversy. On Sept. 26, Brentwood officers were arresting Yolanda Ramirez on suspicion of a misdemeanor when she went unresponsive in the back of a police car and died a week in the hospital. A legal claim filed by her family on Monday alleges an officer knocked her head into the police car on the way in.
Brentwood police didn’t inform the public of Ramirez’s death until after the media publicized it, stating that Ramirez appeared to have a medical episode after being placed in the car and that police “immediately” called paramedics. An attorney retained by her family said she was shocked when police told her an inquest wouldn’t be held.
For Richmond police union president Benjamin Theriault, the lack of inquests will erase a chance to give families and the public “a clear and consistent accounting of what happened.”
“When you remove that, you risk leaving families with unanswered questions and opening the door to speculation, more lawsuits, not fewer,” Theriault said. “Any change to a process this important needs to be handled with real care and consistency, because trust is hard to earn and very easy to lose.”
