Almost three years after a Bay Space man died when police pinned him facedown, in a case that drew comparisons to the killing of George Floyd, the Alameda Police Division officers concerned have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, authorities introduced.
The fees within the demise of Mario Gonzalez, 26, got here Thursday. Gonzalez died after an altercation with police on April 19, 2021. No expenses have been filed towards the officers on the time.
An preliminary post-mortem cited “physiological stress of altercation and restraint” as certainly one of 4 components in Gonzalez’s demise, together with the “poisonous results of methamphetamine,” morbid weight problems and alcoholism.
The Alameda County district lawyer’s Public Accountability Unit reopened the case in 2023, and a second post-mortem decided that Gonzalez had died as “a results of restraint asphyxiation,” in line with the prosecutor.
The case was introduced by Dist. Atty Pamela Value. Elected in 2022, Value had promised in her marketing campaign to reopen the inquiry, which had been closed with out expenses by earlier Dist. Atty. Nancy O’Malley.
The three officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Gonzalez’s demise drew comparisons to Floyd’s 2020 homicide in Minneapolis by then-Officer Derek Chauvin, a killing that set off nationwide protests towards police brutality.
Lower than a yr later, law enforcement officials in Alameda responded to a report of an intoxicated individual and potential theft at a neighborhood park.
Physique digital camera footage launched by the Police Division reveals the officers’ interplay with Gonzalez. Within the video, Gonzalez struggles to reply their questions and seems dazed. After he fails to provide identification for the officers, they try and pin his palms behind his again to handcuff him.
The officers decide that Gonzalez is resisting and push him to the bottom, the video reveals.
“We’re going to deal with you, OK? We’re going to deal with you,” one officer tells Gonzalez as they proceed to restrain him.
“I believe you simply had an excessive amount of to drink right this moment, OK? That’s all,” the officer continues. After studying his title, the officer provides, “Mario, simply please cease preventing us.”
Gonzalez may be seen facedown in wooden chips, grunting and shouting because the officers maintain him down.
One officer places a knee on Gonzalez’s again and holds it there for at the very least 4 minutes, whilst Gonzalez gasps for air.
“I didn’t do nothing, OK?” Gonzalez says at one level.
An officer finally says that Gonzelez is “going unresponsive,” in line with the video. The officers then roll Gonzalez over and carry out CPR on him. He died on the hospital later that day.
In its preliminary public touch upon the case, the Alameda Police Division didn’t point out that Gonzalez had been restrained, saying solely that “officers tried to detain the person, and a bodily altercation ensued. At the moment, the person had a medical emergency.”
However Gonzalez’s household noticed the state of affairs in a different way.
“The police killed my brother, in the identical method they killed George Floyd,” his brother Gerardo Gonzalez instructed reporters on the time.
Alison Berry Wilkinson, a lawyer who represented all three officers through the legal investigation however who now represents solely Leahy, known as the case a “blatantly political prosecution.”
“The officers’ actions whereas taking Mr. Gonzalez into custody have been cheap, vital, and lawful, and his tragic demise was the results of drug toxicity, not legal misconduct,” she mentioned.
All three officers are nonetheless lively in regulation enforcement and can give up themselves within the case, Berry Wilkinson mentioned.
