Yahoo
Cliques, rumors, exclusion: those words came up again and again on Wednesday during testimony in the racial discrimination suit against the city and police Chief Chris Magnus.
In 2007, eight high-ranking African American police officers sued the city of Richmond, accusing police Chief Chris Magnus and former Deputy Chief Lori Ritter of racial discrimination. The civil trial is now in its third week in Contra Costa Superior Court in Martinez. The plaintiffs—one of whom has since retired from the department and dropped his name from the suit—sued in March 2007, just over a year after Magnus was hired from Fargo, North Dakota. The suit alleges that Magnus…
Two witnesses took the stand Monday to talk about being the victims of violent crimes, but neither implicated the man prosecutors say was the perpetrator. “How did that feel, being shot,” Deputy District Attorney Derek Butts asked one witness, a 32-year-old man Richmond Police have said is a central Richmond gang member. “I didn’t feel it,” the man said, referring to the bullets that ripped through his right arm and into the right side of his chest, nearly killing him…
Wallace Jensen and his partner Kristian Palma were in the dark, guns drawn. The Richmond police officers had moments earlier sprinted down Cutting Boulevard, hopped a retaining wall and plunged into a narrow alcove in the 500 block of South 18th Street. The city had been rocked by brazen shootings throughout the day, and the officers had just chased a man they say had a gun into a dark, dead-end corridor. Palma was about 10 feet from the man, who…
By the time for the Richmond Police Department’s evening shift change, the city was on high alert. Bloodshed had started just before 9 a.m., when gunfire at the Pullman Apartment complex sent two alleged gang members to Kaiser Hospital. About two hours later, a 30-year-old man and his 10-year-old niece sitting in a green Buick at Eighth and Adeline streets in Oakland came under fire. The man, who had no gang affiliations, was shot five times while shielding his niece…
Richmond police shot a 22-year-old man at a hotel near Hilltop Mall after 911 reports that a man with a gun was involved in a disturbance with hotel staff, according to police.