OAKLAND — Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price on Thursday announced criminal charges against three police officers involved in the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez, who stopped breathing while being pinned to the ground by multiple officers.
Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, the DA’s office said. All three were employed by the Alameda Police Department at the time of Gonzalez’s death.
Price’s announcement, which came almost three years to the day after Gonzalez’s death, marks a reversal from the conclusions of her predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, who two years ago cleared the three officers of any criminal wrongdoing. O’Malley’s finding that the officers’ actions were “objectively reasonable” was closely watched, given how Gonzalez’s death drew comparisons to the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Price on Thursday said that she was “walled off” from the review of the case so she couldn’t say what, if any, new evidence had been found. Rather, she said her Public Accountability Unit handled all of the work on the case.
The criminal complaint against the three officers was signed by Leah Abraham, a prosecutor who has helped lead some of the unit’s highest-profile cases. Abraham was not made available at Price’s press conference.
Still, Price touted the need to hold police officers to account when they are accused of breaking the law, stressing that “accountability is at the heart of the criminal justice system, not just a case like this.”
“We’re trying to rebuild trust in a system that has not always been fair to folks, particularly in Alameda County,” Price said. “That’s a part of our mandate.”
Fisher’s attorney, Michael Rains, framed the charges as a “desperate effort to shore up her changes of remaining in office” amid a recall campaign. Earlier this week, county elections officials said Price’s opponents had gathered enough valid signatures to force a recall election sometime later this year.
Leahy’s attorney, Alison Berry Wilkinson, criticized prosecutors for waiting until a day before the statute of limitations was set to expire to charge the officers and emphasized that the officers’ actions were “reasonable, necessary and lawful.”
“This is a blatantly political prosecution,” Berry Wilkinson said. “We are confident a jury will see through this charade and exonerate the officers.”
Price said none of the officers had been taken into custody at the time of her announcement. Their names had not appeared in the Santa Rita Jail log as of Friday afternoon.
Gonzalez died April 19, 2021, in an Alameda neighborhood near Park Street and Otis Drive after being contacted by officers who suspected he had violated a municipal code banning open containers of alcohol in public. Officers tackled Gonzalez when he resisted being handcuffed, according to police video, and pinned him to the ground for several minutes as he screamed and whimpered before falling unconscious.
After Gonzalez’s death, police noted that a bottle of Canadian Mist whiskey in his possession had a security cap on it and opened a shoplifting investigation. The officers then travelled to at least five local stores to find out whether Gonzalez stole four liquor bottles that were found in his possession after the fatal struggle.
The Alameda County Coroner’s Office later ruled — in a peer-reviewed autopsy report — that Gonzalez’s death was a homicide, citing the “stress of altercation and restraint” but also noting the “toxic effects of methamphetamine,” “morbid obesity” and “alcoholism” as contributing factors. A few months later, O’Malley cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing.
“The officers’ decision to detain and arrest Mr. Gonzalez, and their subsequent use of force was objectively reasonable considering the agency policies, the totality of the circumstances and the officers’ stated rationale,” according to a 38-page critical incident team report made public in April 2022, while O’Malley was the district attorney.
The city of Alameda’s administrative investigation also didn’t find any sustained violations against the officers. Still, city leaders say they have taken several steps in the last couple of years to improve the department, including hiring a civilian police auditor.
Fisher, Leahy and McKinley were all placed on leave after Gonzalez’s death. Leahy and McKinley both returned from leave in May 2022 and remain with the department, Wilkinson said. Fisher left the department in January 2023 to take a job as a deputy with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, according to Rains.
A statement from Alameda city officials on Thursday evening — while not naming any of the officers in the case — said that the one of the officers charged was no longer with the city’s police department, while the other two, still employed by the city, had been placed on administrative leave.
Police Chief Nishant Joshi released his own statement Friday afternoon: “After assuming the position of Alameda Police Chief, I conducted a fourth independent review of all previous investigations and concurred that Alameda police officers did not engage in any misconduct and I stand by that decision today,” Joshi said in the statement. “I have always been confident in the justice system. … The Alameda Police Department remains committed to serving our community with integrity and transparency.”
More than a year after Gonzalez’s death, his family continued to raise concerns about his treatment by Alameda police. A subsequent, independent autopsy requested by them suggested the primary cause of death was “restraint asphyxiation.” It also found that methamphetamine levels in his body were too low to contribute to his death.
The decision by Price’s office to file criminal charges drew immediate plaudits from the attorneys of Gonzalez’s children and relatives, who hailed it as necessary to ensuring that officers were held to the same standards as the people they’re entrusted with policing.
“A wrong has been righted,” said Adante Pointer, the attorney for Gonzalez’s mother. “These officers should have been charged originally. It’s just that the previous regime was very comfortable giving officers a pass when they didn’t deserve one.”
The charges were “good news” for Gonzalez’s police accountability, added Julia Sherwin, who helped represent Gonzalez’s son in a lawsuit that ended in an $11 million settlement. It was among the largest reached with a single child of someone killed by police in the state of California over the past decade. Gonzalez’s mother received another $350,000.
“I just hope that a criminal jury will do the right thing by Mario,” Sherwin said Thursday evening.
