Unique: FBI criminal investigation of Antioch, Pittsburg cops grows grand jury convening

As aspect of a sweeping investigation into regulation enforcement officers in Contra Costa County, a federal grand jury has convened to contemplate indictments of various police officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments for civil rights violations and other offenses.

Several legislation enforcement sources say the federal grand jury – a group of citizens that normally meets in mystery to identify no matter if prison costs really should be submitted – has known as witnesses related to utilizes of force involving Antioch police K9 Officer Morteza Amiri, whose doggy has bitten at least 22 persons since 2019 — by much the most of any of Antioch’s 7 K9s, according to documents released by the police department. The jury is also investigating uses of pressure involving Antioch police Officer Eric Rombough, a patrol cop who was one of four officers who shot and killed 55-calendar year-old Guadalupe Zavala all through an armed standoff in December 2021.

They are two of the 11 officers underneath federal investigation — a group that consists of 8 officers from Antioch and a few from Pittsburgh — according to many resources.

The revelation of a federal grand jury probe will come immediately after federal and condition prosecutors dismissed instances that relied on the testimony of Amiri, Rombough and other officers. The stakes are substantial and likely damaging to the Antioch Law enforcement Section in which the 8 officers less than investigation depict 10% of the city’s patrol drive.

Attorney Michael Rains verified that his law firm is symbolizing Amiri and that the officer is one of the 11 less than federal prison investigation.

“I’ve been advised very little else other than it relates in some way to his deployment of his pet dog,” Rains explained to this news organization.

Attained by telephone, Rombough’s attorney declined to comment.

Rombough, a SWAT officer and 10-12 months police veteran who joined Antioch from the Alameda County Sheriff’s business office in 2017, was one particular of four Antioch officers to shoot and destroy Zavala through an hours-lengthy standoff at an Antioch residence. Zavala, allegedly armed with a rifle, fired dozens of photographs at officers through the standoff, police stated.

Amiri, a former Brentwood police officer who joined APD in 2017, is a central focus of the investigation, resources say. A lot more than any other Antioch officer, Amiri demonstrates up in current use of force situations his personal office has launched below SB 1421, the 2018 condition legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to produce documents of investigations related to use of drive that triggered terrific bodily harm or loss of life.

All those law enforcement records show that in some conditions Amiri made use of his law enforcement-issued steel flashlight and his fists to strike persons in the face, even though his K9 Purcy was attacking.

Less than SB 1421, APD has introduced information in 4 of the virtually two dozen doggy chunk instances involving Amiri’s pet dog. This incorporates a 17-12 months-old armed robbery suspect Amiri punched in the head while the dog was gnawing at the teenager, documents exhibit. The teen, like other folks bitten by Purcy, required surgical treatment, needing stitches or staples to sew up wounds. Amiri wrote in a law enforcement report that he punched the 17-12 months-outdated suspect in the encounter when Purcy was biting him following a police chase from Antioch to Pittsburg on Feb. 17, 2021, in accordance to law enforcement data.

In a different scenario — involving a gentleman who was suspected of driving a stolen Chevy Trailblazer and did not answer to Amiri and other officers for the duration of an April 2020 website traffic quit — Amiri deployed his doggy to soar as a result of the driver’s aspect window to chunk the arm of a man suspected of driving a stolen Chevy Trailblazer who did not react to officers for the duration of an April 2020 site visitors halt. As Purcy clenched his teeth on the man’s arm, Amiri wrote in a law enforcement report, he swung his flashlight and inadvertently struck the gentleman in the head, immediately after analyzing he was keeping his cellphone and not a gun.

Amiri and other officers claimed they feared for their lives. It turned out, according to the law enforcement report, that the operator of the Trailblazer knew the male and claimed they would not have noted it stolen experienced they recognized he was in possession of the motor vehicle.

In April 2019, Purcy little bit a guy named Vance Gattis when Amiri was making an attempt to arrest Gattis through a targeted visitors cease. He was questioned for not sporting a seat belt as a passenger in a car Amiri stopped for getting tinted windows. The problem promptly escalated, as Gattis resisted the officers, who stunned him with Tasers, deployed Purcy to chunk and apprehend him, and struck him with their fists and flashlights. Amiri claimed hitting Gattis 3 or four times, documents clearly show.

Rombough was the arresting officer but was not named in information as one particular of the officers who made use of drive in opposition to Gattis.

Gattis endured “an intracranial hemorrhage, spinal cord injury, and chest wall trauma,” according to a lawsuit he submitted, naming Amiri, Rombough, and two other officers as defendants. His accidents demanded stitches for lacerations to the arms and a gash on his brow.

This information firm reached out to Rains to seek out remark from Amiri and did not acquire a response.

Considering the fact that the FBI and Contra Costa District Attorney’s business office declared a joint investigation in March, federal prosecutors have dismissed a lot more than a dozen instances, which include four gun possession instances that either hinged on Rombough or Amiri’s testimony. In a single occasion, Rombough claimed he found a pistol on a person he chased on foot and tackled in June 2019. In another, Amiri claimed he noticed a suspect throw a pistol out the window of an Antioch condominium through a lookup. In state courtroom, Contra Costa prosecutors dismissed at minimum 40 conditions that hinge on “impugned” officers, the company introduced, but have declined to specify which situations were being dropped.

Rains did say, having said that, that he believes Antioch law enforcement conduct thorough investigations of use of force and extreme force allegations and that his client, Amiri, was not discovered to have violated policies or eliminated from the K-9 unit until finally the federal investigation started.

In the 4 use of drive scenarios involving Amiri that APD unveiled, none consist of documents exhibiting Amiri was disciplined. In its place, command-degree staff praised his get the job done in sending in Purcy throughout the April 2020 car or truck cease, concluding it was inside policy.

“The restraint of all officers associated and their means to approach information and facts all through a superior stress problem and understand that the suspect was only simulating a firearm is commendable. This could have been an (officer associated taking pictures). Great work by all involved,” an inner section memo mentioned.

In July 2021, the metropolis of Antioch released a biographical video about Amiri in which he talks about how a college resource officer motivated him to return to significant school and in the long run turn out to be a policeman. He recounts increasing up in a “Section 8 household” and how that experience gave him empathy for all those he encounters in equivalent cases “while on patrol.”

“No make any difference the place we go in our group, there is usually men and women waving at us, telling us they respect what we do,” Amiri, an Antioch resident, states on the video clip. But he later laments that, “Sometimes when folks see the uniform, they decide you based mostly on what they see on Tv set and what they see on the world-wide-web.”

With 11 officers underneath investigation, it is by considerably the largest felony probe of regulation enforcement in Contra Costa County in a 10 years. Prosecutors normally request for a grand jury to file an indictment with certain costs at the investigation’s summary, but the final decision of whether and how to charge the case rests wholly with jurors.

The FBI and Contra Costa District Legal professional probe involves equivalent allegations to the infamous CNET scandal of a ten years ago, which specific corruption amongst Contra Costa County regulation enforcement officials, each recent and former, who had been included in stealing and promoting medicines, illegal wiretapping, extortion and theft.

This time about, officers are suspected of employing cocaine and steroids, dishonest on exams or misrepresenting their have teaching, and assaulting men and women, amid other offenses, in accordance to multiple legislation enforcement resources.

Antioch interim police Chief Steven Ford did not react to a ask for for comment for this story.

Civil rights attorneys and critical observers of Antioch police have been not astonished by the existence of the FBI investigation. Lawyer John Burris, who has filed numerous lawsuits towards APD more than the a long time, reported the department has had a background of unchecked too much force and has been resistant to self-discipline officers or modify insurance policies linked to use of drive.

More than the earlier ten years, a number of Antioch officers have been included in deadly shootings or in-custody fatalities, which includes making use of carotid neck retains. From 2008 to 2021, Antioch police officers were concerned in 22 shootings, according to police information.