Fairfield paid $210K to settle lawsuit involving former Vallejo officer linked to badge bending

FAIRFIELD – The city of Fairfield paid $210,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that two officers, including a former Vallejo police officer tied to the department’s badge bending scandal, violently arrested a couple and used force to prevent them from filming the encounter.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2021, alleges that Officer Zachary Sandoval and another unnamed officer pushed Vallejo resident Calvin Rush to the ground during a traffic stop in January 2019. Meanwhile,  Officer Dustin Joseph, a former Vallejo officer, allegedly slammed Rush’s wife, Jayme Rush, to the ground to prevent her from filming it. The Fairfield City Council approved the settlement late last year.

According to the lawsuit, the couple’s vehicle had expired tags when they were pulled over and Calvin Rush was driving without a license. The officers ordered him out of the vehicle and told him to put his hands on his head, the lawsuit states.

That’s when one of the officers grabbed Calvin Rush and threw him to the ground onto his stomach, “with his legs pressed against him in a four-figure leg lock,” and held him in that position.

“During this time while the Plaintiff was already handcuffed and placed in a prone position, Defendant Sandoval struck him on the right side of his face with a closed fist three times,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit alleges that Sandoval and the unnamed officer ignored Calvin Rush’s pleas that he couldn’t breathe.

Meanwhile, Joseph is accused of slamming Calvin Rush’s wife Jayme to the ground after she got out of the car “in order to film the officers’ interaction with her husband to ensure his safety,” the lawsuit states.

Joseph then allegedly put his full weight onto Jayme Rush, who recently had back surgery and suffers from various back injuries, the lawsuit states.

“While Jayme Rush was pinned to the ground with Defendant Joseph’s body weight on her, Defendant Joseph repeatedly placed his forearm into the side of the Plaintiff’s neck, causing her extreme pain and choking the Plaintiff by wrapping her left arm tightly around her neck,” the lawsuit alleges.

Calvin and Jayme Rush were each charged with resisting arrest but those charges were dropped months after their arrest, according to the lawsuit. 

The Fairfield Police Department hired Joseph in 2019. Prior to that, he had worked in Vallejo since 2002. 

While he was employed in Fairfield, Joseph was named as one of the Vallejo police officers who bent the edges of their star-shaped badges to mark their involvement in a shooting. Nine people were arrested during a November 2020 Fairfield City Council meeting as they protested Joseph working for Fairfield police.

Joseph was involved in two high-profile police shootings while with Vallejo police.

In September 2012, Joseph, along with then-Vallejo police Officer Sean Kenney, shot and killed 23-year-old Mario Romero while Romero and his brother-in-law, Joseph Johnson, were sitting in Romero’s car in North Vallejo.

Kenney and Joseph claimed that as they approached the vehicle, Romero reached for something and appeared to hold a gun as he stepped out of the car. That’s when the officers opened fire, hitting Romero 30 times, killing him. Joseph was hit in the hip and survived.

Romero’s family, some of whom witnessed the shooting, disputed the official police narrative, and said that Kenney fired into the car while standing on its hood. Kenney said he later found a pellet gun wedged between the driver’s seat and center console. The city of Vallejo paid a $2 million settlement in the shooting.

About six months following that shooting, Joseph — along with officers Ritzie Tolentino and Joshua Coleman — shot and killed William Heinze, 42, in March 2013. Police received reports of a man, believed to be Heinze, pointing a gun at people. He then retreated into a home, threatening to kill himself and others. Police fired into the home, killing Heinze.

Coleman testified in 2022 that after the Heinze shooting, former police Lt. Kent Tribble bent his badge at a bar across the street from Vallejo police headquarters while Joseph watched.

Calvin and Jayme Rush have another pending lawsuit against the Vallejo Police Department alleging excessive force, false arrest and battery during an arrest outside their Vallejo home last year.  

Vallejo police followed Calvin Rush home from work and then arrested him and Jayme Rush, who officers threw to the ground and injured. The Solano County District Attorney’s Office declined to charge the couple with a crime.

The Vallejo Sun published video of the arrest shortly after it occurred, which shows police take Jayme Rush to the ground and arrest her after she had backed away from her husband’s car onto her front lawn.

John Glidden contributed to this report.