Family sues Vallejo, alleging illegal search for police lieutenant’s gold handcuffs

VALLEJO – A Vallejo family sued the city this week alleging that a Vallejo police lieutenant illegally searched their home and harassed them while trying to recover her gold plated inscribed handcuffs.

The lawsuit filed by civil rights attorney Melissa Nold alleges that Vallejo police Lt. Jodi Brown, who was a sergeant at the time, lost a pair of gold-plated handcuffs inscribed with her name and badge number during an encounter with 21-year-old Robert Baker last year. 

After that, police searched the home of Baker’s parents, Jamal and Kellyanne Colter, leaving it in shambles and damaging property. Police later pursued Baker on a motorbike, causing him to crash and break his leg, and falsely reported the family car had been involved in a robbery, leading to Baker’s family being detained at gunpoint in San Francisco, the lawsuit alleges. 

The family filed a claim for damages last year and requested an internal affairs investigation. But a year later, police have made no attempt to arrest Baker, despite Brown allegedly saying she had a warrant for his arrest, and internal affairs investigators have not contacted the family to follow up. Brown was promoted to lieutenant shortly after the incident.

“Plaintiffs have been robbed of their sense of safety and security as American Citizens, who are to be free from unlawful searches, illegal seizures, unwarranted use of force, racial profiling, and racial terror,” the lawsuit states. “These multiple, escalating, dangerous incidents were ignored by Chief of Police Jason Ta and the City of Vallejo.”

Brown lost the handcuffs when she detained Baker on April 14, 2024, according to the lawsuit. Baker was sitting in a parked car on Tuolumne Street when Brown approached and asked him what he was doing. The lawsuit alleges that Brown became agitated and insisted that he give her his ID. She walked away, then returned and tried to handcuff him with her gold handcuffs, according to the lawsuit.

Baker was afraid and drove away, with the handcuffs attached halfway to his wrist; Brown did not pursue him but still had his ID, according to the lawsuit. Nold said that Baker dropped the handcuffs as he was driving away.

Three days later, police swarmed Baker’s parents home and searched it. His parents were in the process of moving out and many of their possessions were in boxes. Police broke the locks on their house, gate and garage and dumped boxes and kitchen drawers, according to the lawsuit.

After neighbors alerted them to the raid, the couple called the Vallejo police watch commander. They said they received a call back from an officer who did not identify herself but was apparently Brown. The officer said that she had personally searched the house and left a copy of the warrant inside, but the house was boarded up. According to the couple, the officer also claimed that there was an arrest warrant for their son and said that he should turn himself in.

It took a week for the couple to get into the house as they needed specialized power tools to get the plywood off the door. When they finally got in, they said the house was destroyed. A month later, they were still cleaning up.

In the kitchen, they found the search warrant, which was reviewed by the Vallejo Sun. It was signed by Solano County Superior Court Judge Dora Rios and allowed the police to search the home and a car allegedly associated with Baker for “peerless gold-plated handcuffs with the name Sergeant Jodi Brown #637.”

An inventory of items taken during the search does not include the handcuffs and indicates that the only item officers took was a single piece of mail addressed to Baker. The receipt was signed by Brown, indicating that she personally executed the warrant.

Vallejo police had an opportunity to arrest Baker weeks after the search, but didn’t. Baker was riding a motorbike during the afternoon of May 3 when a Vallejo police officer saw him and started following him. According to the claim, the officer swerved toward Baker and caused him to crash, breaking his leg. The officers stopped, took Baker’s information and he went to a hospital, but was not arrested and the officers said nothing about a warrant, according to the lawsuit.

Then on May 18, San Francisco police officers pulled the Colters and their children over and held them at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit. The San Francisco officers told them that Brown had reported the vehicle was wanted in connection with a robbery and the driver should be considered armed and dangerous, the lawsuit alleges.

A year later, police have still made no attempt to arrest Baker, according to the lawsuit. The suit seeks damages for unreasonable search and seizure, negligence, and battery for causing Baker to crash, which according to the lawsuit left him with permanent injuries. 

The lawsuit argues that the case is part of a pattern of the city’s failure to properly train officers and “deliberate indifference” to officers violating people’s constitutional rights, which Nold has repeatedly argued in other lawsuits while seeking to place the police department under federal oversight. The police department is already subject to a long running reform agreement with the state Department of Justice.

Brown herself has a checkered history with Vallejo police. She was once suspended because she was in two car crashes while on duty within a week in 2017. In one of the crashes, she was involved in a pursuit but waited 47 minutes to report it, which the department found was an “unreasonable time delay.” In the second, the investigation found that she was at fault for not properly yielding after a stop.

In 2019, John Mark Raudelunas — a 71-year-old disabled man — sued Vallejo police, saying that when he tried to report another driver throwing an object at his car and striking him in the head, Brown responded, refused to help, then followed him home and Tased him for no reason. The city settled the lawsuit for $37,500 in 2023.

After Brown was promoted to sergeant, she supervised other officers in the patrol division under Lt. Steve Darden. In that role, the officers under her supervision complained that Brown and Darden had engaged in “retaliation,” “harassment,” and created a “hostile work environment.” The complaint led in part to the firing of Deputy Police Chief Michael Kihmm over his handling of the matter.