Vallejo detective who killed Sean Monterrosa to be reinstated with back pay

VALLEJO – Vallejo Police Detective Jarrett Tonn — who shot killed 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa during a chaotic series of burglaries in June 2020 — will be reinstated with back pay after an arbitrator ruled that the city did not follow proper procedures when firing him.

The arbitrator ruled on Aug. 18 that the city could not fire Tonn, according to a statement from Joshua Olander, Tonn’s attorney.

“This decision was issued after an evidentiary hearing and represented the second determination by a neutral hearing officer that Detective Tonn’s use of deadly force was legally justified and his termination was not supported by the facts and the law,” Olander’s statement said.

According to Olander, the arbitrator found that an independent investigation by the OIR Group improperly relied on facts that were unknown to the officers when determining whether the officers reasonably believed there was a threat of imminent harm when Tonn shot Monterrosa.

Tonn was in the backseat of an unmarked pickup truck as he and two other officers responded to a reported burglary at a Walgreens on June 2, 2020. Monterrosa ran from the building as the truck pulled into the Walgreens parking lot and Tonn fired five times through the windshield, striking Monterrosa once in the back of the head.

Tonn said that he saw Monterrosa turn around and point a gun, but Monterrosa had only a hammer in the pocket of his hoodie.

An outside investigation by the OIR Group concluded in 2021 that Tonn violated department policy when he killed Monterrosa because the use of deadly force was not objectively reasonable, that Tonn had failed to de-escalate the situation and because he did not turn on his body-worn camera before the shooting. Based on the investigation’s findings, then-Vallejo police Chief Shawny Williams issued Tonn a notice of termination.

But according to Olander, the arbitrator found that the OIR Group’s analysis relied on facts only known with the benefit of hindsight, which is a violation of California law.

“OIR relied upon several facts unknown to the officers at the time of the shooting: 1) that Monterossa was in possession of a hammer and not a gun; and 2) that Monterossa was shot in the back of the head,” the arbitrator wrote, according to Olander.

The city of Vallejo declined to release the arbitrator’s report on Monday, which is a public record under California law, saying that it required review and redaction by legal counsel. City officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Olander said that the arbitrator also found that de-escalation was not feasible in the situation as Tonn reasonably believed that he was about to be shot and killed, and that Williams wrote in a department email shortly after the shooting that Tonn “perceived a deadly threat” and that he had “the most profound appreciation for [his] hard work, dedication and courage.”

The arbitrator also determined that Tonn would have been cleared of wrongdoing “had normal procedures been followed.”

The Monterrosa family sued the city of Vallejo months after the shooting in a lawsuit that is still pending. In a statement, S. Lee Merritt and John Coyle, attorneys for Monterrosa’s family, called the arbitrator’s decision “appalling.”

“This murder was the third time Tonn has fired his weapon at an unarmed citizen,” Merritt said. “The Vallejo community can have no faith in Tonn as a community member, let alone as a law enforcement officer.”

Tonn was previously involved in three shootings as a Vallejo police officer, but Monterrosa’s was the first that was fatal. The Monterrosa family plans to hold a press conference Thursday at Vallejo City Hall.

Tonn is also being investigated for any criminal violations for the shooting by the California Department of Justice, but the investigation has languished for over three years with no updates.

Tonn previously won a Skelly hearing — a mandatory review hearing for public employees facing discipline — which also found that the city had inappropriately fired Tonn after giving him a positive performance evaluation and making public statements days after the shooting that indicated that Tonn feared for his life when he killed Monterrosa.

Having lost the Skelly hearing, it became unlikely that the city would ever be able to fire Tonn as the decision would be subject to binding arbitration under the city’s contract with the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association, but the city proceeded with the termination anyway.