Vallejo reaches $2.8M settlement for police killing of Angel Ramos

VALLEJO – The city of Vallejo has reached a $2.8 million settlement with the family of Angel Ramos, a 21-year-old man whom a Vallejo police officer shot and killed during a family fight in January 2017.

The settlement ends a wrongful death lawsuit Ramos’ family filed against the city later that year.

“There will never be a dollar amount high enough to measure the value of Angel’s life and what our family lost,” Ramos’ sister Antoinette Saddler said in a statement. “We have experienced pain, terror and anxiety that no words can ever explain, and no family should ever have to experience.”

City Attorney Veronica Nebb didn't respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

Ramos was shot and killed after Officer Zachary Jacobsen and his partner, Officer Matt Samida, responded to reports of a fight at a Sacramento Street home during the early morning hours of Jan. 23, 2017.

Jacobsen reported that he heard yelling and screaming from the home and saw several people on a second story balcony fighting.

Jacobsen claimed that he saw Ramos — who he said was holding a large knife at shoulder level — run from inside the house, mount another man, and make stabbing motions. Fearing the other man would be injured or killed, Jacobsen shot and killed Ramos.

Jacobsen’s description of events has been contradicted by Ramos’ family, who say that Ramos came out of the house and kneeled over the other man and punched him. Samida also testified in a deposition that he saw Ramos punch, not stab, the other man.

No knife was found near Ramos.

A U.S. District judge dealt a blow to the city’s push to have the case tossed when he denied the city’s motion for summary judgment last December, clearing the way for the civil rights lawsuit to proceed to trial. The judge cited discrepancies between Jacobsen’s account and the facts of the case, including that the officer misidentified Ramos’ ethnicity and what Ramos was wearing when he shot and killed him.

The family's attorney, Melissa Nold, called out the city for providing incorrect information.

“The City of Vallejo immediately issued a press release, claiming that Angel was ‘holding a knife’ when he was shot, which was patently untrue and calculated to conceal the truth,” Nold said in a statement. “To date, the City of Vallejo has never issued a retraction of their fabrication that Angel was ‘holding a knife’ when he was shot.”

Jacobsen was cleared of any wrongdoing by a Vallejo Police Department review board more than a year after the shooting. The board wrote that Jacobsen used reasonable force, but it  admonished the officer for not activating his body-worn camera during the incident.

The Solano County District Attorney’s Office also cleared Jacobsen of any wrongdoing in February 2018. Jacobsen has since been named as an officer who bent the tip of his star-shaped badge to mark the shooting.

Ramos’ mother, Annice Evans, called the monetary settlement “blood money” that she said would not make the family go away.

“We will continue to demand the termination and prosecution of Jacobsen and all of the badge benders,” Evans added.

Nold said that following the end of the civil case, there is a one year “statute of limitations for terminating Officer Zach Jacobsen.”

“So the city of Vallejo is now on notice that the community demands his immediate termination,” Nold said.