Journalist receives threatening email from Vallejo police union
The agency says it will investigate a message sent to a San Francisco Chronicle columnist this week.
(Image courtesy Otis R. Taylor, Jr. via Twitter, Graphic by Solano News Update)
The Vallejo Police Department said on Tuesday it will investigate an email that was sent from the city’s police union to an outgoing San Francisco Chronicle columnist this week.
The announcement comes less than one day after journalist Otis R. Taylor, Jr. posted to Twitter a screen capture of an email sent by the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association after the columnist said he would be leaving the newspaper for a new role at the Atlanta Journal-Constitituion.
“Looks like 2021 will be a little bit better not having your biased and uniformed [sic] articles printed in the newspaper that only inflame the public,” the e-mail said. “You have never looked for truth in any of your writings.”
The email warned Taylor that the Vallejo police union would contact their law enforcement counterparts in Georgia to “warn our…colleagues of your impending arrival.”
The email drew swift condemnation from Taylor’s colleagues after he posted it to Twitter Monday evening and caught the attention of Vallejo’s police chief after reporters began inquiring about it.
“I am deeply disturbed by the statement purported to have been made by the VPOA to Mr. Taylor,” Shawny Williams, Vallejo’s police chief, said in a press release Tuesday evening. “We do not condone any form of disrespect, discourteous behavior or act of intimidation toward our media partners.”
Williams said the Vallejo police union is separate from the agency, and that the message did “not represent those [views] of the Vallejo Police Department.”
“We deeply regret Mr. Taylor’s unfortunate experience,” Williams said.
In a conversation with Solano News Update on Tuesday, Taylor said he was curious to see what conclusion the police department’s will draw from its investigation into the e-mail.
“It's troubling that a union representing officers in a department embroiled in so much turmoil would have the audacity to target anyone,” Taylor wrote in a social media message. “But, as I've reported, Vallejo police have a long history of intimidating people, even public officials.”
On Twitter, Taylor took his criticism one step farther, charging the Vallejo Police Department and its officers with having “an adversarial relationship with the truth.”
During his time with the Chronicle, Taylor has not shied away from reporting on the apparent malfeasance of Vallejo’s officers who have become embroiled in several public scandals over the last few years, from fatal shootings of unarmed individuals to a badge-bending scandal that was exposed by an act of investigative journalism.
In a June column, Taylor bluntly wrote, “if there is a police department that needs to be overhauled, it’s Vallejo’s.”
Williams and other city leaders have not disagreed with his assessment: In recent months, they’ve pushed for emergency declarations and other measures that would allow them to better respond to lawsuits that have been filed by people who were victimized by acts of police brutality that occurred in Vallejo. These measures have been largely opposed by Vallejo’s police union, which asserted more than once that Vallejo’s problems with crime and community sentiment could be solved if the city would simply “hire more cops.”
With his columns, Taylor often found himself on the opposing side of the police union’s agenda — not because he disagreed with it, but because the facts took him elsewhere. And the e-mail sent to Taylor on Monday was not viewed as mere collateral damage in a war between two public groups, but rather an unwarranted, personal attack against a journalist who has always done his job.
“Not only is it completely unprofessional, but the attempt to intimidate Otis is a misuse of the office of the [V]POA and disrespects the importance of truth telling in our society,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, said in a quote published by the newspaper on Tuesday. “We are heartened to hear that the chief of police is looking into the matter. Even as Otis departs for his new job, we will continue to hold the Vallejo police accountable as we would all public servants in the Bay Area.”
On Tuesday, Williams appeared to agree that the unprovoked attack by the police union against the journalist was designed to undermine the foundation of public accountability through his reporting.
“Journalism is a noble profession that is the cornerstone of a democracy – the only business entity given protections by the U.S. Constitution,” Williams wrote. “When journalists are attacked, so is our Constitution.”
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