Detective Jarrett Tonn was placed on paid leave a year after the 2020 shooting of SF resident Sean Monterrosa, and in the wake of new findings, the chief of police is looking to fire him.
It was three days after the June 2, 2020 police shooting of 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa that we learned the identity of the officer, Jarrett Tonn. Tonn apparently fit right in at the notoriously trigger-happy Vallejo Police Department, as this was his fourth shooting in five years, as was discovered by the independent news organization Open Vallejo. That same organization reported that Tonn was placed on paid leave a year later, following a state attorney general investigation into whether that Tonn may have mishandled some evidence.
Multiple sources have named Det. Jarrett Tonn as the officer who shot Sean Monterrosa Tuesday morning.
— Open Vallejo (@OpenVallejo) June 6, 2020
Tonn’s previous shootings include:
Gerald Brown (2015): https://t.co/oK9fRhCtG9
Victor Hurtado (2017): https://t.co/uFI2zG03NF
Kevin DeCarlo (2017): https://t.co/JGj6pOvQt7 pic.twitter.com/aHtnfb5kjq
The writing was on the wall then that Tonn might be jettisoned off the force, and that’s looking more and more likely. KTVU reports that Vallejo PD chief Shawny Williams has decided to fire Tonn, citing an internal letter obtained by Open Vallejo.
EXCLUSIVE: Det. Jarrett Tonn has been served with a notice of intent to terminate his employment for violating policy in killing Sean Monterrosa.
— Open Vallejo (@OpenVallejo) December 4, 2021
He is the first Vallejo officer in at least 20 years to face termination for an on-duty killing.
📷: Noah Berger for Open Vallejo pic.twitter.com/0LZO6qTrNC
“I am notifying you of my intent to terminate your employment with the Vallejo Police Department,” Williams wrote in the letter dated December 1. “The evidence indicates that you fast approached a group of people suspected of property crimes, focused on one individual, pointed a rifle at him, did not give him any directions, drew mistaken conclusions from his ‘failure’ to surrender in a manner that you thought he should, and then assumed that he was about to shoot you and your partners. You then shot at him five times in rapid succession, killing him."
“You continued firing despite your impaired view, resulting from your firing through the windshield from inside the [redacted] vehicle,” the letter continues. “Your failure to gather information, evaluate de-escalation strategies, and engage in tactical planning before approaching a potentially armed suspect increased the risk of deadly force."
Unsurprisingly, the very vocal Vallejo Police Officers Association is going to bat hard for Detective Tonn. In a statement to KTVU, they complained that the “administrative, investigative and disciplinary process must be completed in an unbiased, fair, and complete fashion, without regard to political and personal motivations. Unfortunately, this investigation and the resulting conclusions did not meet the basic standards of objectivity, fairness, and due process without regard to political and personal motivations.
Meanwhile, the state attorney general investigation into the mishandling of evidence is ongoing, and a civil suit from Monterrosa’s family did not get moved to Fresno, as the City of Vallejo had hoped.
Image: Vallejo Police Department via Facebook