Chico PD shooting review slams sergeant In-house analysis: Sgt. Ruppel made string of mistakes in Rushing death

by Dave Waddell
posted Sept. 12

A veteran Chico police sergeant did almost everything wrong on the night seven years ago when he gunned Tyler Rushing down, according to Chico PD’s own analysis of the incident.

The recently disclosed in-house review, which the Chico City Council spent many tax dollars trying unsuccessfully to suppress, also criticizes that sergeant, Scott Ruppel, for “dangerously” shooting the critically wounded Rushing while he was in the grasp of two other officers.

Escaping criticism in the analysis was Billy Aldridge, now Chico’s police chief and then a lieutenant and the department’s on-duty watch commander during the incident. Aldridge never took command until after Rushing was shot. The PowerPoint criticizes Ruppel for his failure to “relinquish” control before authorizing a siege on a restroom that ended in Tyler being shot to his death and then tased while incapacitated.

“Did Aldridge approve Ruppel’s plan?” asked Scott Rushing of Ventura, Tyler’s father. “The PowerPoint implies ‘No.’ Why not? Why didn’t Aldridge intervene? There was ample time for cooler heads to prevail.”

Seth Stoughton, an ex-cop, law professor at the University of South Carolina, and top expert on police uses of force, has said that he would have expected “a lieutenant to be calling the tactical shots” in the Rushing situation and that Tyler was not a threat to anyone when tased. The outcome, Stoughton said, was reminiscent “of the Vietnam-era saying, ‘It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.’ … If the goal was to get the guy some help, they totally failed.”

Scott Rushing last year filed a Public Records Act (PRA) petition in Butte County Superior Court to obtain the analysis, titled “Supervisory and Leadership Review” of the shooting of his son on July 23, 2017, inside a title company at Sixth and Main streets. The review was contained in a PowerPoint presentation prepared by a police administrator several months after Tyler’s death.

On July 8 of this year, Rushing’s petition was “granted in its entirety” by Judge Stephen Benson, who ordered the PowerPoint’s release within 60 days. The City provided online access to the report late last month.

In a court stipulation filed Sept. 10, the City of Chico agreed to reimburse Scott Rushing’s attorney fees of $92,548. It is not yet known how much the city spent on its own lawyers in trying to keep the PowerPoint secret.

On the night he died, Tyler Rushing, who was acting strangely but had no illegal drugs in his system, attacked and cut private security guard Edgar Sanchez with a glass flowerpot. Sanchez, while investigating an alarm at Mid Valley Title & Escrow, shot Tyler in the chest, sending him fleeing into the women’s restroom. Eventually, police broke into the restroom with a biting police dog, and the flailing Rushing stabbed Sgt. Ruppel in the neck with a pen he had pulled from officer Cedric Schwyzer’s shirt pocket. Though his injury was nothing more than a skin tear, Ruppel responded with two gunshots at nearly point-blank range.

Three weeks after the shooting, Ruppel was caught on body camera choking a handcuffed suspect for eight seconds. He had retired by the time the PowerPoint was prepared.

Over and over, the review faults Ruppel for his hands-on involvement instead of directing subordinate officers to do those tasks. Ruppel’s actions, according to the review, reduced his ability to plan, coordinate and think objectively. They included:

–Participating in an unnecessarily hurried search for Tyler.
–Conducting all negotiations for 40 minutes in trying to talk Tyler out of the restroom.
–Relinquishing control of the plan to apprehend Tyler to a Butte County sheriff’s deputy canine handler.
–Authorizing a plan that was unnecessarily dangerous to officers because police lacked proof that Tyler’s false claim of having a gun wasn’t true.
–Ramming open the door and entering the restroom as the “lethal option.”
–Shooting while Tyler was being held by deputy Ian Dickerson and officer Schwyzer.

“The K9 was there to support our patrol efforts and Sgt. Ruppel’s plan,” says the PowerPoint. “Sgt. Ruppel relinquished control of the entry team [make-up] to a deputy who likely did not know all the officers on scene and their specific capabilities like Sgt. Ruppel would have known. …

“Without having the intelligence to confirm the suspect was NOT armed with a gun the entry into the bathroom to ‘save’ the suspect’s life would have possibly ended in a gun battle between the suspect and several officers – in complete conflict with the intent to enter. This act unnecessarily placed the entering officers at risk. Again, what’s the rush to send officers in.”

In addition to the PowerPoint, Scott Rushing received through his PRA lawsuit the names of the members of the department’s crisis negotiation team in 2017. One name on the list of nine members jumped out at Rushing: Omar Peña, a second sergeant inside the title company. Like Aldridge, Peña has since been promoted and is currently a captain.

“It appears to me (Peña) used none of his specialized training to help Tyler,” Rushing said. “It made me sick.”

It also was Peña who, without hesitation, provided the Taser called for by officer Alex Fliehr, who yelled out that the prone, thrice-shot Tyler was “moving.”

Just 70 seconds after the shooting, Fliehr tased Tyler. That tasing, not the killing, will be the primary focus of the Rushings’ long-awaited civil trial starting Oct. 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento.

Chico PD’s Internal Affairs investigation into the incident reported that Tyler never moved once he was shot to the floor. That finding was based on a review of officers’ body-worn camera videos.

Police body-cam videos also show that Aldridge, Chico’s chief of police since December 2022, arrived at the corner of Sixth and Main at about 6:30 p.m., about 20 minutes before Tyler was killed and tased. After learning the basic details of the situation from officers Darrin Brown and Marcelo Escobedo, Aldridge headed to the rear entrance of Mid Valley Title & Escrow in search of Sgt. Peña.

According to the PowerPoint, “Lt. Aldridge required a briefing before the transfer of command could take place. Sgt. Peña was an obvious choice to provide that briefing. … A complete brief from Sgt. Ruppel to Sgt. Peña should have occurred for an accurate and complete brief to Lt. Aldridge. … Even after a brief was conducted, Lt. Aldridge would have had to either agree with the current plans made by Sgt. Ruppel or alternate plans would have had to be delivered via the radio, cell phone or face to face with Sgt. Ruppel. … Transfer of command never takes place. Knowing Lt. Aldridge was on scene and being briefed, could Sgt. Ruppel have waited to transfer command before making the decision to enter? Again, what was the immediate rush to enter?”

The tasing is not mentioned until the final page of the PowerPoint review: “Officers that were left in the bathroom with the suspect were without a designated officer to take charge in the absence of the sergeant.”

Scott Rushing commented on the reimbursement of his legal fees by the City.

“I am excited to get my money back, but I am angry that I had to risk so much of my money,” Rushing said. “City officials should have known better, but they flaunted the rules, and the taxpayers of Chico suffered the loss. I am grateful to the court for ruling in my favor. I found the records very revealing.”

Scott Rushing said the PowerPoint was rumored to have been written for training purposes by Ted McKinnon, a since-retired Chico PD lieutenant. Rushing said the review’s conclusions may help his family’s civil rights lawsuit.

“The PowerPoint,” said Rushing, “supports my theory that Aldridge and Peña were guilty of nonintervention, which diminished leadership and, as a result, lessened Tyler’s chances of surviving and getting the medical help he needed.”

Aldridge and Peña did not respond to a request for comment on the PowerPoint’s content or about Scott Rushing’s claims regarding their failure to intervene.

To aid Chico’s defense in Scott Rushing’s PRA case, Matt Madden, Aldridge’s predecessor as chief, recently submitted a written declaration to the court. In it, Madden said the “PowerPoint presentation was created in or around November 2017 … by a now-retired member of the Department … Said retired member took it upon himself to create the PowerPoint and was not directed to prepare the PowerPoint by me or any members of the Command Staff. … The PowerPoint amounts to one person’s personal opinion regarding how he would have handled the situation, including recommendations and conclusions not adopted by the Department.”

Judge Benson, in his ruling, was dismissive of Madden’s claims, writing that “it is almost impossible to imagine how this was not done within the scope of employment. … The fact that recommendations and conclusions were made evidence the fact that it was … more than just an incidental reference to agency business.”

Tyler Rushing was the third of three fatal officer-involved shootings by Chico PD within a 19-month period that included the killings of Eddie “Gabe” Sanchez in November 2015 and Desmond Phillips in March 2017. Mike O’Brien, currently a candidate for Chico City Council, was police chief during that deadly stretch.

Dave Waddell is a contributing writer who specializes in policing.