Butte County police-shooting probes stall

Butte County’s system for investigating officer-involved shootings has stalled without explanation, leaving several cases unresolved and marking a sharp departure from a pattern of rapid exonerations stretching back decades.

District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who oversees such investigations, has issued no reports on police killings since 2020 or on non-fatal police shootings since 2017, according to an extensive review of county records.

A number of cases remain open as a result.

• In November 2022, a California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agent shot four times, missing 19-year-old Madison Sells during a confrontation in a Chico Safeway parking lot. Ramsey’s failure to make a charging decision forced ABC to abandon plans to provide psychological support for the officers involved, according to emails obtained under a Public Records Act request. Nearly three years later, Ramsey still has not ruled on the case, leaving all reports stamped as “drafts.”

• On the second day of 2023, 33 days after the ABC shooting, three Gridley police officers fired 31 times in killing Baltazar Rubio, who was in mental crisis and allegedly pointing an unloaded gun at police. The officers’ final few shots came with Rubio on the ground after a four-second pause in the gunfire. It has been more 2½ years since the shooting, with silence on the case from Ramsey.

• Also missing is any information on Chico PD’s fatal shooting six months ago of Michael Oxley as well as on the May 8 killing of Valerie Ann Cadwallader, by Butte County sheriff’s deputy Tyler Dentinger. The Oxley shooting involved four officers, including two sergeants previously involved in controversial killings that Ramsey had cleared. The City of Chico last week issued a blanket denial of a Public Records Act request for investigative reports about the Oxley shooting, saying the incident is still under investigation.

Seth Stoughton, one of the nation’s foremost experts on police uses of force, said officer-involved shooting investigations can be complicated and time-consuming. 

“There may be multiple witnesses who need to be interviewed, potentially multiple times, as well as physical evidence that may need to be subjected to forensic examination,” said Stoughton, an ex-cop and professor of law who directs the Excellence in Policing & Public Safety Program at the University of South Carolina. “And they aren’t always the highest investigative priority, since they are usually assumed to not have broader public safety implications.”

But even with that in mind, he added, “I’m skeptical that there is a good reason for a criminal investigation to linger for more than two years. At a minimum, the office should be able to explain where they are in the investigation in a way that doesn’t threaten to undermine the integrity of the investigation.”

Based on public records, Ramsey, 77, has overseen 40 fatal officer-involved shooting investigations during 38 years in office. The three most recent cases—Rubio, Oxley and Cadwallader—are still active, with no official determinations. But in all the other 37 shootings, he exonerated the killing officers. In one Paradise case—after a police video went viral —Ramsey reversed himself, prosecuting a cop he first insisted had shot an unarmed man in the neck accidentally.

With the killing of Desmond Phillips in 2017, Ramsey began posting his investigative reports to the DA’s website. A report has not been added since Chico PD’s killing of Stephen Vest five years ago.

Unresolved discrepancies
The practical consequences of Ramsey’s inaction are illustrated by the aftermath of ABC’s non-fatal shooting incident at the West Sacramento Avenue Safeway store on Nov. 30, 2022.

Shortly after 1 p.m. that day, numerous Alcoholic Beverage Control agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars were conducting surveillance at the store, trying to catch minors stealing alcoholic beverages. In the parking lot, they witnessed what looked like a “hand-to-hand” drug deal involving occupants of a parked Chevrolet Tracker.

When agents Chandler Baird and Jeremy Singleton approached the vehicle, the driver, Madison Sells, suddenly accelerated and struck Baird, agents said. Baird was able to “push off the hood” and avoid serious injury, according to an incident report compiled by the California Highway Patrol. His lone injury was listed as a muscle strain.

Singleton, saying he feared for Baird’s life, fired his Glock four times at Sells, missing her and a passenger. While bleeding from cuts from shattered window glass, Sells managed to drive away. She was later arrested hiding behind clothes in a closet of a residence.

The story Sells told investigators was at odds with the agents’ account. Sells, who admitted smoking fentanyl in the Tracker, denied the vehicle hit Baird. While backing out of a parking space to leave, Sells said she suddenly saw people “acting hella weird” and pointing a gun at her. The windows were rolled up and music was playing loudly. She claimed not to hear anyone say “police” or see any badges flashed, as agents maintained.

Sells said she decided that since someone was pointing a gun at her, she was going to flee, turning the steering wheel all the way to the right and hitting the accelerator. She said a guy “jumped back as if she was going to hit him,” but he was “nowhere near the vehicle,” according to a summary of an interview by a Chico Police Department detective.

That’s when the shooting started.

That detective, John Nickelson, who was assigned to the Officer-Involved Shooting Protocol Team, reviewed a nearby laundry’s surveillance video that captured the incident.

“As the vehicle accelerates, it moves straight forward several feet and then sharply to the right,” wrote Nickelson. “As the vehicle turns to the right, the (agent) wearing tan pants is seen running away from the vehicle,” and what appeared to be “puffs of glass” coincided with gunfire that destroyed the driver’s side window.

Unable to Get a Decision
Emails obtained under a Public Records Act request show ABC’s top brass eager to arrange a “critical debrief” for agents involved in the Safeway incident. A critical debrief is a structured group discussion to help officers mentally process a traumatic event, with a secondary purpose of learning from an incident to improve agency responses.

On Dec. 1, a day after the shooting, Melanie Perry, supervising agent in charge of ABC’s Professional Standards Unit, announced in an email that a room had been tentatively reserved for Dec. 9 in Redding to hold the critical debrief. Perry said the event would be facilitated by the California Chaplain Corps and involve only ABC personnel—not Chico PD investigators—because the ABC agents “felt they were being judged on tactics by the PD during interviews and would be reluctant to participate if (Chico detectives) were in attendance.”

“Hopefully the DA has a decision about the shooting by (Dec. 9),” wrote ABC’s Paul Tuby, a deputy division chief in Sacramento, in a separate Dec. 1 email. “The chaplains recommend holding the debrief within a week of the critical incident, so we are pretty good on the recommended timeframe. … I think it would be good for them to debrief the emotions of this.”

On Dec. 7, two days before the scheduled debrief, Tuby emailed Christopher Oakley, an investigative lieutenant in Ramsey’s office, inquiring about “when the DA may have a charging decision.” Oakley promised to ask Ramsey and get back to him.

A week later, on Dec. 14, Tuby queried again. Oakley replied that Ramsey planned to read the investigative reports during the coming weekend and “will make a final call after reviewing everything.”

Nine days later, on Dec. 23, with the holidays looming, Tuby again emailed Oakley seeking “a sense of when the findings of the investigation would be released.” Oakley replied five days later, providing Ramsey’s desk phone number and suggesting he call the DA “and hopefully he’ll have an answer for you.”

It’s not clear from the records whether Tuby made that call, but in February 2023, three months after the shooting, ABC officials were still discussing trying to hold a modified debrief. The email discussion ended at that point.

The CHP’s report described the incident as an “assault with a deadly weapon” upon an ABC agent, resulting in an agent-involved shooting. Ramsey, however, has never filed any assault charges against Sells, according to the Butte County Superior Court website.

Even though the shooting occurred 33 months ago, dozens of reports about the incident from multiple agencies are still stamped as “drafts”—apparently not finalized because Ramsey has yet to decide about criminal charges.

Devin Blankenship, ABC’s public information officer, said the agency has an agreement with the California Highway Patrol to conduct administrative investigations into ABC agent-involved shootings.

“ABC’s internal review accepted the findings of CHP’s investigative report,” said Blankenship, who confirmed that no written evaluation of the incident was done by ABC supervisors.

Police expert Stoughton, a former detective, called ABC’s handling of the shooting “a mistake.”

Stoughton said there are multiple questions that need to be asked after an officer-involved shooting: 

1. “The criminal question: Did anyone potentially commit a crime?”
2. “The administrative question: Did any police employee violate agency policy or training?”
3. “The agency improvement question: What, if anything, can the agency do to improve future outcomes?”

Stoughton explained, “These questions are different, and answering these questions often requires asking different questions. A criminal investigation is simply unlikely to ask the kinds of questions needed to determine whether an officer acted within policy or whether the agency can improve.”

Informed of Stoughton’s comments, ABC’s Blankenship said the agency “utilized the (CHP) report to review its internal policies and procedures, and to confirm the agent complied with the department’s training and standards.”

The CHP report was a summary of interviews with law enforcement personnel at the Safeway incident. Sells’s story, as well as the accounts of other non-police witnesses, was not included in that report.

How Reviews Changed
Ramsey did not respond to requests for comment.

In California, the 58 county district attorneys are primarily responsible for investigating officer-involved shootings. Since 2021, the state Department of Justice has investigated all police shootings resulting in the death of an unarmed person.

Butte County’s law enforcement “protocol” for investigating officer-involved shootings dates to the early 1990s, when it was adopted by 14 city, county and state law enforcement agencies. Under the protocol, all law enforcement shootings are supposed to be investigated by the Butte County Officer Involved Shooting/Critical Incident Protocol Team, composed of rotating detectives from participating agencies and directed by Ramsey.

“The average number of days taken by Ramsey to complete his report … was 43.”

Twenty years ago, it was not uncommon for Ramsey to rule on a police shooting in less than a week. His pace has progressively slowed over the last dozen years—as demonstrated by the duration of the investigations in the five fatal Chico police shootings preceding the Oxley killing.

In 2013, Ramsey took just 11 days to exonerate Chico PD Sgt. Scott Zuschin in the killing of 19-year-old Breanne Sharpe. Zuschin shot Sharpe in the back of the head as she fled in a stolen Honda.

Two years later, after Chico Detective Mark Bass shot fleeing armed robbery suspect Gabe Sanchez in the side of the face, Ramsey cleared Bass of wrongdoing in three weeks.

It took a month for the district attorney to exonerate Chico PD officers Alex Fliehr and Jeremy Gagnebin after their barrage of bullets on St. Patrick’s Day 2017 killed Phillips, a 25-year-old Black man in mental crisis.

Four months later, Chico Sgt. Scott Ruppel shot Tyler Rushing twice at point blank range after a struggle in a downtown bathroom. Seventy seconds after the shooting, officer Fliehr tasered the incapacitated Rushing, who was in mental crisis. Ramsey’s report clearing the police was issued 65 days after the incident.

In 2020, Chico officer Tyler Johnson and Sgt. Nick Bauer shot the knife-holding Vest to death in a pet-store parking lot. Ramsey’s report exonerating the officers was issued three months later.

The average number of days taken by Ramsey to complete his report in those five Chico PD deaths—Sharpe, Sanchez, Phillips, Rushing, Vest — was 43.
In contrast, about 180 days have elapsed since Oxley died in a SWAT shooting involving four officers, including Sgts. Fliehr and Bauer—the same officers involved in previous controversial killings.

In a statement, Concerned Community for Justice , a Chico-area advocacy group for police accountability, expressed “serious concerns about this lack of transparency.”

“These reports would assure the public that an independent, impartial, and thorough investigation into the death of a civilian at the hands of ‘peace officers’ was completed,” says the statement. “The CC4J members want to know if transparency is no longer a priority for Mr. Ramsey.”

Dave Waddell is writing a book about Butte County law enforcement killings and is a contributor to ChicoSol.