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.”