Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
Chico Police Chief Mike O’Brien
commentary by Dave Waddell
Last March, I spoke at a League of Women Voters of Butte County forum having to do with public access to law enforcement records.
That Sunshine Week forum, which included Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea and police reformers Emily Alma and Margaret Swick, gave me an opportunity to vent a bit about the most secretive public agency I’ve dealt with as a journalist: the city of Chico.
by Leslie Layton
In July 2018, a Sacramento civil rights attorney noted just how much information had been withheld in the shooting by Butte County sheriff’s deputies three months earlier that had killed a Palermo woman.
Myra Micalizio, 56, died in April of that year during an encounter with a pair of deputies who together fired 13 rounds. Attorney Mark Merin, representing Micalizio’s family, issued a press release noting that Butte County had “refused to produce any interviews, investigation reports… statements of the officers, coroner’s report…”
