Vallejo has reached a $900,000 settlement agreement with a former police captain who claims he was fired for exposing the Vallejo Police Department’s “badge-bending” scandal.
The Vallejo City Council approved the agreement – confirmed by ex-Capt. John Whitney and his attorney, Jayme Walker, on Thursday – during a closed session Tuesday afternoon.
Whitney had served on the Vallejo police force for 19 years when the city fired him in August 2019. He claims the police department targeted him for exposing a tradition of bending back the star points on the badges of officers who killed someone in the line of duty.
“I took an oath to uphold the public trust and that’s what I did when I blew the whistle on badge bending,” Whitney said in a statement. “I shouldn’t have lost my career for trying to hold officers accountable. Vallejo took so much from me, but now I have finally been vindicated.”
Walker condemned what she sees as the city’s attempts to cover up a now-infamous practice.
“John Whitney tried to reform a department with much higher rates of police shootings than almost any other agency in California,” she said. “Badge bending should have been rooted out immediately. Instead, Vallejo tried to cover it up and fired the officer trying to stop it. Hopefully beginning with this settlement, the City of Vallejo will start making necessary reforms in its police department and holding its officers accountable for excessive use of force.”
The city did not admit fault in the...
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