Vallejo settles with alleged police ‘badge-bending’ whistleblower
Ex-Capt. John Whitney 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.
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.
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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 settlement and did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
Whitney’s lawsuit, which he filed in 2020, targeted the city, the police department, then-city manager Greg Nyhoff, and former Vallejo Police Chiefs Andrew Bidou and Joseph Allio.
Earlier in 2020, Nyhoff told people gathered at a town hall to discuss police matters that it “appears true” that officers were bending their badges to celebrate kills and he pledged that there would be discipline. A third-party investigation of the practice was launched by then Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams in late July of 2020.
Whitney claimed that when he brought up the misconduct, then-chief Bidou rounded up the badges in an attempt to send them for repairs but realized that if finance saw a bill for 10 badge repairs they might start asking questions.
The Vallejo Police Department told the Times-Herald soon after Whitney’s termination that the reasons for that decision were “confidential.” During his tenure, the captain received a Medal of Courage and a lifetime achievement award from the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.
Soon after, Open Vallejo reported that Whitney was terminated for removing personal data from his work cellphone while he was being investigated for improperly handling information. He was later cleared of these allegations.
Mayor Bob Sampayan wrote a letter attached to the ex-captain’s initial claim filed in March 2020.
“Frankly, I believe that because John spoke out about a negative culture in the Vallejo Police Department, his reputation was soiled by those who did not want ‘dirty laundry’ aired,” he wrote.
Times-Herald reporter Thomas Gase and former Times-Herald reporter Katy St. Clair contributed to this article.