A story posted on the KVCR News website earlier today followed last summer's officer involved shooting that took the life of Rob Adams following a call about a man with a gun. KVCR's Jessica Greenwell reached out to California Newsroom lead reporter, Molly Solomon for an explanation.
Jessica Greenwell:
Last July San Bernardino Police officers shot and killed Rob Adams, a 23 year old black man who was running away from the officers while allegedly holding a firearm. KVCR and the California Newsroom have confirmed the names of the involved officers. Reporter Molly Solomon joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Molly.
Molly Solomon:
Thanks so much for having me.
Jessica Greenwell:
So, could you remind us about this case?
Molly Solomon:
San Bernardino officers were responding to a call from a quote, “citizen informant” about a black man in a parking lot with a gun. Statements issued by SBPD did not say that a crime was underway when officers received that tip or when they arrived at the scene. Body camera footage shows that officers fired seconds after they arrived in an unmarked car, and both officers were uniformed. And to date, the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office hasn't released a report on Adams death. But Rob Adams Family commissioned its own autopsy, which revealed that Adams was shot seven times. Most of those shots entering the back of his body. Since then lawyers have filed a $100 million federal lawsuit on behalf of Rob Adams family. Those lawyers are L.A. based attorney Bradley Gage and national civil rights attorney Ben Crump. His clients include the families of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols.
Jessica Greenwell:
And so, who are the officers that shot Rob Adams?
Molly Solomon:
We have confirmed that the officers’ names are Michael Yeun and Sergeant Imran Ahmed. Both of them are on the department's elite SWAT team. And Ahmed actually is a SWAT trainer. Yeun is the officer that fired the shots that killed Adams, according to body camera footage that was released by the San Bernardino Police Department. And the family of Adams and his lawyers both had not confirmed the names of the officers until we reached out for comment. We called the city. We called the police department, attorneys for the officers, and the police union. All refused to comment or make Yeun or Ahmed available.
Jessica Greenwell:
So, I understand from your story that both of these officers have a history of alleged excessive force.
Molly Solomon:
Yes, and that's according to federal lawsuits that we reviewed. We also looked at use of force cases from the department in August of 2020. We found that Yeun had shot a 15 year old boy after a police foot chase. According to the police files, the minor was shot three times and required surgery to remove a projectile from his back. That case was settled in March of this year for $500,000. It's currently under review with the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office. The second officer, Sergeant Ahmed has been named in seven federal civil rights lawsuits for numerous allegations, including assault, battery and excessive force. Five of those cases have settled and have cost the city of San Bernardino another half a million dollars. And two of those cases remain open. Again, the police department refused to comment on those.
Jessica Greenwell:
So, Rob Adams was shot last July. Why are we just learning about these officers in their histories now?
Molly Solomon:
Well, San Bernardino Police Department has not been forthcoming about releasing those officers’ names. They do claim that they sent out a press release on the Friday before Christmas last year at 8:50pm with the names of those officers at the bottom of a press release. But that release was not posted up on their website or any of their social media accounts. I checked in about this with Seth Stoughton. He's a law professor and former police officer in Tallahassee. And here's what he had to say, “It starts to look like every single one of those steps is probably an intentional effort to minimize the access to information rather than facilitate the access to information.”
San Bernardino officials also denied our public records request for the officer names. But while looking through public records my reporting colleague Madison Aument at KVCR found an obscure reference to a Sergeant Ahmed. We took a deep dive into the body cam footage and other publicly available files and were able to identify the second officer as Mike Yeun. The department later confirmed those names to us, last week. And the family of Rob Adams and their attorneys say that they also didn't have any official word on officer names until we called them for comment last week.
Jessica Greenwell:
And why is this transparency important? Why should we name officers and shootings like this one?
Molly Solomon:
Experts that we spoke to say that publicly sharing the names of officers that are involved in cases like Adams is essential for the public trust. And both the California Supreme Court and the state legislature have made it really clear that they believe the public's right to know almost always outweighs the right to officer privacy. The release of names also allows you to see patterns and look at their histories. Both officers involved have histories of alleged excessive force, which we detail in our reporting. And we called San Bernardino City Council member Ben Reynoso for comment about this, and he told us that quote, “…a lack of transparency cements distrust in the police among community members.” He told me, “When an officer's on the street, armed, in a patrol car, I want to know if they have a record.”
Jessica Greenwell:
Molly Solomon, thanks so much. You can get the full story on our website at kvcrnews.org. For KVCR News, I'm Jessica Greenwell.
This story was produced by The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public radio stations, and The California Reporting Project, a coalition of 40 news organizations across the state. Bella Arnold of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism's Investigative Reporting Program, Leila Barghouty of Stanford Journalism's Big Local News and Lisa Pickoff-White of Big Local News and KQED contributed to this report. Former KVCR reporter Jonathan Linden also contributed reporting.