Black Lives Matter Sacramento

RANCHO CORDOVA(CBS13) — It’s the scuffle that went viral. A former Rancho Cordova Police Officer, now identified as Brian Fowell, was seen on cell phone video pinning and punching a young boy.

The incident prompted an internal investigation and the department’s police chief to turn to social media, announcing an investigation into what happened. That was back in April. Now, months later, the officer is out of a job after being fired for excessive use of force.

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. —

Hundreds of health care professionals are calling for the firing of a Rancho Cordova officer who was seen on video punching a 14-year-old boy, according to a letter they wrote to Police Chief Kate Adams.

The letter was hand-delivered on Tuesday by doctors, nurses and a family member of the boy who read the letter addressing Officer Brian Fowell's actions aloud before handing it to Adams. The health care workers showed up in white coats and scrubs.

The letter, which describes the police department's response to Fowell's actions as "anemic," reads that he should also be charged with assault and child endangerment.

"As healthcare and public health professionals, we express solidarity with the intimidated and injured communities of the region," the letter read. "This episode of police violence now stands indelibly as an experience of trauma for Jah and for his entire family and community. The actions of the officer have not made us more safe; they have made us all less safe."

The family of the 14-year-old boy involved in a use-of-force incident with a Rancho Cordova police officer called the incident caught on video an unjustified “beating.”

He’s “our everything,” said Leata Tufono, the boy’s aunt, said during a news conference Wednesday night. “He was raised to be respectful, to not talk back to adults. ... He’s a good, good kid and he didn’t deserve this.”

The boy — identified as Elijah Tufono by family members on social media — was forcefully detained Monday after the officer believed he saw a “hand-to-hand exchange” of tobacco between Tufono and an adult, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Tufono allegedly resisted the officer’s commands, which led to a scuffle that was caught on cellphone video.

SACRAMENTO – A Sacramento Black man will be spending the holidays languishing in a coma at the UC Davis Medical Center here – he may have been the victim of a chokehold by Sacramento Sheriff’s deputies at the county main Downtown jail, charged Black Lives Matter Sacramento Monday.

The troubled Sacramento jail has been the target of massive lawsuits, and millions of dollars in taxpayer funded payouts for negligence after suicides at the facility.

BLM Sacramento said that while it expects the jail is somehow responsible, it is an unknown right now.

“We just don’t know anything for sure because the Sheriff is not providing any information,” said Tanya Faison of BLM at a press conference in front of the UC MedCenter, where Antonio L. Thomas is hospitalized.

Sheriff Scott Jones is known for providing little to no information after an incident – the department has vehicle dash cams, but deputies do not wear body cameras, as many law enforcement agencies now do for transparency reasons.

There are also booking area, and other cameras online at the Sacramento County Jail – Faison said none of that has been forthcoming.

Faison told reporters that Thomas, 39, “has no brain activity” after he was sent to the MedCenter around Dec. 7 or 8 from the jail, where he was found nonresponsive in his cell after booking.

SACRAMENTO – The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department announced this week through their Facebook account that, effective Feb. 15, 2021, the “specialized units of Gangs, Homeless Outreach, and North Problem Oriented Policing (POP) will be equipped with body worn cameras.”

Maybe a case of a little too late for victims of police violence, who often cite lack of body-worn cameras in their complaints against the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department.

Most recently, following the shooting death of Kershawn Geyger by undercover officers from the Sheriff’s Department’s Gang Suppression Unit on Jan. 15, 2021, Geyger’s friends and family were  left with only grief and unanswered questions.

Geyger was shot and killed on Jan. 15 during an undocumented interaction with members of the Sacramento Sheriff Department’s “Gang Suppression Unit.”

Geyger was but 25 years old at the time of his death. He was shot and killed outside of the Crestview North Apartments where he had just dropped off his two-year old daughter and his daughter’s mother.