We’ve seen enough — enough to know that Eureka Police Department Sgt. Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez and officer Mark Meftah have no business wearing a badge and holstering a gun; enough to to know there’s a cancerously toxic culture in at least one of EPD’s units; enough to know the trust has been irrevocably broken.
Now, we’re not naïve or, as a newsroom, immune to gallows humor. We get that finding some humor in the bleak is a necessary coping tool that helps us through — perhaps those whose job it is to navigate society’s worst on a regular basis, most of all. We get that. But this is not that.
When an officer looks upon a burning building and his first thought is to fantasize about rounding up homeless people to shove them inside, as you’ll read about in this week’s cover story, well, that officer needs to lose his badge. When officers repeatedly use terms like “snatch” and “bitch” to refer to the women around them while objectifying them, how do we have any reasonable expectation as a community that they’ll step in to protect them when they’re in danger or won’t take advantage when they’re vulnerable? When an officer refers to a suicidal military veteran killed in a standoff with police using an acronym for “piece of shit” with “several extra holes in him,” how do we as a community have any reasonable belief that he values the sanctity of life? When an officer pleads to go to a standoff because he needs to “work out some frustrations,” how can we have any expectation he’ll de-escalate the situation — or the next one — when he gets there? We don’t. We can’t. We’ve already seen too much, more than enough to know these men can’t be trusted to act in our names or protect our rights.
This is absolutely not to say that Eureka should fast track the third-party investigation it has commissioned to look into the situation. It shouldn’t. It can’t.
We applaud Eureka’s decision to bring in a high-powered, out-of-area firm to investigate the department, and the city’s willingness to contractually give that firm “full discretion” to conduct the investigation without the city “influencing or interfering with the outcome.” This investigation needs to biopsy every tumor, every sign of malignant growth, until it’s clear to what degree this cancerous culture has been allowed to metastasize throughout the department. If that means it spans months and costs tens of thousands of dollars, that’s what needs to be done and the costs pale in comparison to the alternative.
We say this knowing all too well the investigation’s full findings likely won’t — and probably can’t — be made public unless they find one of the officer’s involved was dishonest. The truth is that California’s laws are overly protective of police officer personnel files and disciplinary actions. We won’t know if or why a sergeant is demoted or an officer suspended — given “days at the beach,” as those who don a badge sometimes call it — much less if someone gets a written reprimand or ordered to undertake additional training.
And that makes it all the more imperative that Meftah and Reyna-Sanchez be fired. Thanks to whoever decided to leak a host of text messages to the Sacramento Bee, we’ve seen their conduct. Now we need to see the consequences.
We understand the legal protections police officers enjoy, the high-priced attorneys who will jump to their defense through the seemingly bottomless coffers of the Legal Defense Fund. We expect that when he has the investigation’s findings in hand and decisions to make, Chief Steve Watson will have people in his ear urging caution, warning of the potential consequences of overstepping to fire an officer. We don’t envy his position.
But when that day comes, we urge Watson to also consider the consequences of doing too little, to think about the message that would send to everyone in his department and everyone in this community, to weigh the potential liability of a personnel action against that of leaving guns and badges in the hands of people unfit to wield them.
He must consider the cost of not doing enough when we’ve all seen too much.
Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal’s news editor. Reach him at 442-1400, extension 321, or thad@northcoastjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @thadeusgreenson.
This article appears in ‘Mission, Values, Vision’.
Very well written!
What I have experienced and witnessed particularly with Meftah has shocked me to the core and yet where does one turn for help when one’s rights have been violated, their spirit damaged to the point of incapacitating them? They destroyed my life. They prey on vulnerable women particularly though I saw one officer berate personally and viciously a legless man in a wheel chair also.
Metaph is back from leave. Does anyone care. The law office is likely via a connection with a friend of someone in the department or friend of a friend because it is not experienced in cases protecting public from police.
Why in the world is anyone surprised?
Cops are out of control thugs, racists, murderers, homophobes, liars with guns and power.
Did any of you think such cretins were only in bigger cities? Cops only kill black folks?
Wrong.
In my experiences smaller forces are worse. They run roughshod over locals easily. They know who can be victimized with no consequences or who to give a pass. Locals think cops are either saints, thugs, thieves, sociopaths or combination.
Here’s a thought.
Does anyone think that other cops had no idea these (how many others?) creeps were talking like this, doing what they were doing?
This didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Of course other cops knew.
They were around these arrogant creeps all the time. Emboldened cretins just don’t care if anyone in their ranks hears or sees such horrors perpetuated. Sociopaths are incapable of empathy, sense of ‘right/wrong’.
They know that unbreakable ‘wall of blue’ will protect them.
We have a sheriff who picks which laws he will enforce. Recall that back in earlier days of covid spreading?
Such primitive thinking is rampant among ALL police forces.
Wake up.
If you are surprised by such revelations then you don’t want to know or know but think such outlaws are taking care of ‘those people’ so you’re safe.
Think you’re safe by being white?
Just say ‘no’ to a cop some time.
See what happens.
Based on history, nothing or almost nothing will happen to these cretins nor all the others who knew, remained silent.
Sickening.
Not surprised, but silence = complicity! So we need to speak out, demand the BOS authorize a Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board with subpoena power and speak out at every BOS meeting and/or contact your supervisor etc. Unfortunately, the blue wall of silence, combined with the CA Police Officer’s Bill of Rights, far more protective than the Bill of Rights for the rest of us, make it unlikely that these verbally violent and disrespectful “public servant” creeps will be reprimanded, much less fired.
The toxicity or “cancer” within the Eureka PD is but a microcosm. These officers, I suspect, are much closer to the (nationwide) norm than we’d like to believe. Sadly, the very people drawn to law enforcement and the military are often the last people you want in those roles. Simply put, we have a very sick society, and our increasingly anti-majoritarian political system won’t help. We desperately need community-controlled policing, in addition to reallocating police funds.
If enough people, individually, and through their community organizations, churches and clubs, demand that veterans stop receiving preferential hiring credit and that the veterans that are hired have their military records thoroughly examined and receive psychological testing that effectively identifies racist, violent tendencies…we can have a more responsible police force.
Many veterans have no business being in civilian policing.
When the local dump employees raped me, the cops did everything they could to cover it up, not investigate and deny me victims compensation and a lawsuit. That is right, there is no justice in this town for the victims of the authorities.
There us a cancer in the veins of this whole area… If you are part of the cancer, raise your hand.