{"slug": "vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report", "title": "Vallejo finally releases police badge-bending report", "summary": "Vallejo city officials released a long-awaited report on the police department's badge-bending ritual, concluding the act violated departmental policy but was not done to commemorate fatal shootings. The report, which has sparked controversy since allegations surfaced in 2018, found that officers modified badges to mark survival of critical incidents, damaging public trust. The city fought disclosure until a court ordered its release.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...City officials finally released a long-awaited report on the Vallejo Police Department’s scandal-ridden badge-bending ritual on Tuesday, concluding that the act “was not done to commemorate fatal officer-involved shootings, but that it did violate departmental policy.”\n\nAllegations surfaced nearly six years ago that a group of officers secretly “commemorated fatal shootings with beers, backyard barbecues, and by bending the points of their badges” each time someone was killed in the line of duty. Officers reportedly called a badge modified in this way a “Badge of Honor.”\n\nSonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said that although an Open Vallejo article on the findings in 2020 was “not substantiated by the evidence, the evidence nonetheless supports findings of misconduct.”\n\n“The badge is a symbol of public trust and the authority vested in law enforcement officers,” Giordano writes in the report. “It is to be used only for official purposes. Modifying the badge to mark an officer’s engagement and survival in a critical shooting incident is not an authorized use of the badge. Such an act can be misinterpreted or send the wrong message about Vallejo PD officers’ approach to use of force and the sanctity of human life, as it has here.\n\n“The City and its police department have suffered a media firestorm and damage to their collective reputation as a result of these instances of badge misuse and how they have been interpreted. The persons who intentionally bent badge tips, their own or others’, have engaged in unauthorized use of the badge and conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer.”\n\nVallejo Police Chief Jason Ta said Tuesday that the conduct described in the badge-bending investigatory report does not align with the department’s code of ethics and values.”\n\n“Conduct of this nature erodes public trust and is inconsistent with the professionalism, accountability, and integrity expected of every member of this department,” Ta said Tuesday in a news release. “Members of the Vallejo Police Department have been reminded that such conduct will not be tolerated.”\n\nLongtime civil rights attorney Melissa Nold told the Times-Herald by text on Tuesday after the city finally released the report that she wasn’t surprised “the city fought the report’s disclosure tooth and nail, and it makes the officers look like ghouls.”\n\n“The court ordered the city to disclose it, in accordance with state law, which is the only reason they disclosed it,” Nold wrote. “They had no legal basis for concealing it all this time and only did so to hide wrongdoing. The report should have been made public the day it was completed. Unfortunately, the only value of the report is to outline how pathetic, threadbare, and amateur the city’s belated investigation really was and how the city failed to hold anyone accountable, as usual.”\n\nIn a 2021 Times-Herald article, an attorney for the Vallejo Police Officers Association disagreed with this supposed purpose of the practice, claiming it had been done to signify officers “surviving officer-involved shootings’ and not deaths by their hand.” Solano District Attorney Krishna Abrams described the allegations of badge-bending as “rumors” while running for reelection in 2022.\n\nIn March of 2022, on the same day the investigation was turned over to Abrams and the Solano County District Attorney’s Office, former Vallejo police officer Michael Kent Tribble testified in court that he and retired officer Dan Golinveaux helped originate the ritual back in 2000 while working for the Concord Police Department. Tribble, who retired in 2021, testified in Solano County Superior Court in Vallejo that the ritual was “a way to signify the fact that we would stand up and do our job.” He said the ritual was not held solely for fatal shootings.\n\nThe report released to the public for the first time on Tuesday, put together by Giordano, offered a similar analysis to Tribble’s testimony.\n\nThe report cites a July 28, 2020, meeting with Giordano and then-Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams, then-Deputy Chief Joe Allio, then-Assistant City Manager Anne Cardwell, and attorney/investigator Christine Maloney. The meeting discussed the existence of a “secretive clique” of officers and how they would “commemorate” these fatal shootings at get-togethers for barbecue or beers. According to those reports, the alleged badge-bendings were often done at The Relay Club, a bar in Vallejo.\n\nAccording to the investigation by Giordano, “several potential witnesses were former employees and beyond the City’s ability to compel them to interviews, and that some employee-witnesses were otherwise unavailable to be interviewed due to medical issues. The investigation, which is filed in a nearly 200-page report, features interviews with\n\n- Former City Manager Greg Nyhoff\n- Former Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan\n- Lieutenant Drew Ramsay\n- Lieutenant Bobby Knight\n- Sergeant Kyle Wylie\n- Sergeant Jeff Tai\n- Lieutenant Steve Darden\n- Sergeant Jason Bauer\n- Captain Jason Potts\n- Detective Jarrett Tonn\n- Officer Colin Eaton\n- Officer Christopher Hendrix\n- Lieutenant Michael “Kent” Tribble\n- Officer Bryan Glick\n- Sergeant Waylon Boyce\n- Officer David McLaughlin\n- Officer Jason Bahou\n- Corporal Matt Komoda\n- Captain Todd Tribble\n- Officer Mark Thompson\n- Detective Jason Scott\n- Officer Anthony Cano\n- Former Captain John Whitney\n- Corporal Zach Jacobsen\n- Former Chief Andrew Bidou\n- Many, many more\n\nAccording to Giordano’s summary, the investigation reflects that Kent Tribble (ret.) bent the badge tips of Matt Komoda and David McLaughlin in 2016 and his own in 2003. Evidence also reflects that Terry Poyser (ret.) bent the badge tips of Jason Bahou in 2015 and Zach Jacobsen in 2017. A preponderance of the evidence also reflects that Jacobsen bent the badge tip of Ryan McMahon in 2018. In addition, Kyle Wylie admitted that his badge tips were bent twice in 2009, but there was insufficient evidence to determine who bent his badge on these occasions.\n\nGiordano reports that, “the evidence reflects that ‘badge-bending’ was a manner of recognizing an officer involved in a shooting who did their job in a stressful situation, did not ‘run from the fight,’ and survived. It was an act that Kent Tribble initiated on an individual basis after he joined Vallejo PD in 2003, and it was something that he experienced at his prior employer, Concord PD.”\n\nGiordano also stated in the report that “there is no evidence that ‘badge-bending’ was a recognition of killing someone in the line of duty.\n\n“Occurrences of badge bending related to the officer’s action of firing a weapon in a critical incident, regardless of whether a suspect was hit, injured, or killed,” Giordano writes. “There is insufficient evidence that badge bending was a ‘custom’ or ‘ tradition ‘ of the department, or that bent badges were known as a ‘Badge of Honor,’ or that officers who had their badges bent were part of an assembled, secretive group. With regard to the allegation that fatal shootings were commemorated or celebrated at social gatherings of officers, there is insufficient evidence to support this.”\n\nGiordano went on to say that there is no evidence that these gatherings are formed to celebrate the killing of a human being as opposed to peer support following a critical incident.\n\nSuperior Court Judge Daniel Healy disagreed in 2021, claiming these types of “victim” claims were “insane.”\n\nGiordano wrote that one member “of the command staff, Capt. Lee Horton knew that one or more officers had a bent badge tip in the past (before 2019) and acted to stop the behavior. However, there is evidence that Capt. Horton failed to inform in a timely manner other members of the command staff, including the chief, about these events so that decisions on investigations and potential discipline could be made.”\n\nAccording to a City of Vallejo news release on Tuesday, “the City and the Police Department have engaged in substantial efforts to enhance and better the Department” since 2020.\n\n“These efforts include a reform process with expert review of procedures and policies, utilization of the Chief’s Advisory Board, the adoption and implementation of an ordinance to form the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission, which is now operational, and the successful updating of several significant policies which govern such important topics as use of force, complaints, review of critical incidents, and mandatory activation of body-worn cameras, among others,” the news release by the City of Vallejo reads. “The Department’s efforts are ongoing and support best practices with a focus on community policing, community engagement and oversight, as well as improving transparency, accountability, and the preservation of public trust.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/24/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report/", "published_at": "2026-06-24 14:21:58+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-24 14:41:46.815054+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["Vallejo Police Department", "Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano", "Vallejo Police Chief Jason Ta", "Melissa Nold", "Vallejo Police Officers Association", "Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams", "Michael Kent Tribble", "Dan Golinveaux"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vallejo-finally-releases-police-badge-bending-report.jsonld"}}