Open Vallejo62%
Vallejo has released its long-secret police badge-bending report. Read it here. 20%
By Geoffrey King46%
6/23/2026, 1:36:54 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Availability Heuristic, with Anchoring Bias as the most egregious example at 19.3% saturation with 101 hits. Analysis detected 379 faulty-reasoning hits from 524 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.7% and a BS Rank of 20% (18,070 of 22,405 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 80.70% of the article peer group.
The city of Vallejo has been forced to release its investigation into a macabre police ritual, first exposed by Open Vallejo six years ago , in which officers bent the tips of their star-shaped badges to mark each civilian they killed.
Officers called the tradition, “The Badge of Honor.”
Open Vallejo’s reporting sparked immediate impact.
Vallejo police shot someone on average every four months between 2000 and 2020, often fatally, data shows .
The most recent killing came less than two months before this newsroom exposed the badge-bending ritual in July 2020; the department has not killed anyone since.
When California passed a landmark 2021 law banning law enforcement gangs , the bill’s bicameral analyses cited the badge-bending revelations.
The California Department of Justice opened a review of Vallejo police in 2020, citing the “number and nature” of shootings by officers.
A voluntary reform effort stalled , and in 2023 Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the city , alleging a pattern of excessive force.
Vallejo agreed to court-enforced reforms .
Vallejo announced its own investigation days after Open Vallejo’s article was published.
The city hired former Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano, then refused to release his report.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and Open Vallejo each sued under California transparency laws.
In 2025, a state appeals court ordered the report disclosed in the ACLU’s case, which Open Vallejo supported with two friend-of-the-court briefs, and the California Supreme Court declined to intervene .
At least 14 of the 46 Vallejo officers involved in those fatal shootings had a badge bent by a colleague, Open Vallejo found.
In 2019, the city of Vallejo fired the captain who tried to end the ritual, John Whitney ; he later settled a whistleblower claim alleging retaliation for $900,000.
A 2020 city attorney’s office study estimated that Vallejo and its insurers faced some $50 million in police-related liability.
The city has since paid record civil rights settlements: $5.7 million to the family of Ronell Foster, killed by Ofc.
Ryan McMahon, the largest the city had paid in a police case at the time; $5 million to the family of Willie McCoy, killed by six officers including McMahon; $2.8 million to the family of Angel Ramos, killed by Ofc.
Zachary Jacobsen; and a record $8.5 million in 2026 to the family of Sean Monterrosa, who was killed in June of 2020.
Vallejo fired McMahon in 2020 for endangering a fellow officer when he fired at McCoy.
He is one of nine current and former officers the state agreed in 2024, at the request of the ACLU, to investigate for possible decertification .
Giordano’s investigation has drawn criticism, including from Solano County Superior Court Judge Daniel Healy, who reviewed Giordano’s findings in a 2022 criminal case.
During a March 2022 hearing, he said, “I don’t find his investigation designed to serve the needs of the community,” according to court records.
“It feels to me like he was seeking to thread some needle to satisfy various entities in a way that minimized blowback, certainly not designed to bring light.”
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.