Three police officers have been charged in California with involuntary manslaughter for the in-custody death of detainee Mario Gonzalez. The charges were announced on Thursday by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
Gonzalez’s situation started unfolding when the officers responded to a call of a man behaving weirdly in a public park. A body-cam footage, reviewed by JURIST, depicted the struggle between the officers trying to detain Gonzalez. The officers restrained Gonzalez on the ground, holding him there for several minutes, and he subsequently died at the scene.
An initial inquiry into the incident did not implicate any police misconduct. The first post-mortem report attributed the death to methamphetamine, with stress from the restraint and other health factors contributing. However, the District Attorney’s Office later reopened the case after a second autopsy pointed to asphyxiation due to the police restraint as the possible cause of death.
The officers have been charged with involuntary manslaughter under section 192(b) of the California Penal Code, a statute that covers the unlawful killing of a person without malice in the commission of a lawful act that might produce death, executed in an unlawful manner, or without due caution and care. This lays the burden on the prosecutors to prove that the officers were indeed negligent in their handling of Gonzalez and that the restraint was the cause of his demise.
Some reporters have drawn parallels between this case scenario and the death of George Floyd in 2020. In the Floyd case, a jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter. Incidents like these have pushed for reforms and legislation in California to ensure better police accountability and addressing cases of police misconduct, as seen in Los Angeles and statewide.