City of Vallejo Releases Sanitized Report On Police Officers' Badge-Bending Ritual

VALLEJO — After five years of stonewalling, the City of Vallejo has been forced to release a long-suppressed third-party investigation into allegations that VPD officers bent the tips of their badges each time they shot at a civilian in the line of duty — a disturbing commemoration first exposed by the journalism nonprofit Open Vallejo in 2020.

It took a lawsuit by the ACLU of Northern California to compel city officials to finally make the findings public.

The city hired Robert Giordano, a former Sonoma County Sheriff, to conduct the investigation. His report confirmed that VPD officers were bending their badge tips and that people throughout the department and at the highest levels of city government knew about it for years before the allegations became public.

"By sitting on this information for years, the city missed any opportunity to hold any officer accountable," said Emi Young, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. "Under California's Police Officers' Bill of Rights, agencies have one year from when they become aware of misconduct to initiate discipline. Whether the Department intended to shield the officers or merely avoid a public scandal, its dereliction of duty ensured impunity for those responsible."

Vallejo has a long and sordid history of police violence that has made national headlines. From April 2001 to June 2020, Vallejo police officers shot 56 civilians, killing 30. Between 2017 and 2026, the city paid nearly $21 million in police misconduct settlements. The city’s population was 122,207 residents as of 2025.

Vallejo residents have long demanded transparency and accountability. They will not get it from Giordano’s report.

Giordano did not conduct a serious investigation. He accepted most officers' self-serving accounts at face value, characterized some officers with bent badges as “victims” of the practice, identified a small number of "bad apples" as scapegoats, and ultimately shielded department leadership and the broader culture from accountability.

The report maintains that badge bending was intended as peer recognition for officers who "survived a dangerous encounter.” But the report, and the Department, avert their eyes from what is plain: the Vallejo Police Department has a serious “us-versus-them" problem, a mentality that has poisoned its relationship with the community for decades. And this is reinforced by a culture wherein officers from patrol through command understand their first duty is to stay quiet about the problems amongst their own.

The officers who were identified in the report as chiefly responsible for badge-bending and the effort to hide it, unsurprisingly, had all retired before Giordano’s report was completed. Meanwhile, many of the officers Giordano characterized as badge-benders or who enabled the cover-up, remain active on the force. Some have even been promoted.

The release of the Giordano Report should prompt a long overdue reckoning—for the badge-bending scandal, and the rotten culture that created it. Vallejo residents should demand that city and VPD officials answer to the public for this scandal.