Yvonne De La Torre remembers her partner, Alejandro Campos Rios, as a doting grandfather who made friends everywhere he went.
“He was a very loving person. He had a very good heart,” she said.
Their 29 years together ended abruptly on March 6, 2024, when Rios was standing outside a McDonald’s in Fullerton, California. A manager called the Fullerton Police Department on him while he stood outside of the front doors, swinging a belt. De La Torre said the 50-year-old Rios had severe mental health issues and was living on the streets.
When the police arrived, they tased him. Then, they fired more than six rounds of bean bags. The Fullerton Police Department contends in a 17-minute video summarizing the incident that the rounds penetrated his chest and caused “significant” injury. Rios died shortly after.
The Fullerton Police Department did not respond to requests for answers to questions about the case, instead directing inquiries to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. The District Attorney’s Office did not answer questions about this case sent in an email. In an emailed response, a public information officer said: “We are in the process of conducting our legal review and as such are unable to provide any information at this time.”
“They killed him,” De La Torre said in a phone interview with Capital & Main. “I know they killed him.”
Rios’ son, mother and father are plaintiffs in a civil suit contending that police used excessive force and denied him medical care, among other violations of Rios’ and the family’s constitutional rights. De La Torre did not trust authorities to complete a thorough investigation, so she sought outside help. She retained an attorney who connected her with Know Your Rights Camp, a nonprofit group that provides free independent autopsies for police-related or in-custody deaths through its Autopsy Initiative. The program has performed 100 autopsies since 2022.
A pathologist with the Autopsy Initiative found that three of the beanbag rounds struck Rios, two in his right forearm and a third that penetrated his chest, but an official ruling on the cause of death is still pending until a preliminary autopsy report is released by the Orange County coroner, which is a division of the Sheriff’s Department.
Experts say coroner’s autopsy reports can come with inherent conflicts of interest.
“There’s a lot of counties that have a sheriff-coroner’s office, so then you essentially have police investigating police deaths, determining what the cause of death is,” said Nicole Martin, the legal program director for the Autopsy Initiative. This is the case in Orange County, California, where Campos was killed. “Oftentimes too, when there is an autopsy performed and it was a police-related death, that same officer who was present or involved in the killing can also be present in the room,” she said.
Independent autopsies are important for families who believe their relative was wrongfully killed by police or in custody and provide an unbiased review.
When reviewing autopsies performed by county coroners, Martin said, “We’re looking to see, are there any discrepancies? What protocols were done from the first autopsy, what procedures were done, what wasn’t done? And being able to then provide a more comprehensive analysis on what the victim’s true cause of death is.”
Nationally, the number of people killed by police or in custody has continued to climb in recent years. Departments and incarceration facilities that face chronically high rates of deaths, instances of excessive use of force, or other misconduct have been investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. These investigations can result in settlement agreements or consent decrees under which the police agency submits to federal monitoring and changing its operating practices. However, oversight and accountability of police agencies does not appear to be a priority for the Trump administration.
In January, the Trump administration ordered the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division not to pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, as well as to halt its investigative activity that began during the Biden administration. The Department of Justice launched a dozen investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies during President Joe Biden’s term, but several reform agreements had not been finalized. Now, those reforms are in jeopardy.
President Donald Trump selected former Florida Attorney General and Fox News host Pam Bondi for U.S. attorney general. Bondi was confirmed to the position this week. She previously served on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, and served in his first administration.
Bondi’s selection has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the United States. The group’s River City Lodge recently filed a motion to block the enforcement of a consent decree for the Louisville Metro Police Department.
“I think the unfortunate truth of where our country is today, and what current conditions are showing, is that we are far from having police-related deaths stop,” Martin said. “I think that when there are other factors that remove accountability, that also allows for more abuse to occur. Inevitably, the mistreatment and deaths will also increase as well.”
In Orange County, the Mobile Crisis Assessment Team is dispatched to respond to individuals in the midst of a mental health crisis. The team works in concert with family members and police to complete assessments in the field. Although the officers responding to the call regarding Rios acknowledged in body camera footage that he appeared to be in the midst of a crisis, they did not request that a Mobile Crisis Assessment Team respond to the scene.
“They didn’t know how to handle this situation. And that’s what cost him his life,” De La Torre said.
“I would like for them to know and admit that they did wrong and that they need to change,” she said. “He just needed help.”
