More than dozens of fast gunshots ran down her streets and sent Angela Rivera.
At 2:30am, my son was driving while he was chased by several California Highway Patrol cruisers.
When Rivera reaches the source of the shooting, she finds her 21-year-old son, Seiya Rivera, has been mortally injured by dozens of gunshots from only CHP officers. Three other officers chasing Rivera did not fire the weapon, but authorities say Rivera pulled the gun, and shooters know he is under immediate threat.
There has been footage of the CHP Dashcam since that morning on February 26th, but the shooting itself has not been filmed with cameras. That’s because, experts say, CHP was stubbornly slow to deploy body cameras within its ranks until recently.
“We’ve seen a lot of people who have had a lot of trouble with us,” said Jeffrey Alpert, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.
Over the past decade, law enforcement agencies across California and across the nation have gradually integrated body-mounted cameras into their operations. A 2016 survey estimated that nearly 80% of large law enforcement agencies acquired body-decorated cameras, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and additional local agencies have followed suit since.
Footage of CHP Dashcam from the morning of February 26th shows the moment before Sei-Jah Rivera was shot. The shooting itself is not captured by the camera.
(California Highway Patrol)
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office set rules for body-mounted cameras in 2016, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office began budgeting in 2020, and San Bernardino County began offering it to deputies last year.
However, CHP is just beginning to catch up.
In 2022, the CHP had around 7,600 officers, but according to a report from Calmatters, it was equipped with around 7,600 officers.
Currently, around 1,500 CHP executives have them, but they are all located in the Sacramento Valley and the Bay Area, a department spokesperson said.
The state legislature purchased $9.9 million in its 2024/2025 budget and approved $4.9 million at ongoing cost, but the equipment has not yet been deployed and training is underway.
Southern California CHP officials should begin receiving body decorative cameras within the next six to eight weeks, but that’s pretty much a comfort to Rivera’s family.
“State refusal to equip CHP officials with BWCs [body-worn cameras] Family lawyer David Fior said:
On May 14, the family filed an illegal death lawsuit against CHP. The agency declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.
“We can’t rely solely on statements from the four officers on the ground, and Rivera can’t provide his version of the event, so we’re working with qualified experts to scrutinise the objective evidence we have,” Fior said.
On February 26, Sei-Jah Rivera was driving his father’s work van when CHP said he had driven a red light and refused to stop. At the time, Angela Rivera wasn’t aware of it, but she was watching the chase unfold as she tracked her son’s location on the phone app and waited for him to come home from a night out with her cousin.
Within minutes she saw her son’s position pass by their house with the sound of intense sirens. The CHP Dashcam video provided to the family shows what happened from there.
Rivera drove to the edge of the cul de sac and tried to turn around, but a CHP officer plunged into the side of the van, neutralising it.
CHP Dashcam footage shows a flash of muzzle from a CHP officer’s service weapon when Sei-Jah Rivera is shot.
(California Highway Patrol)
CHP officials ordered Rivera to shut off the engine and get out.
“Hey, turn it off. I’ll F-off. I’ll F-off,” the officer cried. “Hey, turn it off or you’ll get shot!”
Rivera leaves the van as two nearby CHP officials reached to grab him, but failed.
Rivera then ran behind the van, where he was not visible to the dash cam, but the audio is clear.
Someone is heard screaming “Gun! Gun! Gun! Gun! Gun! Gun!” and then you can see a policeman dropping down a firearm at Rivera. One officer can be heard screaming “Stop it! Stop!” several times before filming ends.
Then someone says, “He threw it. He threw it on the fence.”
According to the family lawsuit, Rivera left the vehicle and “drove towards the end of the street, removed the gun from the waistband and threw it into the eight-foot Cinderblock wall.”
The family claims that Rivera had his back on the officers and surrendered when he threw the gun over the fence. The complaint claims that officers fired 16 times and “continued to shoot after Seiya raised her empty hand as a sign of obedience,” but it is not specified what the account is based on.
Rivera was hit in 12 rounds, according to an autopsy. These include some that hit him on the back and left shoulder, and some that went into the back of his head. Officers provided assistance at the scene, but Rivera died of his wounds, according to the report.
The autopsy report also points out that Rivera’s handgun was recovered at the scene.
Angela Rivera said she rushed to the scene but was turned away by an officer.
“I wanted to give him a final hug, but they pushed me away like an animal,” she said.
The Times showed footage of the dashcam to Force usage experts who independently reviewed the footage. They agreed that it would be difficult to make an exchange that led to fire because the vans blurred their vision.
“We’re not going to ask him to risk his life by saying, ‘Oh, are you trying to get rid of the gun, or are you going to shoot me?'” said Ed Obayashi, deputy sheriff in Modoc County and law enforcement policy advisor for police agencies across the state. “The officer would have been justified by feeling that there was an immediate threat to his life and to other officers, regardless of the subject’s intentions.”
It is unclear what the officers fired, but based on a series of events it is reasonable to assume that Rivera pulled out the gun while he was on the other side of the van, Obayashi said.
He added that it is not uncommon for officers to fire multiple times in seconds in such a scenario, and that in the absence of body cam footage, investigators must rely heavily on the officer’s statement and the threat they perceived, but they must determine whether only one officer has been fired. Obayashi said it is unclear what the vision didn’t fire, but if they fired while nearby Rivera, they might have been worried about hitting the officer.
The incident is being investigated by external law enforcement, as well as standard protocols for shootings involving officials in California.
Jerry Rodriguez, a retired 35-year law enforcement officer and expert witness, said Rivera’s gun status played a role in how firemen responded.
“He fired 16 rounds and we’re responsible for every round we’re leaving the hospital,” Rodriguez said. “So, in order to assess its objective rationality, we would have to be able to tell which threats were posed to the executives at the time.”
Rivera was 6 feet tall, 288 pounds, under the influence of opium when he was killed, according to a Los Angeles County Medical Department autopsy and toxicology report.
His family said he loved singing and dancing and lost about 100 pounds in the past year.
“He ran every day and did his best to get it in shape,” said his older brother, Ocarani Rangi.
Fior, the family’s lawyer, said officers could not justify shooting Rivera for just the sight of a gun. He pointed to a decision last year from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that found San Jose police officers could withstand trial in a 2019 fatal shooting involving replica guns, and was not protected by a common shield from law enforcement liability, a qualified immunity.
“The bottom line is that the accused shot an unarmed man 16 times,” Fior said.
Alpert, a professor of criminology, said that the majority of cameras in the time body check the executive’s version of events. However, executive reports may not match what the footage reveals, as was the case when LAPD officers repeatedly use stun guns on their teachers in 2023 and then die, and then it turns out that LAPD officers are out of divisional policy.
So this technique is important and should be embraced, says Alpert, a professor of criminology.
“It’s going to be a moral compass issue,” he said. “Why doesn’t the police chief want to equip officers with cameras?”
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