Speakers include family members of people who had died in police shootings.

SAN DIEGO — 

The lives of several people who died in county jail or in confrontations with law enforcement officers were remembered in a demonstration and march against police brutality Saturday.

About 50 people gathered outside the Archie Boggs Memorial Building, a San Diego Police Department substation in the southeastern neighborhood of Skyline, as part of the 26th annual National Day Against Police Brutality.

While there have been recent reforms in law enforcement policies, event organizer Buki Domingos said more changes are needed.

“Our mission is not yet accomplished,” said Domingos, one of the founders of the Racial Justice Coalition. “People continue to die in the hands of law enforcement.”

Speakers included Sabrina Weddle, sister of Saxon Rodriguez, who died four days after being booked into San Diego County Jail in July.

Fighting back tears, Weddle said her brother was the seventh person to die in a county jail this year. His death came three weeks after state lawmakers voted to investigate the county’s inmate mortality rate, the highest in the state among large counties.

Weddle said her brother was arrested while asleep for indecent exposure and assault with a weapon that was not a firearm, and she still does not know what the weapon was.

“I want justice for my brother,” she said. “He was in custody for four days before he passed away. That means he needed help. He was probably going through withdrawal. The sheriffs did not do what they needed to do to help my brother.”

Three months after his death, Weddle said the family still is waiting for an autopsy report with the cause of death.

Calls for police reform escalated into demonstrations, marches and sometimes violence last year following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

In June 2020, San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit announced officers in his department would no longer use a controversial neck hold known as the carotid restraint. 

Last November, San Diego voters approved Measure B, which will dissolve the existing police review board and create a new Commission on Police Practices. The independent commission will review complaints against police officers, investigate deaths of people in custody and shootings by police.

In April, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced a package of public safety reformsthat included eliminating existing gang injunctions, alternatives to arresting low-level offenders, anti-bias training for officers and potential limits on the sometimes controversial practice known as pretext stops.

Speaker Tony Abuka recalled the death of his brother, Alfred Olango, who was fatally shot several times by police responding to a 911 call in September 2016. Officers on the scene said they believed he was pointing a gun, which later was discovered to be an e-cigarette.

Abuka said he spoke the day before the shooting with his brother, who was going through an emotional breakdown because his best friend had committed suicide a few days earlier.

“Five years later, every single day I wake up, and the first thing on my mind is my brother,” he said. “It gives me motivation and inspiration now, but it started off as pain.”

Speaker Marie Cofinco is the aunt of Fermin Vincent Valenzuela Jr., who was killed in a confrontation with Anaheim sheriff’s deputies in 2016.

“This is an ongoing pandemic,” she said. “These officers are hunters.”

Cofinco said somebody reported being followed by a person on July 2, 2016, but the person was her nephew walking to a laundry. Officers confronted him while he was putting clothes in a washer. A struggle ensued, and Valenzuela died of asphyxia.

A jury awarded his children $13.2 million, and Confinco since has campaigned with the Racial Justice Coalition and helped pass an Assembly bill banning chokeholds.

Speakers also included Maria Hoyt, aunt of Sergio Weick, who was shot and killed after a confrontation with local deputies in August 2016. Weick was shot 18 times after deputies said they believed he was reaching for a gun, and an investigation found the shooting justified.

The event was started in 1996 by the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation with the goal to recognize the lives that have been lost and to discuss solutions.