Pleasant Hill police chief chided over handling of armed standoff with ex-cop
PLEASANT HILL -- An armed standoff in Pleasant Hill that began Thursday night ended Saturday morning when the suspect surrendered to a SWAT team.
But the police chief is facing tough questions about why, in the midst of the siege, he pulled his SWAT team off the scene, leaving an armed, suicidal suspect alone for 18 hours.
On Saturday, there were lots of police at the suspect's home on Cleopatra Drive, just as there were on Thursday at 7 p.m. after a woman had been shot when she tried to enter the back door of the house. Her injuries were minor but police cordoned off the area and tried to get the man, a former Pittsburg police officer named Chunliam Saechao, to come out.
During the standoff, he posted videos to social media wearing a bulletproof vest and holding an assault rifle. One message posted online said, "Anyone try to break into my home is going to be killed and I will have no remorse because I did a good thing to rid evil."
But, at about 11:30 that night with Saechao still inside, the SWAT team packed up and left. A news release from the Pleasant Hill police said that, despite social media posts which "suggested he may be suicidal," circumstances surrounding the event indicated "the husband was not an immediate threat to the general public."
At a news conference Saturday, Pleasant Hill Police Chief Scott Vermillion said it was his decision to pull the officers from the scene.
"I believe I made the right decision," he said. "Having said that, the factors changed and my decision to do that ... eventually ... it really didn't work and, for that, I'm accountable."
Vermillion said he believed that Saechao was angry at police and, by leaving, they would de-escalate the situation.
"I believed that there would be a cooling-off period and that he would not escalate," Vermillion said. "In fact, he did the opposite, and his mental health and his social media elevated."
The chief said that, while the neighborhood may have looked empty, some officers had remained in unmarked vehicles watching the house. At 5 o'clock Friday evening -- 18 hours later -- the SWAT team returned as Saechao's angry posts continued. He ended up firing some 30 rounds at their armored vehicle. They stayed until 8 a.m. Saturday, when Saechao finally surrendered.
Peter Scheers lives in the neighborhood and couldn't figure out why, in the midst of the standoff, the street had suddenly been reopened.
"That was weird to me too, you know?" Scheers said. "I didn't understand it. I thought maybe he escaped the house or something, you know? But no, he was still in the house, I hear."
Ed George arrived to help a friend move from a home next door while the suspect was still inside his house.
"My concern is, well, if the guy's still there and no police presence around, he can come out, he can run, become a fugitive, right? And endanger someone else's life. So, to me, that's endangering the public," George said.
As for Scheers, he thinks the fact that Saechao was a former cop played a major part in how the situation was handled.
"I think if he was a Black guy he is dead by now, for sure," he said. "Sounds racist but that's the way it is."
At the news conference, Vermillion was asked if he understood how it looked to the public that his officers walked away from an armed suspect who was a former cop.
"Yeah, I absolutely do understand that," he said. "We -- I made those decisions for the reasons I've stated. At the end, it ended peacefully and nobody got hurt and that's the best resolution we could have asked for."
Still, the police chief said he has been doing a lot of soul-searching over the incident and considered it to be a "learning point" for the next time something like this might occur. Meanwhile, he said, the suspect faces a charge of attack with a deadly weapon on his wife as well as multiple counts of attempted homicide of a police officer.
