Former Pittsburg cop and department prosecuted for shooting man in 2022 – NBC Bay Area

A former Pittsburg police officer and the department now face a trial in connection with the 2022 shooting of a man.

Ashton Porter's family says he was suffering a mental health crisis, but instead of receiving treatment, he was shot.

Porter flew from Georgia to the Bay Area in February 2022 and checked into a Pittsburg hotel. He said he then began experiencing a mental health crisis.

The police were called for help. They eventually shot him twice and arrested him.

“My family called for help, I called for help,” Porter said. “I explained to them that I really didn’t understand what was going on.”

Police said their first call came from the hotel after Porter refused to leave his room.

But in the federal lawsuit filed against four Pittsburg police officers — Ernesto Mejia-Orozco, Brian Addington, William Hatcher and Cory Smith — against the police department and the city, Porter claims he was showing clear signs of crisis.

He said he told authorities he was scared and that worried people were looking for him.

An edited video provided by Porter's attorneys showed Pittsburg police promising not to harm him if he left his room.

“My family and I called the police because my father was very stressed,” said Porter's daughter, Natalia Metts. “We just wanted help finding out where he was, and they did the complete opposite.”

After more than 20 hours of negotiations, including multiple deployments of tear gas, this father of six was shot twice by former police officer Mejia-Orozco.

In 2022, police claimed de-escalation tactics did not work and Porter was shot after being hit by rubber bullets, turned and approached officers with a knife.

Porter's lawyers say he was protecting himself in response to the first non-fatal shots and the video shows he raised his hands in surrender. They accuse police of escalating the situation after firing mental health professionals.

The lawsuit claims police then dragged Porter through the hotel before eventually providing medical treatment.

Pittsburg police and the city did not respond to NBC Bay Area's request for comment Tuesday.

“Police went from a wellness call involving mental health professionals properly trained to handle this incident to a police operation with SWAT,” said Adante Pointer, Porter's attorney .

The city previously settled a wrongful death lawsuit involving Mejia-Orozco and other police officers. That suit claimed the officers killed a man after putting him in a chokehold and pinning him to the ground.

Mejia-Orozco is also one of several Pittsburg and Antioch police officers currently facing federal charges in a wire fraud scheme, accused of paying someone to finish college.

“This police department is involved in multiple lawsuits and litigation,” Pointer said. “This is the most striking example of a police department acting in an unbalanced manner.”

After being arrested, Porter was charged with several crimes, including assault on a police officer. All of these charges were later dropped.

Porter said he now wants justice.

“Some kind of accountability and maybe even some changes to stop lying like that,” he said. “It should be a crime for the police to be able to lie like this and disrupt the lives of families.”