A backlog of cases at the state Department of Justice and a delay by San Bernardino County in providing information because of a ransomware attack could combine to make it several months or more before the DOJ completes its report on the shooting of an unarmed teenage girl and her armed father by sheriff’s deputies at the end of a pursuit in Hesperia in September 2022.
Recordings released by the Sheriff’s Department on Friday, March 29 indicate that a deputy was coaxing 15-year-old kidnap victim Savannah Graziano to come to him to surrender after she got out of her father’s pickup at the Main Street exit of the 15 Freeway when she was fatally struck down by other deputies’ gunfire.
Anthony John Graziano, 45, of Fontana, who was wanted for killing his wife and kidnapping Savannah days earlier, was also killed in the gun battle.
The DOJ investigates fatal shootings of unarmed civilians by law enforcement under a 2020 state law. Investigators determine whether officers committed a crime and whether their tactics and department policies were in line with best practices.
The DOJ has completed six such investigations, all from shootings that happened in 2021. The average completion time was just under two years. The DOJ has 48 active investigations and generally works them in order of occurrence. Investigators work more than one case at a time. The Graziano shooting would be 19th in line if taken in sequence.
“It’s important for investigative agencies to do their work as fast as possible and release information as fast as they can so people know what happened,” said Jim Bueermann, a retired Redlands police chief who now works as a policing consultant. “It’s not fair to the survivors and it’s not fair to the officers involved if they don’t.”
But the sharing of information with investigators got off to a slow start.
“The DOJ requested materials and evidence from the Department,” the Sheriff’s Department said in an email when it released the Graziano recordings. “Regrettably, in April of 2023, the Department encountered significant challenges due to a ransomware attack and was unable to access all the Department’s data. Despite extensive and ongoing efforts to resolve this issue, much of the data remained inaccessible. As of March 29, 2024, all requests from the DOJ for evidence have been fulfilled by the Department.”
The county paid a $1.1 ransom to the cyber attacker to unlock Sheriff’s Department databases that he had encrypted.
A DOJ spokeswoman on Tuesday would not describe in specific terms any effect of the delay or provide a timeline for completion.
The Sheriff’s Department conducted an internal investigation to determine whether its deputies’ actions conformed to department policy. The Southern California News Group has filed a California Public Records Act request for the results.
Bueermann recently founded the Future Policing Institute, whose mission is described as advancing policing “that is effective, empathetic and just.”
He said investigators in both agencies are likely focusing on what deputies perceived as they fired.
On Sept. 26, 2022, Graziano shot his wife to death and kidnapped their daughter, Fontana police said, triggering an Amber Alert for their white 2017 Nissan Frontier. Then on Sept. 27, a convenience store clerk recognized Savannah and called 911. Deputies found the pickup near Barstow and pursued it to the Main Street exit in Hesperia.
There, Graziano tried to drive the wrong way up the exit amid heavy gunfire. The pickup eventually rolled back next to the freeway, a law enforcement video also released Friday shows. That’s when Savannah, who the Sheriff’s Department said was wearing tactical gear and a helmet, got out.
A deputy crouching next to his patrol car shouted for Savannah to come to his location, and, hunched over, she walked briskly toward him, a video shows. His shouts that included “Stop shooting her,” while archived on his belt recorder, did not go out over the police radio, the Sheriff’s Department said.
Deputies who had different vantage points of the encounter then mortally wounded the teen.
The circumstances, Bueermann said, “show how chaotic these things can be. It’s very loud, near the freeway. The deputy or deputies who shot her, what did they believe, and is it reasonable for them to believe it?”
The tactical gear Savannah wore, Bueermann said, “is not typical attire for a kidnap victim and that would seem to me to lend credence to the deputies believing she was actually trying to attack a deputy. But that doesn’t mean (they believed that).”
