New chief of troubled Antioch Police Department sworn in

ANTIOCH, Calif. (KRON) — A new permanent police chief who will lead the embattled Antioch Police Department was sworn in at a ceremony Tuesday afternoon. Antioch’s top cop, Joe Vigil, has served twice as interim APD chief.

A statement released by Jaden Baird, the city’s new public information officer, writes that the new police chief marks a “new chapter” and a “significant step toward accountability, reform, and community trust.”

Chief Vigil held leadership roles throughout his career while serving in Suisun City, Vallejo, Sacramento, Richmond, and Antioch. “A dedicated public servant and family man, Chief Vigil lives in Antioch with his wife Rachelle and their three children,” the city’s statement writes.

Vigil has 25 years of law enforcement experience. “His leadership represents a pivotal moment for the Antioch Police Department and the broader community,” the city’s statement writes.

In the summer of 2023, FBI agents arrested 10 current and former East Bay police officers.

Three former Antioch police officers — Eric Rombough, Morteza Amiri, and Devon Christopher Wenger — were charged with committing litany of civil rights violations. The three officers inflicted excessive force, bragged about violence, and covered up brutal tactics by falsifying police reports, investigators said.

The Antioch Police Department was also embroiled in a controversy caused by officers who paid someone to earn college degrees in criminal justice for them. Officers used the degrees to fraudulently obtain pay raises from their police department.

Dozens APD officers exchanged text messages in 2020 and 2021 that included racial slurs, court documents show. Some of the texts compared Black people to gorillas and water buffalo, and others mocked the murder of George Floyd. One of Rombough’s texts wrote, “bottom line it doesn’t matter, some gorilla killed another gorilla.” The text messages came out as part of an investigation launched in 2022 by the FBI and the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office.

Amiri and Rombough were convicted of deprivation of rights earlier this year. Amiri was also found guilty in the pay raise scam.

In April, a jury found Wenger guilty of distributing steroids. “Instead of upholding the law, as he swore an oath to do, Devon Wenger conspired with a fellow officer to sell illegal anabolic steroids.  When the FBI arrived at his home to investigate him, he then doubled down by destroying evidence of his crime. Crimes like these by a police officer have a corrosive effect on the public’s trust in law enforcement,” said United States Attorney Patrick Robbins.