Malad Baldwin

“The torment that I’ve been through, as a mother, as a human being, living in Contra Costa County, Antioch, against the racist terrorist police, it’s been hard, it’s been so difficult,” says Kathryn Wade, mother of Malad Baldwin. “Seeing them sitting outside my house, finding out they had a tap on me (I don’t even have a criminal record, you know), but I was just fighting to get justice for my son.”

Malad Baldwin’s death in March 2021 after Antioch, California cops invaded his family’s home was the end of years of police terror. His family was harassed by Antioch cops ever since they moved there in 2007. He was brutally beaten in 2014, and the harassment intensified after the family was outspoken against cop brutality. Baldwin’s case was so well known that he was interviewed in the press in 2020 after George Floyd was killed. Antioch was originally known as a “sundown town,” where black people were unwelcome. As urban housing prices surged, “Antioch was, by a factor of four, receiving more Black residents than any other cities in the Bay Area,” Chris Schildt, director of housing justice for Urban Habitat, told the Mercury News (14 May 2023).

On 28 April 2014, Officers James Colley and Casey Brogdon pulled their patrol car alongside Kathryn Wade’s parked car, in which Baldwin was sleeping. Colley yanked him out of the car, slammed him against it, handcuffed him and threw him to the pavement face-first. Baldwin lost consciousness twice as Brogdon pressed his knee to the back of his neck while punching his head, face and body; Colley beat his anal/genital area with a large metal (police-issued) flashlight.

When his mother, Kathryn Wade, came out of the house, she saw the two cops on top of her son with his face bloodied. She screamed for them to stop. The cops told her to “shut the fuck up” and back away; she fell as she did so. The cops falsely claimed Baldwin had mental health problems, so the EMTs injected him with mental health medications, as did the hospital when he woke up. From that day forward, Baldwin indeed struggled with mental health problems—as well as repeated anal bleeding.

Cop Brogdon was later implicated in the asphyxiation death of Rakeem Rucks in 2015. Wade launched a civil lawsuit over Baldwin’s 2014 beating, settled in 2017. Notably, around the time of that beating, Wade, Baldwin and their residential address were “flagged” by the APD with a description of Wade as “hostile with PD.” She repeatedly protested the ongoing mistreatment of her son to the police and city council, filing 44 complaints about the total of five beatings of Baldwin by the cops between 2014 and his death in 2021. The city did nothing.

In September 2019, without cause, a policeman punched Baldwin in front of their house, followed him inside, beat him and had him transported to the hospital, where he was given an anti-psychotic medication (Geodon). When his mother arrived home later, a cop told her Baldwin had been arrested and concocted a false story. Baldwin spent three days in jail; no charges were filed against him. In December 2019 the cops violently attacked Baldwin while he was walking alone on the street, falsely claiming he had a gun. Kathryn only learned of it when another cop called her…to apologize! Baldwin was taken to jail and released without charge.

In March 2020, Baldwin was again brutally beaten by the cops, including one Michael Mellone, and transported to a hospital where they admitted him as a “John Doe” so that his mother—now knowing she should check hospitals if Malad disappeared—could not locate him. A picture of Baldwin when he was admitted showed a swollen head, bruised face, and scrapes up and down his body that required stitches. Mellone was under investigation for having shot and killed homeless immigrant Luis Gongora-Pat in 2016 when working for the San Francisco PD. Baldwin’s mother and Gongora-Pat’s family had protested Mellone’s later hiring by the APD.

In early August 2020, Baldwin had a non-violent mental health episode, and Wade called 911 for help. Cop Colley provocatively showed up at their door along with other officers, and they refused to get Baldwin—who fled the house in fear—any medical assistance. A few days later, Malad was arrested and jailed after being attacked by a man outside the Pittsburg, California DMV; his supposed “victim” required no medical attention, and no charges were pursued. When Baldwin experienced another mental health crisis in December, cops arrived only to quarrel with Wade and again refuse to provide assistance.

Three months later, Baldwin, father of a young son, died following yet another intervention by the Antioch cops. On 11 March 2021, Wade called for emergency medical help when her son was writhing in pain. She insisted no police be sent. The dispatcher’s response? Police would indeed be sent—because Wade “was hysterical”! EMTs arrived, and Wade escorted them upstairs to Baldwin. After Wade went back downstairs, and unbeknownst to her, several cops entered and went upstairs. Kathryn next saw an unconscious Malad, now badly swollen and on a Lucas CPR machine, brought down on a gurney. Responding to further noise upstairs, Wade then discovered the cops searching her son’s bedroom. The family later found the room to be in total disarray.

The ambulance sat waiting until cop Mellone exited the house, quarreled with Wade and signaled the EMTs to go, after sending one of the cops back upstairs. Baldwin was declared dead and the coroner notified both from the scene and by the hospital upon his arrival. However, he was then successfully resuscitated at the hospital, where they proceeded to suture a cut on his wrist—not observed by Kathryn—that had caused extensive bleeding and continued to bleed. Malad was conscious when Wade visited him that evening, but the nurse quickly ordered her to leave, saying they had to put Baldwin back under because he was agitated. He died two days later.

There are many discrepancies in the reports of the events. The cause of death was listed as “pending” on the two separate death certificates issued. The doctor later told Wade that Baldwin’s body rejected a blood transfusion and his organs had failed, while the coroner investigator’s report claimed he died by suicide.

Immediately following Malad’s death, the Antioch police once again began parking in front of Kathryn’s house and briefly handcuffed one of her sympathizing visitors there. Before Baldwin’s funeral, a cop stopped by the funeral home, and police cars repeatedly drove by throughout it.

Malad’s name was back in the news in 2023 during a federal investigation after exposure of racist text messages exchanged in 2019-22 among more than 45 Antioch cops. The text messages first revealed in 2023 show that cops had joked about Malad’s 2014 beating on the same day that he spoke out following George Floyd’s death. People who’d thought Wade’s accusations were “crazy” learned that she’d been right. While several Antioch police have since been jailed, no cop known to have been involved in Baldwin’s beatings has been charged. As Wade told the PDC, “Every right Malad had as a human being was violated.”

Another of Wade’s sons died from alcoholism in 2024, grieving at his brother’s death and haunted by the years of police abuse.

“Trying to find out what happened to our children—closed doors everywhere,” says Wade. “The coverup is the worst part when it comes to fighting for our children.” The unanswered questions surrounding the harassment, beatings and death of Malad Baldwin cry out for opening all the Antioch police files to public scrutiny. We call for release of all statements and reports, including texts and emails, about Baldwin, Wade and their family as well as those of the EMTs on the scene. The personal cell phone recordings and personnel files of James Colley, Casey Brogdon, Michael Mellone and all the other Antioch police who brutalized Malad, Wade and her family must be made public, including all the federal and state Department of Justice files on the Antioch PD. Open all the Antioch police archives!