OAKLAND — The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office will not pursue criminal charges against a Fremont motorcycle police officer who killed a 34-year-old Oakland man during a shootout on Highway 84 near the Dumbarton Bridge in 2021.
The decision follows a second look at the case by the Public Accountability Unit formed in January by District Attorney Pamela Price.
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In a news release Friday, the district attorney’s office said there was “insufficient evidence” to prosecute Officer Brian Burch for fatally shooting Joshua Gloria on March 24, 2021.
Police at the time said Gloria crashed a stolen SUV during a pursuit, got out and ran toward Burch firing a gun. Body-worn camera footage showed Burch leaping from his police motorcycle and returning fire as Gloria initially straddled the motorcycle and then ran back toward the SUV. The officer fired a total of five rounds at Gloria.
The PAU concluded that Burch “had valid reasons to believe that Mr. Gloria represented a substantial risk of causing severe harm or even death to both himself and those in the vicinity and further that he reasonably believed that he needed to use deadly force to stop Mr. Gloria from fleeing,” the district attorney’s office said.
The PAU reviewed materials including a report by former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s office and all available body-worn camera footage, the district attorney’s office said. In addition, the PAU visited the scene of the shooting and reached out to Gloria’s family and their civil attorney.
“DA Price does not believe that the prosecution could prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the first three shots fired by Officer Burch were not in lawful self-defense and that the last two shots Officer Burch fired at Mr. Gloria were not a lawful use of deadly force against an individual who was suspected of a felony and in clear flight,” the district attorney’s office said.
The case is one of eight in-custody deaths and police shootings Price initially tasked the PAU with reviewing. Earlier this year, the PAU charged two Alameda County Sheriff’s Office deputies — Sheri Baughman and Amanda Barcamontes — with falsifying records in connection with an inmate suicide at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
