When Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Isaiah Cordero pulled over a black pickup in Jurupa Valley on Dec. 29, he may have considered the stop so routine that he didn’t notify dispatchers, which is standard practice. But minutes later Cordero was mortally wounded, shot, the Sheriff’s Department said, by a career violent criminal with a warrant out for his arrest.

When Deputy Darnell Calhoun rolled up on an “unknown trouble” call possibly related to domestic violence on Jan. 13, he didn’t know that a man awaited him who had been described by his wife as a methamphetamine addict who possessed a gun. And after Calhoun was fatally shot, his backup, a short distance behind, shot the gunman, and bystanders whom that deputy raced there to protect then turned against him.

Those tragic outcomes, policing experts say, underscore that traffic stops and domestic violence calls are two of the most unpredictable and dangerous encounters that law enforcement officers face every day.

“They pose unique circumstances that most regular calls don’t,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said.

Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Isaiah Cordero. (Courtesy of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department)

“A traffic stop, you’re pulling someone over for say … a cracked windshield. They think you’re pulling them over for robbing a bank. … To them, they’re thinking ‘I’ve been caught and how am I going to get away?’ ” Bianco said.

“Domestics … The normal man and woman, husband and wife, they don’t beat each other up. … A lot of times alcohol and drugs are involved and then we get there and those emotions on both sides are just completely raw and they are going to take it out on whoever is there,” Bianco said.

Few are killed in the line of duty at traffic stops or domestic violence calls. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, of the 226 officers who died in the line of duty in 2022, six were killed during traffic stops and nine perished at domestic violence calls — far less than the 40 officers who died in traffic collisions.

But from his experience, said retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Al Bennett, “Those are the most dangerous calls.”

Bennett, 59, talked about policing on Jan. 14 as he visited the makeshift memorial at the restaurant that Calhoun’s family operates in Murrieta.

“It could happen to any of us,” he said.

Bianco said there will be a review of tactics in both deputies’ deaths, but at this point, the sheriff said, he doesn’t believe there were any missteps.

Jim Bueermann, a policing consultant and former Redlands police chief, said those reviews typically include an examination of training, policy, equipment, deployment and supervision. It’s important, he added, to look for root causes that are not always obvious.

Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Darnell Calhoun. (Courtesy of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department)

He told the story of a Redlands sergeant who, responding to a call, tried to jump over a fence and impaled himself on spikes. He had taken the call so that two of his officers could eat lunch. The root cause of the mishap, Bueermann said, was determined to be the department’s unwavering commitment to rapidly answer calls promptly even in the face of staffing shortages.

“If you could ask every cop who was killed, ‘Do you want us to understand what happened? Was there something to make it safer for your colleagues?’ I am sure every one of those officers would say yes,” Bueermann said.

Bianco said he doesn’t know why Cordero, 32, pulled over the truck driven by William Shae McKay, 44. McKay had skipped bail after being convicted of false imprisonment. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Cara D. Hutson had lowered McKay’s bail from $950,000 to $500,000 after she acquitted him of a more serious charge of kidnapping. McKay posted bail and appeared at the next two hearings before failing to show for a third.

Cordero approached the driver, then went to the back of the truck and was shot as he again approached McKay, the Sheriff’s Department said.

In Calhoun’s case, he was gunned down 15 seconds after arriving at the call on Hilldale Lane in the unincorporated area of Lakeland Village near Lake Elsinore, Bianco said. The scene was chaotic, with suspect Jesse Navarro, 42, his wife and children in the street.

The second deputy arrived “seconds” after Calhoun, so it’s a mistake, Bianco said, to assume that Calhoun, 30, went in alone on a potentially dangerous call.

“When somebody’s beating a woman, you go in. Sometimes it ends tragically,” Bueermann said.

The second deputy shot Navarro, who remained in critical condition Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Department said. Then, Bianco said, a few of the people there assaulted that deputy. Sgt. Wenndy Brito-Gonzalez, a sheriff’s spokeswoman, said three people were detained but were not arrested.

“A lot of times when you got to the (domestic violence) call, you can take the husband aside, and the wife attacks you, or vice versa,” Bennett said.

Superior Court records show that Yvette Navarro had obtained a temporary restraining order against her husband in 2004. She wrote in a court filing that he was addicted to methamphetamine and had pointed a gun at her when they lived in Wildomar. A judge rejected a request for a similar order in 2021 after she wrote that her husband had smashed her wedding ring outside their Lakeland Village home.

But those disturbances apparently were never reported to the police. Bianco said deputies had never been to the Navarros’ homes, so the department had not developed what is called a premise history that could have alerted Calhoun to the Navarros’ fights and the husband’s reported drug and weapons issues.

So now, Bianco is faced with reciting another eulogy following his tribute to Cordero on Jan. 6 because, despite deputies’ training in handling traffic stops and domestic violence calls, two are now dead.

“The reality in the back of (deputies’) heads and how law enforcement is being vilified, they’re afraid to do something wrong,” Bianco said. “They’re afraid to be the assertive command presence that we need. They are afraid of that cell phone video, the snippet that gets broadcast with no context, and they are the next victim of something going viral.

“You put that second thought in your head and that may be the cause of that split-second decision not to happen fast enough that costs you your life,” Bianco said.

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