During its Tuesday, Nov. 9 meeting, the Signal Hill City Council voted unanimously to designate June 2 as an annual Ron Settles Day of Remembrance, honoring a 21-year-old Cal State Long Beach football star who died in 1981 while in Signal Hill police custody.
The council also agreed to place a permanent marker where Settles was arrested by Signal Hill police on June 2, 1981, before dying in his jail cell three hours later. A Los Angeles County coroner’s inquest ultimately deemed Settles’s death a homicide, though no police officers were charged.
City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn said the memorial marker will be placed where Signal Hill police officers pulled over Settles’s car while he was driving southbound on Orange Avenue, just north of E. Hill Street. To be ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, the marker will likely be embedded as a panel in the sidewalk at that location.
“[This is] a real victory for our family,” Settles’s aunt Juanita Matthews told the Signal Tribune after the meeting.
In August, Matthews asked the council, on behalf of the Ron Settles Dedication Committee, to consider recognizing a day of remembrance and installing the commemorative marker.
In June, she and other family and friends held a private memorial at the Signal Hill Community Center to honor the 40th anniversary of Settles’s death. The council unanimously agreed in April to waive its usual fee for the use of the center.
Several City officials attended the June memorial, including Mayor Edward Wilson, Vice Mayor Keir Jones, Shin-Heydorn, and former Signal Hill Police Chief Christopher Nunley.
Wilson spoke of the City addressing systemic racism and expressed support for an official June 2 remembrance day for Settles, who was African American. Nunley spoke of how today’s Signal Hill police officers are working not to repeat past racist behaviors and attitudes that may have led to Settles’s death.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the Signal Hill Diversity Coalition Committee (DCC)—which the council established in July 2020 as part of its Race and Equity Framework—expressed written support for “celebrating” a day of remembrance and commemorative marker.
“Ron Settles was much more than a Black man who was pulled over by Signal Hill police,” the DCC wrote to the council. “He was named in several college football polls as one of the most promising running backs on the West Coast.”
The committee stated that though Settles is no longer here, his “image, legacy and purpose” will continue because of the council’s “monumental” vote.
Wilson agreed that the council’s unanimous decision was an important step for Signal Hill.
“It is an opportunity for us as a city to heal and to move forward and recognize that every life does matter,” he said. “No one wants their loved one to be in custody and not come out alive.”
