S.D. POLICE VIDEO SHOWS OFFICER SHOOTING MAN

Homeless man shot 3 times as he pulls out knife, drops it

Police body-camera footage released Wednesday showed a veteran San Diego officer shooting and injuring a 69-year-old homeless man last week near the Gaslamp Quarter as the man pulled a kitchen knife from his back pocket and appeared to drop it to the ground.

San Diego police officials initially said Stephen Wilson threatened Officer Kelly Besker as he pulled out the knife last Thursday night. Video from Besker’s body camera shows Wilson wordlessly pulling out the knife, and almost at the same instant he drops it, Besker fires three rounds at him.

Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, a spokesman for the Police Department, said officials changed their description of the threat as more evidence became available, including the body-worn camera footage and an interview with Besker.

Police initially said Wilson “drew a knife and threatened the officer,” but after further investigation said he “drew a knife which threatened the officer.” The shooting occurred at 7:10 p.m. on the corner of Third Avenue and G Street, according to police. The video released Wednesday shows a man flagging down Besker as the officer is engaged in a stop with a man who may have been drunk outside a nearby 7-Eleven. The video shows the witness telling Besker that Wilson was armed with a knife and causing a commotion on a street corner, forcing pedestrians to walk into the street to get around him.

In the video, after some initial conversation between Besker and Wilson, who is eating from a bowl of food throughout the interaction, a second officer is seen approaching Wilson and getting close to his right side at the same time Besker first spots an object in Wilson’s back left pocket.

“(You have) a knife in your back pocket,” Besker tells Wilson in the video as Wilson backs away from him, still holding the bowl in his right hand.

In a nearly simultaneous series of events, Besker shouts, “Do not grab that knife!” as Wilson appears to pull out the knife and drop it to the ground. Besker fires three rounds. Police said the video showed that Besker fired his first shot less than a second after Wilson released his grip on the knife.

“What was that, a Taser gun?” Wilson, who dropped to the ground after being shot, asked police officers seconds later. “I didn’t pull it on you,” Wilson said, apparently referring to the knife.

A short time later, Wilson realizes he has been shot, according to the video. Another officer’s body-worn camera footage shows officers performing medical aid on Wilson, who asks Besker, “Why did you shoot me?”

“(Because) I told you not to grab the knife out of the back pocket,” Besker tells him.

“I was giving it to you,” Wilson answers back. He said he didn’t hear the order not to grab it.

Medics took Wilson to a hospital, where he underwent surgery and was in stable condition the night of the shooting, according to police homicide Capt. Rich Freedman.

That same night, Freedman told reporters at the scene that “as (Besker) got closer to the male, it looked like the male had produced a knife, threatening the officer.” In a news release the next morning, homicide Lt. Andra Brown said Wilson “drew a knife and threatened the officer, despite orders not to touch the knife.”

In a Tuesday news release identifying Besker and Wilson, also attributed to Brown, the wording was changed to say Wilson “drew a knife which threatened the officer.”

Takeuchi said Freedman and Brown had given the information they “knew at the time,” but that officials changed their wording about the threat Tuesday after “investigators had additional evidence including body worn camera footage and an interview with Officer Besker.”

Besker has fired his weapon previously in the line of duty. In 2009, he and two other officers fatally shot Lonnie Glasco minutes after the Metropolitan Transit System mechanic shot and killed two of his MTS coworkers at a downtown busmaintenance depot. The district attorney cleared Besker and the other officers in that shooting, ruling they were justified in using deadly force against Glasco, who pointed a revolver at them.

State laws dictating when officers are justified in using deadly force changed in 2020 with the implementation of AB 392, which allows law enforcement officers to use deadly force only when “necessary,” when their life or the lives of others are in imminent danger and when there is no other alternative to deescalate the situation, such as using non-lethal methods.

The legislation marked a change from the previous standard, which allowed using deadly force when an officer had a “reasonable” fear of imminent harm.