San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Boudin won’t charge S.F. officers in 2 fatal cases
District Attorney Chesa Boudin urged police “to carefully review these cases to promote better, safer practices by police officers to protect the public.”
San Francisco police officers who shot and killed a man in 2018 and who restrained a man who died in 2019 will not be criminally charged after their cases were reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office.
In the shooting case, police officers acted in selfdefense when they killed Jesus DelgadoDuarte on March 6, 2018, after DelgadoDuarte opened fire on them near Capp and 21st streets in the Mission District, the district attorney’s investigative branch found. Police had responded to a report of an armed robbery and DelgadoDuarte, the suspect, ran, jumped inside the trunk of a Honda Civic, took out a handgun and fired “at the line of police behind the Honda,” district attorney’s officials said. Ten police officers opened fire, striking DelgadoDuarte “numerous times,” officials said.
In the restraint case, a district attorney’s review found no wrongdoing by officers in the Jan. 5, 2019 , death of Christopher Kliment. Kliment had been discharged from the California Pacific Medical Center’s Mission Bernal emergency department but refused to leave. Two officers “wrestled” Kliment “to the ground and handcuffed him, but he continued to struggle and bang his head against the floor and the side of a table.” More officers showed up to restrain Kliment and he lost consciousness and stopped breathing, officials said.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office said his manner of death was accidental, and the the cause of death “resulted from a cardiopulmonary complication of methamphetamine and cannabinoid intoxication with law enforcement restraint,” district attorney officials said.
The two cases, along with a third case involving the nonfatal police restraint of an individual, were reviewed by the D.A.’s Independent Investigations Bureau, which determined there was not sufficient evidence to “support prosecution of any officers involved,” district attorney officials said Friday.
The bureau’s findings do not necessarily mean “that officers modeled best practices,” district attorney’s officials said.
“Although we did not find violations of criminal law in these cases, we urge the San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Police Accountability to carefully review these cases to promote better, safer practices by police officers to protect the public,” District Attorney Chesa Boudin said.
In the third case reviewed by the investigation bureau, investigators found that there was “no criminality” in officers who restrained Lafayette Reed on Sept. 3, 2019, after police said he started kicking and “throwing punches at the officers” trying to detain him near the Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall.