Police shootings: We look at three other recent fatal police shootings in San Francisco.
A series of fatal police shootings in San Francisco over the past several years has raised enduring concerns about how officers are trained and held accountable.
The shootings prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to study the city police force and recommend a slate of reforms, an effort that continues. The incidents spurred policy changes that emphasize deescalating perilous encounters and preserving life. And they forced the resignation of a police chief.
But none of the shootings led San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón to file criminal charges against officers. On Thursday, he said there was insufficient evidence for charges against officers who killed Mario Woods in the Bayview neighborhood in December 2015 and Luis Góngora Pat in the Mission District in April 2016.
The following are three other notable cases:
Alex Nieto
Alejandro “Alex” Nieto was fatally shot March 21, 2014, in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights Park after, according to police, he pointed a Taser at officers, who mistook the shock device for a pistol.
The four officers — who fired at least 48 bullets, striking Nieto 10 to 15 times — arrived at the park after receiving reports from fearful witnesses about a man armed with a gun and acting erratically.
The officers, Roger Morse, Richard Schiff and Nathan Chew, and Lt. Jason Sawyer, were cleared by the district attorney’s office, which found that they reasonably confused the weapons.
Supporters and friends of Nieto, a 28-year-old Mission District resident and City College student, disputed that he could have pulled and pointed a Taser at officers. They said Nieto had the stun gun because he was working as a nightclub security guard.
The shooting sparked widespread protests, and Nieto’s parents sued the city, but a federal jury cleared the officers in March 2016.
Amilcar Perez-Lopez
On Feb. 26, 2015, two plainclothes officers responded to reports of a man chasing another man with a knife on Folsom Street in the Mission. The question that emerged was whether Amilcar Perez-Lopez was shot while threatening the other man and the officers, or while trying to run away.
When Officer Craig Tiffe grabbed Perez-Lopez, a 21year-old recent immigrant from Guatemala, and tried to pin him to the ground, he was “violently resisting,” Tiffe’s partner, Eric Reboli, told investigators.
Prosecutors said Reboli “saw a flash of a very large silver knife” and thought his partner had been stabbed. Reboli said he shot PerezLopez five times to protect himself and his partner. Tiffe said he shot him once to protect the other man in the altercation.
Pressure to charge the officers mounted from community advocates, who held weekly vigils outside the Mission police station. The advocates said officers needlessly fired at Perez-Lopez, who was intoxicated. The city medical examiner determined that all six bullets struck him from the back and side. The young man’s supporters said he spoke Spanish and must not have realized the men were cops.
Both officers, who said they had announced themselves as police, were cleared of charges two years after the shooting.
Perez-Lopez’s parents filed a federal lawsuit against the city. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Jessica Williams
Amid ongoing controversy over the city’s police shootings, the killing of Jessica Williams on May 19, 2016, was a breaking point, prompting the resignation of then-Chief Greg Suhr.
The months leading to the shooting had been turbulent. The December 2015 police killing of Woods, who was shot while carrying a knife but not directly threatening officers with it, prompted then-Mayor Ed Lee to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to review the Police Department top to bottom.
Then, the April 2016 shooting of Góngora Pat, a homeless man who allegedly came at officers with a knife, raised questions about officers’ tactics under new de-escalation policies that emphasized creating time and distance. Officers shot Góngora Pat with bean bags and then bullets within 30 seconds of stepping out of their patrol vehicles.
Williams, a 29-year-old homeless woman, was sitting in a stolen Honda Accord on a dead-end street in the Bayview neighborhood when two officers tapped on the window of her car. Startled, she drove away and rammed into a parked utility car, according to the district attorney’s office.
Sgt. Justin Erb ran to the driver’s side to arrest Williams, who allegedly put the car into reverse and attempted to speed off. Prosecutors concluded that Williams, who was unarmed, was driving in Erb’s direction when he fired a single shot into her chest.
Suhr resigned within hours as the shooting renewed questions about whether the department had lost the confidence of minority communities in the wake of shootings and revelations that a number of officers had exchanged bigoted text messages.
The sergeant who shot Williams was cleared in October 2017 by Gascón’s office, which cited “insufficient evidence.”
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi expressed outrage. “I’m flabbergasted that the D.A. is saying it is OK to shoot at a person who appears to have been fleeing in a car,” he said. “How can you justify shooting a person when you easily could have stepped out of the way?”
The city Police Commission amended the department’s use-of-force policy in December 2016, barring officers in most cases from firing on moving vehicles.