Petition demands criminal charges in Taser death

Activists and relatives of a man who died after San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies shocked him with a Taser in October have delivered a petition with tens of thousands of signatures to the county’s district attorney calling for criminal charges in the case.

About a dozen people brought the petition on Wednesday to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe on the birthday of Chinedu Okobi, the 36-year-old who was killed Oct. 3 in a confrontation on El Camino Real in Millbrae.

Organizers said the petition had nearly 50,000 signatures demanding criminal charges against the five deputies involved in Okobi’s death. They also decried what they called “four months of zero accountability” in the incident, and accused Wagstaffe of dragging his feet in making a charging decision.

“Prosecutors have a duty to ensure police cannot kill us without consequences,” said Clarise McCants, criminal justice campaign director for Color of Change, one of the groups that organized Wednesday’s demonstration.

Wagstaffe said Wednesday that he expects to announce his decision in the last week of February or first week of March.

“I respect their views and I will do my prosecutorial duty, as I have done on all cases over the last 42 years,” Wagstaffe said of the demonstration.

Okobi’s death has attracted attention from activists across the country as another encounter in which an unarmed black man died at the hands of law enforcement officers. Analyses by The Washington Post and others have found police are almost never prosecuted for fatal encounters with civilians.

Okobi was also the third person killed after being shocked with a Taser by law enforcement officers in San Mateo County last year. His death prompted a public hearing on the use of Tasers in the county where a representative from Axon, the company that manufactures Tasers, defended the weapon.

Family members who were shown video of the incident that led to Okobi’s death say it contradicts statements from the Sheriff’s Office that Okobi was running in and out of traffic and assaulted a deputy before another deputy shocked him with a Taser.

Wagstaffe has said his office will release video of the confrontation taken by bystanders, a deputy’s patrol car camera and at least one surveillance camera after the charging decision is announced. The district attorney’s office also will release investigative reports from the incident, the coroner’s report and an analysis by an outside expert on police use of force.