San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S. F. rookies’ experience questioned in shootings
Cases test Boudin’s pledge to hold police accountable
San Francisco police Officer Christopher Flores had been in field training for five months before firing the single bullet that would send him to criminal court. Officer Christopher Samayoa had been on the streets for just four days when he killed a man in the line of duty.
The rookie cops will soon stand as the first tests of one of District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s core priorities: holding police accountable for what he argues are unjustified uses of force.
The charges against the two men raise questions about whether new officers are being sent into situations they’re not ready to handle and whether different training, more education or older recruits would produce better outcomes. How juries might weigh the officers’ inexperience is an open question.
On Nov. 23, Boudin announced that he had filed manslaughter and other charges against Samayoa, who fatally shot a carjack suspect, Keita O’Neil, during a chase in the Bayview in 2017. The decision marked the first time a San Francisco prosecutor filed homicide charges against an onduty officer in modern history.
On Dec. 7, Boudin announced that a grand jury had indicted both Flores and the man he shot, Jamaica Hampton, on assault charges after an encounter in the Mission District last December.
“Both cases involved officers who were new to the job, who were relatively inexperienced, behaving in a way that is a stark contrast from the way that other officers on scene with more experience behaved,” Boudin said in a recent interview. “In any profession, including policing, I think when people are new to the job they’re more prone to make mistakes.”
Tony Montoya, the president of the San Francisco police officers union, disagreed, saying he wouldn’t peg either of the San Francisco shootings on training or experience, and said each circumstance needs to be viewed independently. Montoya, who condemned the charges in both cases, stressed that both Flores and Samayoa were in highly stressful, volatile situations.
“I can’t say that somebody with my experience — 32 years — would have necessarily acted any differently, based on the circumstances,” Montoya said. “It’s really hard to use a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Boudin argues that both cases revealed “a clear distinction” between how experienced veteran officers and rookies use force.
Prosecutors believe none of the other, more veteran officers on the scene after the chase of O’Neil had drawn their weapons when Samayoa fired. O’Neil had allegedly carjacked a lottery employee’s van and led police on a chaotic chase. He was reportedly unarmed, and moving toward or past the police car on foot, when Samayoa shot through a passenger window and fatally struck O’Neil in the head.
In the other incident, both Flores and his training officer, Sterling Hayes, were emerging from their patrol car when a man they were about to stop for questioning, Hampton, attacked them with a vodka bottle, they said.
The three darted around parked cars until Hampton appeared to charge at Hayes, who fired six times and sent Hampton to the ground.
Hayes was heard calling in the shots fired and appeared to turn around just in time to see Flores fire at Hampton as he struggled to stand.
“Stop stop stop stop stop!” Hayes yelled as he raced over to the two. Hayes was not charged in the case.
Both cases are the subject of internal investigations. Samayoa was terminated in 2018, and Flores is currently assigned to the investigations bureau, police officials said. An officer’s departure does not end a pending internal investigation, and the former officer will be notified of the outcome when the probe is completed.
Police Chief Bill Scott said the department is constantly reviewing critical incidents in an effort to improve training and policies.
The department has expanded crisis intervention training and other drills to handle rapidly developing situations drawing several officers.
“We always want to get better at how we communicate together and … to whoever it is that we’re coming into contact with,” Scott said. “And we saw a need there to improve.”
Though research on the topic is scant, some findings have suggested that age and experience can play a role in how likely officers are to reach for their weapons. A 2008 study shows that an officer’s risk of shooting decreased with age. That data that was supported by a 2015 BuzzFeed analysis that found officers in many of the nation’s most controversial police shootings were younger than 30.
Both officers prosecuted by Boudin’s office were in their 20s at the time of the shootings, though older than the youngest rookies. Flores is now 28 and Samayoa is 31, officials said.
It is standard for departments to send younger patrols into the city’s crime hotbeds, where the chance of a violent confrontation is higher, regardless of the officer. The benefits are twofold: Some officers with seniority prefer a beat with less action, and rookies get a crash course on all aspects of policing.
Local leaders have previously weighed whether stations like Bayview — one of the city’s highcrime areas — should remain training grounds, said Police Commissioner Malia Cohen, a former city supervisor who led the charge in creating the city’s independent Department of Police Accountability.
Samayoa’s fatal shooting of O’Neil was in the Bayview, while Flores’ shooting of Hampton occurred in the Mission, also a relatively highcrime area.
The city’s seven field training stations are Bayview, Tenderloin. Southern, Northern, Central, Mission and Ingleside. Bayview, Tenderloin and Mission had more reported violent crimes than other stations this year, according to police data.
Cohen said she’d like to revisit the question of where officers should be trained, though she understands why, at first glance, the Bayview seems a fitting beat for newcomers: The area is brimming with shootings, domestic violence and robberies of all kinds, “all in one little police district,” she said.
“Perhaps we need to update that thinking,” she said. “Is Bayview Station in the best interest of officers and the public to be a training station?”
Fellow Commissioner John Hamasaki said he’s considering drafting a local policy similar to proposed state legislation that would require officers to have a bachelor’s degree or be at least 25. Currently, recruits need a high school diploma or equivalent and to be at least 18.
While both Flores and Samayoa would have cleared that hurdle, Hamasaki said raising the age barrier could benefit public safety. He pointed to research that shows young adult brains are still developing well into the 20s.
“It’s a very good question,” he said. “Is this the best time for them to be in that role, and for our city to have them in that role?”
Both Flores and Samayoa’s status as rookies will almost certainly factor into their defense. To get a conviction, prosecutors would need to show in both cases that the officers’ use of force wasn’t “reasonable.” Both shootings happened before 2020, when a California law changed the standard to allow officers to use deadly force only when “necessary.”
Alison Berry Wilkinson, an attorney for Samayoa, said jurors will be asked to determine what a reasonable officer — with Samayoa’s level of training and experience — would have done in the same situation.
“Certainly a fourday officer — which is what Officer Samayoa was — is different than somebody who might have been on the force for four years or 14 years or 24 years,” she said.
“That makes sense. They have a different level of training and experience that they apply to the decisions that they make.”
Before the shooting, she said, Samayoa had never made a traffic stop where a citation was issued. In the final week of the academy, recruits undergo what’s known as “officer survival school” in which officers are faced with training scenarios they’re likely to encounter on the streets, Wilkinson said.
“Some of those scenarios that they ran with Officer Samayoa show a startling resemblance to what happened here,” Wilkinson said. “He performed as they trained him under the circumstances and reacted exactly as the San Francisco Police Department had told him he should.”
Nicole Pifari, Flores’ attorney, said the fact that two rookies were involved in shootings wasn’t as much related to their inexperience, “but a reminder that the job can be as dangerous on the first day as it is on your last.”
“There is only so much training and preparation we can put these brave men and women through before finally putting them out on the street,” she said. “While I do not believe these shootings occurred simply because the officers were brandnew, an officer’s training and experience is certainly a relevant factor when evaluating a force incident.”