Mistaken shooting case settled by payment

The city of Oakland agreed to pay $ 275,000 to settle lawsuits filed in connection with the police shooting of a 16year- old boy who was mistaken for a robbery suspect.

Frenswa Raynor, who suffered a graze wound to his lower jaw when he was shot by Officer Bryan Clifford in 2013, will receive $ 230,000, while a teen who was present at the time will receive $ 45,000.

The Oakland City Council voted in closed session Tuesday night to approve the payouts. But at the public meeting, Councilwoman Desley Brooks said the settlement was “despicable” and “insufficient” because the incident involved “young men who didn’t do anything.”

“We ought to make sure that we right the wrongs that happen, and I don’t think this settlement represents that,” Brooks said to applause from the gallery.

The April 3, 2013 incident began after police responded to reports that an employee at Le Cheval, a restaurant at 10th and Clay streets, had been robbed at knifepoint by a group of teenage boys.

A witness told police that he was following several assailants he believed were the robbers. The group turned out to be Raynor and two of his friends, said Raynor’s attorney, John Burris.

Several officers intercepted the three about a block from the restaurant, and Clifford, sensing a threat, shot Frenswa in the jaw, authorities said.

Clifford, who was a field training officer, opened fire because he saw the teen “make a sweeping motion toward his waistband” and believed the youth was “reaching for a weapon,” attorneys for the city wrote in court papers.

Police confirmed that Frenswa and his friends, all juveniles, were not responsible for the robbery, authorities said.

Frenswa, who was hit by bullet fragments, was taken to a hospital and then booked into jail before being released the next day without any charges, said the suit Burris filed on behalf of the teen and his father, Matthew Raynor.

“It was certainly a wrongful shooting,” Burris said Tuesday. “It was a panic shooting.”