Few charges left against man shot in police spat
Judge dismisses majority of case over confrontation
A San Francisco judge dismissed the majority of the criminal charges against a man who was shot during a video-recorded confrontation with city police officers at his Ocean View home in January, the public defender’s office said Wednesday.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ross ruled Tuesday that prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to proceed to jury trial on eight of the 10 charges filed against 43-year-old Sean Moore, who was seriously wounded in the Jan. 6 incident.
The charges that were dropped include assaulting a peace officer, making criminal threats and resisting arrest. Moore, who remains in jail, still faces one count of battering an officer and one count of violating a restraining order that had been filed by a neighbor.
Public Defender Jeff Adachi called for Dis-
trict Attorney George Gascón to drop the case entirely.
Max Szabo, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said another judge who presided over a three-day preliminary hearing of the evidence had “found there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial on almost every charge.”
Ross made his ruling after the public defender’s office filed a motion challenging the earlier decision.
“Yesterday, another judge that reviewed the transcripts from that hearing came to a very different conclusion,” Szabo said. “As such, we are weighing our options.”
The incident began when Officers Kenneth Cha and Colin Patino tried to speak to Moore through a locked gate about a suspected restraining order violation at about 4:15 a.m. Moore, whose family said he suffers from mental illness, responded by yelling profanities at the officers and telling them to leave.
The shooting was the first to be captured on the department’s new body-worn cameras, but the footage yielded dueling narratives about what happened and should have happened.
Authorities said the footage showed Moore reacting violently, prompting the officers to deploy pepper spray and use a baton to strike him. When he reacted to the use of the less-lethal weapons by kicking Patino in the face and punching him, Cha fired his gun twice, police said.
The public defender’s office said the footage showed the officers escalating a situation that could have been resolved peacefully, with Moore acting in self-defense against officers who were not acting lawfully.
“This (ruling) is extraordinarily significant in that it demonstrates that the majority of these charges were unfounded,” Adachi said at a news conference.
Deputy Public Defender Brian Pearlman, who represents Moore, said the judge validated his argument that the officers should have left Moore’s home after he said, “Get off my stairs.”
“They ended up escalating the situation,” he said. “And now you have a victim of police violence sitting in jail.”
Police officials declined to comment on the ruling. Earlier, police said the officers had used “great restraint” in dealing with a large suspect with an unknown object in his hand. They released a photo of Patino with his face bloodied from a blow to the nose.
Adachi said the Moore case revealed shortcomings in investigations by the district attorney’s office into police shootings. In September, Mayor Ed Lee approved a final round of funding for a unit that would allow Gascón’s office to take over the lead in the investigations from the Police Department.
During the preliminary hearing, Adachi said, Judge Ethan Schulman said he was troubled to see that statements by Cha and Patino describing the shooting were nearly identical.
Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo