Cops won’t be charged in 2 fatal shootings

More than three years since two men were killed in separate police shootings, the San Francisco district attorney’s office announced Friday that the officers involved would not face any charges.

District Attorney George Gascon found there was “insufficient evidence” to bring criminal charges against San Francisco police Officer David Goff, who fired seven shots at O’Shaine Evans, 26, outside AT&T Park during a Giants game on Oct. 7, 2014.

Goff and five other officers were investigating car breakins during the baseball game that evening when they saw a silver Infiniti casing other vehicles on the 400 block of Bryant Street, according to the district attorney’s report. Wearing a shirt over his uniform to avoid standing out in the postgame crowd, Goff approached Evans while he was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. Other officers had reportedly seen the two passengers in the Infiniti steal a bag from another car.

After the men returned to Evans’ vehicle, Goff identified himself as an officer and told Evans to show his hands, police said. One of the passengers, 24-year-old Steven Moore, reportedly jumped out of the car and attempted to flee.

Goff told the district attorney that Evans pointed a black gun at him and he believed Evans planned to shoot. The officer then fired seven times into the car, hitting Evans twice and striking the rear passenger twice.

A gun recovered from the car was later found to be unloaded.

At a town hall two days after the shooting, Evans’ family members expressed doubt over law enforcement’s account of events. They questioned how Evans could have known Goff was a police officer if his uniform was covered.

Moore refused to speak to the district attorney, according to the report, but he apparently told an unknown person in a recorded jailhouse call that Goff never identified himself as a police officer before shooting Evans.

A civil lawsuit against the city in the Evans case was dismissed with prejudice Feb. 6.

In a second report released Friday, the district attorney cleared sergeants Michael Serujo and Nicholas Pena in the fatal shooting of Matthew Hoffman on Jan. 4, 2015.

Hoffman was sitting on a concrete planter in a restricted access parking lot of the Mission police station, the report said, when three sergeants came upon him and told him he was trespassing. A confrontation ensued between police and Hoffman, who apparently refused to leave while keeping his hand hidden under his sweatshirt.

He then pulled out a pellet gun that was modified to look more like a real firearm by removing its orange tip, the district attorney said. Serujo and Pena fired their weapons and Hoffman was struck by three bullets. He later died at the hospital.

Police found three suicide letters on Hoffman’s phone, including one addressed to police, the report noted.

“Please don’t blame yourself,” the letter read. “I used you. I took advantage of you. I am so lost and so hopeless.”

Hoffman previously lived in Norwalk, Conn., where suspicions of his suicidal tendencies were first raised. The district attorney’s report found that he had texted a police officer asking what would happen if a person pointed a fake gun at a cop or told an officer that he was planning on shooting.

Just hours before his death, Hoffman had asked other San Francisco police officers about their firearms and whether or not they had shot anyone, the district attorney said.