San Leandro officer arraigned in fatal shooting

The San Leandro police officer who fatally shot Steven Taylor at a Walmart in April was arraigned on a manslaughter charge Tuesday and taken into custody, Alameda County prosecutors said.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Dickinson set Officer Jason Fletcher’s bail at $200,000, and he was released later Tuesday after posting bond, a representative for his lawyer, Michael Rains, said. Fletcher’s first court appearance on a charge of voluntary manslaughter comes five months after he shot Taylor, 33, at the Hesperian Boulevard store. Taylor’s family said he was experiencing a mental

health crisis. Fletcher’s lawyer said the officer feared for his life when he shot Taylor, who was holding a bat.

Fletcher shot and killed Taylor April 18 after Walmart security called authorities and said Taylor had taken a bat and a tent off the shelves and was acting erratically. Prosecutors said Fletcher arrived to the store at the same time as another San Leandro police officer but went in to confront Taylor alone.

Video released by police shows Fletcher confronting Taylor near the front of the store and unsuccessfully trying to grab the bat. Fletcher drew his pistol and stun gun as Taylor backed away. He stunned Taylor twice before shooting him in the chest with his service pistol.

Prosecutors said Taylor “clearly experienced the shock of the taser as he was leaning forward over his feet and stumbling forward,” when he was shot. Only 40 seconds elapsed between the time Fletcher entered the store and when Taylor lay dying from a gunshot wound.

Fletcher is the first Bay Area police officer to be charged in a fatal shooting in more than a decade, and among the first charged since a new, more restrictive, California law defining when police officers can use force was signed into law.

Though the new law is more restrictive, it “does not require police officers to have their brains bashed out with a baseball bat before they defend themselves,” said

Rains, Fletcher’s lawyer, after the charge against his client was announced this month. In a statement Tuesday, Rains said Fletcher “did exactly what he should do as a law enforcement officer and protector of the public.”

On the eve of Fletcher’s arraignment, the San Leandro Police Officers’ Association expressed condolences to Taylor’s family and loved ones, but called Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s decision to charge Fletcher “politically motivated and legally deficient.”

Fletcher is scheduled to appear in court again on Oct. 27.