DA releases report on 10-year-old fatal shooting

OAKLAND » The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office on Monday released a report on a decade-old officer involved shooting, saying it had not realized the report was unfinished until an inquiry from this news agency.

In a letter to Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said investigators completed the investigation in 2013 — more than five years after the incident — but apparently never sent it to Oakland police. Once the DA completes its report, the document is made available to the public.

O’Malley agreed with DA investigators that Oakland Officers Hector Jimenez and Jessica Borello should not face criminal charges for the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Andrew Moppin-Buckskin on New Year’s Eve 2007.

“Recently, a member of the public requested a copy of the report,” O’Malley wrote to Kirkpatrick on Aug. 20, referring to this newspaper’s public records request. “Upon searching our records, we learned that the report may not have been transmitted to the Oakland Police Department upon completion. Accordingly, we are now providing the report.”

As reported on Sunday, legal experts and an open records advocate criticized the 10-year delay of making the report publicly available and called into question the conduct of the DA’s office. David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, on Monday said delays in access to records is a form of access being denied.

“While I applaud the DA’s release of this report, the events described in the report happened over 10 years ago,” Snyder said. “In order for government transparency to have the necessary salutary effect — including accountability — it has to be prompt. That didn’t happen here, which is unfortunate.”

For the investigation, Deputy District Attorney Melissa R. Krum and DA Inspector Joseph Marin interviewed Jimenez, Borello, two other officers at the scene, a witness, and someone who was in the car with Moppin-Buckskin that night. The report, dated May 2, 2013, found the officers acted in self-defense.

According to the report, Moppin-Buckskin ran after a car he was driving was pulled over by another. Police officers — including Jimenez and Borello searched the area and spotted Moppin-Buckskin hiding underneath a car a few blocks away in the 1200 block of 47th Avenue in East Oakland. Jimenez and Borello shot him after he refused repeated demands to come out with his hands up and reached for his waistband, according to the report.

“Despite loud, repeated orders to show his hands, Moppin refused to comply. Instead, he was immediately defensive and belligerent — claiming he was going to the bathroom, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Moppin eventually put his hands up in the surrender position by his head, but refused to comply with further commands to come out from behind the truck,” Krum and Marin wrote. “Moppin told the officers he did not care if they shot him, as he had been shot before. Then, Moppin suddenly dropped his right hand to the small of his back or rear waistband area. Believing he was reaching for a gun, both officers discharged their weapons at Moppin, hitting him.”

Moppin-Buckskin, who was not armed, was shot at least three times. One bullet traveled through his chest, fracturing two ribs and passing through his lungs and heart, according to the autopsy cited in the report. His blood-alcohol level was at .16 percent, double the legal limit for driving, the autopsy found.

“The credible and admissible evidence — largely corroborated — shows that Officers Jimenez and Borello discharged their weapons in actual and reasonable self-defense and the defense of each other,” according to Krum and Marin’s report. “No evidence exists to support any contention that the shooting of Andrew Moppin was a criminal act.”

O’Malley agreed with the findings and officially closed the case in the letter sent to Chief Kirkpatrick.

“As indicated in the report, no further action will be taken in this case,” she wrote.

A parallel investigation by Oakland police found that the officers’ conduct did not violate any department policies. Six months after the shooting, on July 25, 2008, Jimenez shot and killed another unarmed man, Mack “Jody” Woodfox, who was shot in the back as he ran away from officers. Jimenez was fired after that shooting but won his job back through arbitration.

Jim Chanin, a civil rights attorney who represented Moppin-Buckskin’s family in a lawsuit, said the DA report does not address the reason Moppin-Buckskin turned around.

“They failed to show any curiosity as to why he suddenly turned around for no apparent reason. I think the District Attorney could have shown more curiosity about that point since that’s why he got shot,” Chanin said. Chanin emphasized that MoppinBuckskin wasn’t armed, so “why would he reach for something that wasn’t there?”