Officer-involved shootings

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February 15, 2011 | 4:58 PM | By

SFPD’s new Taser request likely to face resistance

Ali Winston

An Oakland Police officer readies a Ttaser during an encounter with a mentally ill man on San Pablo Avenue

An exchange during the San Francisco Police Commission’s discussion of its new crisis response policy last week hinted at the attitude of some commissioners towards SFPD’s renewed push to equip patrol officers with Tasers. Although the Commission rejected SFPD’s requests for Tasers last year, citing safety and liability concerns, the police department took up the cause again in the wake of three recent officer-involved shootings of mentally ill people.

Commissioner Petra DeJesus, who led the successful opposition to implementing Tasers last year, raised the issue with Sam Cochran, a retired Memphis Police Department Major who helped create the Crisis Intervention Team model SFPD will adopt. DeJesus asked whether MPD’s CIT officers carry Tasers.

At first, Cochran said, CIT officers were equipped with the less-lethal electronic weapon, but took them out of service because of burns incurred by suspects who were tased after being sprayed with an alcohol-based chemical agent MPD carried at the time. MPD eventually replaced the tasers with the SL-6 impact launcher, which can fire a range of non-lethal projectiles.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Officer-involved shootings, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Commission, San Francisco Police Department, Tasers
February 8, 2011 | 5:08 PM | By

Officer-involved shootings and the public record

Ali Winston

District Attorney and former police chief George Gascón's office is refusing to release documents related to police shootings

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón’s office has rejected a request for a decade’s worth of officer-involved shooting reports – and it is unclear whether the DA even keeps such records.

Following three officer-involved shooting incidents in San Francisco at the end of December and the beginning of January, we filed a public records request with District Attorney George Gascón for copies of DA’s reports on officer-involved shootings in San Francisco County that were completed between 2000 and 2010.

The DA’s office, along with the police department, investigates every incident that involves an officer firing his or her weapon at a civilian to determine whether the shooting was justified, or if it should be charged as a crime.

A findings letter – alternatively called a shooting review or report – includes details of the incident, the account of separate reviews by police and district attorney’s investigators and a legal explanation of why the officer is not being charged with criminal conduct. These letters are issued only if the district attorney does not charge a police officer with a criminal offense.

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FILED UNDER: Police, George Gascon, Officer-involved shootings, San Francisco, San Francisco District Attorney, San Francisco Police Department
February 7, 2011 | 5:25 PM | By

Shots fired at Oakland Police Saturday night

Henderson Images

Hard on the heels of last week’s discussion of a rash of citizen-on-police shootings, two Oakland Police officers were shot at Saturday evening while responding to reports on gunfire in North Oakland.

Benny Ray Martin Jr, a 31-year-old parolee who was recently released from federal prison in Nevada, allegedly fired at two problem-solving officers around 6:30 PM in the 800 block of 59th Street. Although their patrol car was struck by a round, neither officer was injured in the shooting.

Police cordoned off the area and arrested Martin and Anthony Perry, 20, when the pair attempted to drive out of the neighborhood in a green Buick. Both men are being held in North County Jail in downtown Oakland for the attempted murder of a police officer, but the Alameda County District Attorney has yet to file charges.

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FILED UNDER: Police, assaults on police, North Oakland, Oakland, Oakland Police Department, Officer-involved shootings
February 1, 2011 | 4:28 PM | By

A war on police?

Much has been made in the past few weeks about a “war on police.” Nationwide, fourteen officers were killed while on duty in January, including a spate of shootings within a week at the end of January that left eleven officers shot with 2 fatalities.

One of the most alarming attacks was at a police station in Detroit on January 23, where four officers were shot when 38-year-old Lamar Moore opened fire inside the building with a pump action shotgun. Moore was killed in the ensuing gunfire.

There is no evidence out there linking the shootings in five different states, from Michigan to Florida. However, Richard Roberts, the head of the International Union of Police Associations told MSNBC that officers feel like they have a bulls-eye on their backs right now.

“There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops,” Roberts said.

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FILED UNDER: Police, assaults on police, Oakland, Officer-involved shootings, United States
January 29, 2011 | 4:07 PM | By

Oakland Police shoot, kill man in Rockridge

Ali Winston

An Oakland Police officer directs pedestrians away from the scene of an officer-involved shooting In Rockridge on January 29, 2011.

[UPDATE 1/30/11: Oakland Police have identified the dead man as Matthew Cicelski, 39, of Oakland.]

Oakland police shot and killed a disgruntled boyfriend in Rockridge Saturday morning after the man allegedly threatened his girlfriend and officers with a knife and a replica assault rifle. Around 9:35 AM, 911 dispatchers received frantic calls of a man dressed in camouflage and armed with a knife and a rifle in the 5500 block of Taft Avenue.

According to police, at one point the man stood outside his former girlfriend’s home and demanded she come outside. The man apparently threatened to shoot his girlfriend. Neighbors reported seeing the man jump a fence into the property when officers showed up on the scene. Her relatives ran outside, and officers could hear the woman inside screaming for help.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Oakland, Oakland Police Department, Officer-involved shootings, Rockridge
January 24, 2011 | 1:12 PM | By

Two more officer-involved shootings this weekend

lawreports.co.uk

Saturday and Sunday brought us two more officer-involved shootings in the Bay Area. An Oakland school district police office shot and killed 20-year-old Raheim Brown on the evening of January 22nd outside a community center in the Oakland hills, where Skyline High was hosting its annual winter ball.

The following evening, a Daly City police officer pursued a woman into San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley neighborhood and shot her after she drove her car into a house and tried to put the car into reverse. The woman, who remains unidentified, suffered life-threatening injuries and is still in San Francisco General Hospital.

The incidents will be reviewed by the Alameda and San Francisco District Attorneys, respectively, to determine whether the shootings were in policy or not. SFPD is also investigating the shooting by the Daly City police officer, since it took place within the city limits.

The weekend’s incidents marked the fifth officer-involved shooting in San Francisco and Oakland in the past five weeks. SFPD officers shot and wounded a knife-wielding man in a wheelchair on January 4, after he allegedly stabbed an officer.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Oakland, Oakland Police Department, Officer-involved shootings, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
January 13, 2011 | 1:59 PM | By

Humans and stress: the science of police shootings

Rina Palta

A chalkboard in the use-of-force simulation room at the San Francisco Police Academy.

For his 1991 book Homicide: A year on the killing streets, author David Simon (of the Wire fame) spent a year shadowing a shift of homicide detectives, who were occasionally called upon to investigate shootings by police officers. In this passage, he describes an officer-involved shooting of an unarmed man by Detective Scotty McCown in Baltimore, Maryland:

“A heavily armed nation prone to violence finds it only reasonable to give law officers weapons and the authority to use them. In the United States, only a cop has the right to kill as an act of personal deliberation and action. To that end, Scotty McCown and three thousand other men and women were sent out on the streets of Baltimore with .38-caliber Smith & Wessons, for which they received several weeks of academic firearms training augmented by one trip to the police firing range every year. Coupled with an individual officer’s judgement, that is deemed expertise enough to make the right decision every time. It is a lie. It is a lie the police department tolerates because to do otherwise would shatter the myth of infallibility on which rests its authority for lethal force. And it is a lie that the public demands, because to do otherwise would expose a terrifying ambiguity.”

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FILED UNDER: Police, Officer-involved shootings, San Francisco Police Department
January 6, 2011 | 4:36 PM | By

Judge throws fuel on battle over officer privacy

lawreports.co.uk

In the last few days of 2010, a Los Angeles judge issued a critical opinion in the ongoing struggle over privacy between law enforcement unions and civil liberties advocates. On December 30, Judge Joseph Di Loreto barred the release of the names of Long Beach Police Department officers in response to a Public Records Act request from the Los Angeles Times.

The request was filed after an unarmed man holding a garden hose nozzle was shot to death by LBPD officers on December 12. The dead man, Douglas Zerby, was drunk and pointing the nozzle at passersby as if it were a gun. His family is suing the city, and has called for a federal investigation.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Long Beach, Officer-involved shootings