Next week, the contents of a security video may be the key piece of evidence in deciding whether two workers at a San Francisco homeless shelter should face trial for allegedly helping a man accused of shooting and wounding a police officer.
The shelter workers, Oliver Barcenas and Erika Porter, face charges that could land them in prison for years. They are accused of concealing a man, Norris Reed III, who, on May 31, according to SFPD and viewed in body-camera footage, exchanged gunfire with several officers after a police pursuit, seriously injuring an officer and a passenger in Reed’s vehicle.
It is clear that Reed III subsequently entered the homeless shelter where Barcenas and Porter worked. What happened within, however, remains in question. Video footage from the shelter has been viewed by both Barcenas’ attorney, the shelter’s former CEO, and city prosecutors. Its contents are a point of contention.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins referred to the video as “stunning” evidence that the workers colluded to hide Reed III from the police. She also condemned the shelter’s workforce for waiting “over an hour” to call the police.
Multiple shelter staffers and a client tell a different story. One, the now-retired CEO of the shelter, described the workers’ actions as “nothing short of heroism.”
When Reed entered the Bayshore Navigation Center, the shelter’s former CEO and a staff member said, he brandished two firearms, putting the staff and its 100-plus homeless clients in danger.
The workers were told by their superior to “do anything the gunman wanted,” said Steve Good, the ex-CEO.
Good says he reviewed “every minute” of the security footage and does not know what evidence the district attorney referred to as “stunning.” His staff, he said, did the best they could in what quickly escalated into a “hostage situation.”
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Dawn Payne will decide next Thursday whether that video, and other evidence, will be enough for the two to stand trial.
A ‘terrifying’ and ‘traumatizing’ night
Police say Reed fled from officers on the night of May 31 after Flock, a license-plate surveillance technology, connected his car to an armed robbery in the East Bay. San Francisco police attempted to pull him over at 10:29 p.m. at Mission and First streets, police said, but he sped away with a passenger in tow.
According to police, Reed and the passenger, Ariunsanaa Dolgorsuren, fled from officers through multiple police districts before crashing into a highway median on Jerrold Avenue, across the street from the Bayshore Navigation Center.
Body-camera footage shared by the San Francisco Police Department appears to show Reed drawing his weapon and, at approximately 10:45 p.m., after an exchange of gunfire, officer Brittney Taylor and Dolgorsuren were both shot, critically wounding them. Data from ShotSpotter indicates that 19 shots were exchanged.
Those across the street at the shelter heard the barrage.
“It was like the shooting happened in the back of the dorm,” said a client sleeping at the shelter, who asked to not be named. “People sat up, shot up, I heard tires squealing and several shouts.”
After the gunfight, Reed purportedly fled on foot past a nearby Chevron gas station, the police said, and toward the shelter mere feet away.
What happened next is disputed.
Reed was let into the building’s courtyard by staff just after the shooting — they mistook him for a client, said Good and Barcenas’ attorney, Gabriel Navarrete.
For a moment, said Good, security footage provided by the shelter shows Reed disappearing inside the building’s entryway, near where more than 100 clients were lying in their beds. But at the shelter’s security checkpoint, a staff member quickly realized he was not a client and “challenged him.”
That’s when, Good said, Reed “displayed his weapons and instructed staff not to call the police.”
Barcenas escorted Reed, still armed, outside the building and into the facility’s courtyard, said Navarrete, and went back inside to decide what to do. He decided to call his supervisor, an assistant director at the shelter, Navarrete and Good said, who told him to follow the gunman’s instructions.
According to staff, during the next “terrifying” and “traumatizing” 90 minutes, Barcenas and Porter tried to keep Reed calm while he allegedly “played” with his guns and used drugs in the shelter’s courtyard.
“I was afraid I might be shot,” said the homeless client, who was lying in her bed when she heard that the gunman was in the courtyard.
It was at this time, Navarrete said, that Reed asked Barcenas for clothing, which he provided. Jenkins has referenced this action — handing over a beanie and a jacket — as evidence shown in the security video that Barcenas attempted to disguise Reed from the police.
It is unclear what Porter was doing at this time, but the charges against her accuse her of hiding Reed and lying to police about his whereabouts.
As the police encircled the building, searching for Reed, Barcenas tried to keep Reed calm, said the homeless client and Navarrete. He went back and forth between the inside of the shelter and the courtyard, where Reed was sitting. Eventually, Barcenas and other staff evacuated the building, said the client.
The client, who asked to not be named, said Barcenas entered her room and told her and her dormmates to leave the building. When asked to describe his behavior, she referred to him as “very professional.”
“He wanted to protect the people who were the residents and the staff,” she said.
She stood, terrified, at the back of the shelter for nearly 45 minutes until officers arrived by jumping over the courtyard fence.
At 12:17 a.m. an unknown female staff member called the police, letting them know that Reed was sitting on a bench outside the entrance to the building, alone.
Barcenas eventually came back, the homeless woman said, and told her to go back to bed.
“They just said, ‘it’s over,’” she said, “Everything went back to normal.”
SFPD and DA tell a different story
The police and district attorney dispute the narrative of the workers and residents at the Bayshore Navigation Center.
The footage, said Jenkins at an August press conference, “shows clear evidence” that the workers “made a choice” to assist Reed. “To have employees of this navigation center act in furtherance to assist this individual, knowing that he was armed, knowing that the police were in search of him, is something that we cannot take lightly,” she said.
That belief appears to be shared by some members of the SFPD. In a screenshot of a June 1 Instagram story shared within the department, a user identified to Mission Local as an SFPD officer referred to the shelter staff as “commie shitbags.”
“Shoutout to the navigation center that waited an hour and a half to tell cops the suspect was hiding in their parking lot with his gun still on him,” read the post. “Commie shitbags … ”
It is unclear what the video shows, but Good and others associated with the shelter who have viewed the footage worry that key context, including that Reed purportedly threatened the staff at the shelter, may be missing.
“It’s easy to second-guess what someone would do until you’re confronted with someone with two guns,” said Good. “Everyone seems to have an opinion about how they would handle the situation.”
A previous version of this article reported that the preliminary hearing was set for Oct. 21. The hearing was continued on Wednesday to Oct. 29.
The cops need to calm the fuck down. Most of us are not around guns all day. If someone showed up with two guns at my place of work I am not sure what I would do. They eventually caught the guy and no one in the shelter was hurt. I feel like that’s a pretty big win. Leave these shelter workers alone. They have to deal with enough already!
XXX
You know they are wrong for what they are doing to my sister if you watch the video you see my sister the first one jumping telling dude leave regardless that he had guns and then charge her she is fucked up from it and all the negativity that people are saying and then this one a police officer saying what he said
The “commie” comment is saying the quiet part out loud. If a gunman had run into a fancy hotel and the hostage staff accommodated him (as instructed), that staff would be having their 15 minutes on the morning shows, not facing prosecution. Jenkins career has been attacking the homeless.
Someone ask that cop a) what communism is and b) how, exactly, specifically, the shelter save demonstrated their, uh, communism on that day.
Well, if these staff were not reluctant to call the police before, I’m sure charging them with felonies and calling them slurs on social media after they survive a hostage situation will make them way more excited to call for help next time! Great work as always by the DA’s office to build trust between police and the community.
I can’t imagine a jury convicting. Jenkins seems to love losing court cases.
the fact that no one else was shot at and killed, I don’t know the staff, but with a tentful of patrons and the incident not being escalated, I’d think they did a good job. Remember the Onion Field killing?
Jenkins is literally insane.
Nope. This is clearly calculated.
The criminal case against Barcenas and Porter is still active and underway.
The surveillance video — to my knowledge — has not been released to the public.
Accordingly, anyone opining on what it may or may not show — one way or another — is only indulging idiotic ideological bloviating.
Once the video is made available to the public, by all means, feel free to chime in with an accordingly informed opinion.
And, if those screenshot “commie shitbag” comments were indeed authored by a member of the SFPD, then that cop should be fired or, at least otherwise disciplined/suspended pursuant to SFPD Department General Order 2.09 (“Personal Use of Social Media”). There’s plenty of local legal precedent for taking such action and that individual should be dealt with firmly.
Incredible. It is a good thing I will not be a juror based on the reading of this article. SFPD and the DA need to be ashamed of themselves. I would have voted 5 minutes into deliberation. And any juror who can’t see these facts should experience someone running into their place of employment. Its one thing to be hero and its another to be scared. SFPD and the Brookester DA, is trying to send people to prison for being scared. Now, that said, I don’t fully understand calling your supervisor. But that is why the Brookester will never get a conviction in this case, in my opinion. And my youngest brother was kicked out of that very Navigation Center. So its not like I am siding with “criminals” as the Brookester sees these employees.
I’d rather fund MUNI than the SFPD or any SFPOA pensions, based on the recent public comments and endorsements they seem to be making. Maybe there’s a way to divert this misused funding back to the public.
The DA should focus on the gunman. The shelter workers already have a difficult job. Take it out on the bad guys.
I’d love to know exactly what “choice” Jenkins thinks they should have made when a tweaked out gunman came into the shelter and started issuing orders, while also doing drugs and playing with his guns. The only things that’s “stunning” about this story is Jenkins’ stupidity.
Believing anything copsucker Brooke Jennings requires a leap of faith into a imaginary roam.