The following piece was written by Father Richard Smith, the vicar of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist on 15th and Julian Streets and a leading advocate for justice in the five police shootings that have taken place in the Mission since 2011. Max Szabo, District Attorney George Gascon’s press officer responded and we have included his response below...
After two years, the District Attorney has decided not to press criminal charges against Officers Eric Reboli and Craig Tiffe, who shot Amilcar Perez-Lopez to death on the night of February 26, 2015. District Attorney George Gascón, who has yet to bring charges against any officer of the SFPD, released a 25 page summary of the investigative report laying out...
Activists from several coalitions seeking justice in high-profile police shootings united their movements on the steps of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice on Friday to denounce what they say was a biased investigation into the death of Amilcar Perez Lopez. “The report reflects the DA’s clear bias towards protecting the officers that killed Amilcar rather than seeking the truth of...
On the third anniversary of police shooting victim Alex Nieto’s death, a concert to kick-start a fundraising campaign for the construction of a permanent memorial in his honor will be held tonight at 24th Street’s Brava Theater. Nieto was shot and killed by four San Francisco Police officers on March 21, 2014 on top of Bernal Hill. Since then, the local community has mobilized...
A federal judge on Monday set October 22, 2018 as the trial date for a civil suit brought by the family of police shooting victim Luis Gongora Pat against the city and the two San Francisco police officers involved. The trial will come more than two years after the April 7, 2016 anniversary of the fatal encounter between Gongora Pat,...
None of the officers involved in fatal confrontations with some 40 civilians shot and killed at the hands of San Francisco police since 2000 has stood a criminal trial. On Monday, anti-police-brutality advocates, city leaders, and family members of police shooting victims gathered on the steps of the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant St. to demand that the city’s...
A group of some 40 community members, activists, friends and family of police shooting victim Alex Nieto on Tuesday gathered around a makeshift memorial on a slope leading up Bernal Hill – a tarp strewn over a pile of rocks. A photo of Nieto smiling was imprinted on the tarp. That memorial will soon be replaced with a bench marking...
Activists who have been pushing for police reform from the Mission District said Tuesday they are waiting for the newly appointed police chief William Scott to prove himself. Scott, a 25-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, spearheaded reform efforts in the LAPD, according to the Chronicle. That, however, was not enough to win over local activists just yet...
Traduccion en español aquí. A city investigation has found that a San Francisco police officer involved in the fatal shooting of Alex Nieto made inappropriate comments on social media in reference to the deceased and may face disciplinary action. The Office of Citizens Complaints found that Roger Morse, one of the police officers who shot and killed Nieto in 2014,...
The San Francisco City Attorney’s office said on Thursday that two San Francisco police officers lawfully killed Luis Gongora Pat, a Guatemalan immigrant, when they confronted him earlier this year in the Shotwell Street homeless encampment where he lived. The statement from City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office came in response to Gongora Pat’s family who filed a lawsuit two months ago naming...
Traduccion en español aquí. As an ordinance requiring a memorial to police shooting victim Alex Nieto makes its way through the legislative process, some 100 residents who support it met Monday night to discuss what the monument should look like. Supervisors John Avalos and David Campos have put forward legislation instructing the Recreation and Parks Department to install a memorial...
Activists and a lawyer representing police shooting victim Luis Góngora Pat joined his wife and children at a press conference in Mexico Thursday morning to emphasize the trans-national significance of the shooting. Officers responding to a call about a man swinging a knife arrived on Shotwell Street near 19th Street on April 7 of this year and confronted Góngora Pat,...
A police officer involved in the fatal shooting of a mentally ill man at Stern Grove in October was also one of the officers who pulled the trigger on Alex Nieto in 2014, according to police. After police released this information last week, organizers who work with at-risk youth came forward and told Mission Local that they had raised concerns of...
The family of the 45-year-old Mayan homeless man shot by police near a Mission District tent encampment on April 7 filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the two officers involved on Friday. The lawsuit was filed on the six-month anniversary of Luis Gongora Pat’s death and comes on the heels of an autopsy report released last week....
San Francisco supervisors challenged Acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin on his commitment to reform at a Tuesday hearing at the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors asked pointed questions about everything from Chaplin’s ability to push back against the influential police union to working towards changing department culture. “We are getting all this talk about things happening and implementation, but I...
