SF Cops Shoots Suspected Stabber

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Police-say-SF-officer-shoots-suspect-in-Bayview-6671485.php

San Francisco police shot and killed a suspected stabber in the Bayview District late Wednesday afternoon after the man approached an officer while holding a knife, police said.

The shooting, which authorities said occurred on Keith Street after officers tried and failed to subdue the man with nonlethal beanbags, was recorded by someone on a Muni bus who posted the video to Instagram.

Police Chief Greg Suhr told reporters that the video confirmed the suspect “does have the knife in his hand and he does move toward officers.”

But San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, after watching the same video, said it appeared that “the person was not posing a direct threat and certainly did not have to be shot.”

The video shows the man up against a building gesturing as armed officers surround him. A bystander can be heard shouting, “Just drop it!” The man, his hands at his sides, is seen walking away from at least four officers but toward one officer, who steps in his path, walking backward with his gun drawn.

Moments later the camera turns away as the first of at least 15 shots ring out. The camera does not capture the man’s last movements.

Police went to the neighborhood about 4:20 p.m. after a man told them he had been stabbed in the shoulder about half an hour earlier on the 6600 block of Third Street by an assailant who was still in the area, police said.

Officers said they found the suspect nearby on the 2900 block of Keith Street, holding what appeared to be a six- to eight-inch kitchen knife. At least five officers surrounded him at gunpoint and ordered him to drop the knife, Suhr said.
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Police first shot the man with lead-filled beanbag pellets, and he fell but then rose again, the chief said. With the officers surrounding him, Suhr said, the man approached one officer, still holding the knife, and was shot at 4:35 p.m. He said five officers opened fire.

Officers summoned paramedics and tried to revive the man, but he died at the scene, Suhr said. The man was not immediately identified.

Suhr said he did did not know how many shots were fired, but the suspect “had already demonstrated, by committing a felony aggravated assault, that he was a danger to others, so he could not be allowed to move away from the scene.”

The police chief said the officers’ account of the shooting was supported by witnesses on the bus and by the video.

Video segments “appear to show the officers encircled and they appear to show the suspect moving toward the one officer before the shots were fired,” Suhr said.

Adachi, however, told reporters that the footage he saw did not show a need for deadly force.

“It does not look like the officer who fired the fatal shots was in immediate danger of being killed,” the public defender said. He said it appeared the officer “can move back and at least order the person to the ground or use some other sort of defensive maneuver, rather than using a gun and shooting him point-blank.”

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko contributed to this report.

Jenna Lyons and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: jlyons@sfchronicle.com and vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno and @VivianHo

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Tr1ll said:

Once you pull a weapon on a cop, all gloves are off.

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A man killed by San Francisco police officers in a shooting caught on video that was widely circulated on social media was identified Thursday as a 26-year-old city resident.

Mario Woods died shortly after officers fired at him in the Bayview neighborhood at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Police said Woods was a suspect in an earlier stabbing on the 6600 block of Third Street. When they approached him on the 2900 block of Keith Street, he still had what appeared to be a six- to eight-inch kitchen knife, investigators said.
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In the video, taken from a nearby Muni bus, it is unclear if he is armed. The video shows a man up against a building, gesturing as armed officers surround him. With his hands at his sides, he is seen walking away from at least four officers but toward one officer, who steps into his path, walking backward with his gun drawn.

The camera turns away just as the first of at least 15 shots ring out.

Police said when Woods refused to drop the knife, the officers tried other tactics to disarm him and take him into custody. They deployed a less-lethal beanbag round as well as pepper spray, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman, but he still did not drop the knife.

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Officers fired on Woods when he attempted to walk away, Andraychak said. An officer moved in front of him to prevent him from leaving, and Woods, supposedly still armed, continued to walk toward the officer.

“At this point, fearing serious injury or death, officers fired their department issued handguns at the suspect,” Andraychak said.

Cedric Smith, a 47-year-old real estate entrepreneur who lives near where the shooting took place, said he saw Woods around the neighborhood frequently and the type of threatening behavior described by police did not fit his personality.

“He wasn’t a big guy, definitely not a trouble maker,” Smith said. “You’d see him around drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette, but he walked real slow and might’ve had a disability. He wasn’t a threat to nobody.”

Smith said he went to the scene of the shooting early Thursday morning where he saw Woods’ mother crying and looking at the blood stain on the pavement where her son had fallen the night before.

“You almost made it home Mario,” Smith said he heard her say.

Woods was convicted in 2010 of charges stemming from an armed robbery of a pool hall patron in San Francisco with a sentencing enhancement for using a firearm and participating in a street gang, the Oakdale Mob in Bayview-Hunters Point, court records show.

According to police reports, Woods was 18 when he attempted to rob a victim at gunpoint in the bathroom of a Mission Street pool hall in the Crocker-Amazon district in February 2008.

The victim managed to disarm Woods and he and other patrons chased him outside where they started to club him with billiard sticks.

Woods managed to get into a waiting car and the driver of that vehicle, which was stolen, ended up crashing during a police pursuit. Both men were arrested.

The driver of the fleeing car, Kerry Dawson, another Oakdale member, was shot and killed in San Francisco in 2010 in a still unsolved homicide.

Woods was also tied to a robbery of another patron of the same pool hall in January 2008 and ultimately pleaded guilty to that offense, not the robbery attempt that led to his arrest.

Woods ended up being sentenced to seven years in state prison with credit for two years he served in county jail. He was in custody stemming from the robbery case in 2009 when he was served with the city’s gang injunction related to the Oakdale Mob street gang.

In seeking the injunction, City Attorney Dennis Herrera identified Woods as a gang member who committed armed robbery, vehicle theft and had crashed a car while fleeing police.

He was released from state prison in September 2014, state records show.

Along the fence where Woods was killed, a small memorial with flowers, candles and Black Lives Matter signs had been set up. “You will live on in our hearts,” was written in spray paint on the sidewalk as well as some disparaging statements about the San Francisco Police Department.

A man walking by the scene, who identified himself only as Angelo, grew visibly emotional when he heard Woods was the man who'd been shot.

“No, man, not Mario,” he said as he walked his young daughter past the memorial. “These cops have no respect for human life.”

Smith, who had seen the video of the run up to the shooting widely circulated on social media, said he thought the officers could have resolved the situation without resorting to deadly force.

“They had six officers against this one little guy. They could have used batons. They could have backed off,” he said. “They didn’t need to shoot him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Kale Williams, Jaxon Van Derbeken and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.comjvanderbeken@sfchronicle.comvho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale @jvanderbeken @VivianHo
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Gentrification said:

They said they did use nonlethal weapons first. But who knows. 

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