A 22-year-old bicyclist said he was brutally beaten by San Francisco police after being pulled over for apparently cycling while using his cellphone to get directions to deliver food as part of his job.

The cyclist, Donovan Reid, says that on January 3rd he was delivering a burrito in SoMa when an officer pulled him over.

Reid briefly records the encounter using his cellphone camera, but the camera goes off shortly after the officer instructs Reid to put his hands behind his back.

The video cuts out and there isn’t any footage until two witnesses, including one of Reid’s friends, begins to roll their cameras.

In the videos, Reid can be seen on the ground and it appears that one officer hits him in the knee.

Reid says the officers punched him in the stomach and held his legs down. Donovan said he has hospital photos that prove he was injured by police.

The San Francisco Police Department has said their Internal Affairs Division is investigating the incident and the Office of Citizen Complaints has been informed.

Reid said he thinks the officers were aggressive and that “They should be terminated.”

He said there was “No need for that to happen. Not to me. Not to anybody.”

Donovan posted the following update on Facebook after the encounter, explaining what happened.

Following the officer shooting of 26-year-old Mario Woods last week, San Francisco residents are calling for the resignation of Police Chief Greg Suhr.

During a community meeting on Friday, an outraged group of Bayview residents demanded that Suhr step down, after he said the cops who shot Woods in the neighborhood were justified. Video footage captured by multiple bystanders shows that Woods was actually walking away from five officers who had their guns drawn. When one of the cops moved to stand in front of Woods, the 26-year-old kept walking. At that point, the five officers opened fire.

Referencing a blown-up photo of Woods holding a knife with his arm outstretched, Suhr argued that the 26-year-old was a threat to the cops at the scene. He maintained the officers fired “in defense” of themselves and other people in the vicinity, adding that they first tried to subdue Woods with pepper spray and beanbag rounds. But the video does not show Woods lunging or making aggressive movements.

People at the meeting yelled “liar” and “murderer,” saying Suhr needs to step down. They pointed out that the officers could have found another way to disarm Woods, since British police successfully took down a man wielding a machete without killing him. Last year, 30 cops spent close to six minutes trying to disarm the man without firing their guns, which showed that dangerous people can be subdued without lethal force.

“You think we’re actually stupid,” Bayview resident Asale-Haqueenyah Chandler said of Suhr’s comments.

“You get up here [at these meetings] and you tell the same version of events,” said activist Adriana Camerena. “You tell a narrative that someone poses a threat. It’s the narrative you have to defend in court, but it’s a lie. So are you here to resign?”

An internal investigation of the shooting is ongoing. Charges against the officers are not on the table yet.

Wood’s shooting is just one of many excessive force cases this year. It may be the last straw for a community that has endured rampant racial profiling and police brutality for years.

Back in August, 14 officers forcefully took down a one-legged homeless man for allegedly waving one of his crutches in the air. In April, 23-year old Travis Hall was thrown out of his car and slammed on a concrete curb during an unlawful police interrogation. And last month, two officersrepeatedly clubbed 29-year-old Stanislav Petrov on the ground, following a high-speed car chase.

In 2014, four officers shot Alex Nieto 10 to 15 times, when they mistook a Taser for a gun. Nieto, a security guard, was carrying the Taser to work.

Police in the city also have a damning record of racial profiling. Back in March, the San Francisco Chronicle released racist text exchanges between five SFPD officers who talked about killing black people.

“I hate to tell you this but my wife friend [sic] is over with their kids and her husband is black,” read one. “Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its [sic] not against the law to put an animal down.” Another said, “All n****** must fucking hang.” “N****** should be spayed,” read a third.

According to the California Department of Justice, black people in San Francisco are seven times more likely to be arrested than their white counterparts.

From ThinkProgress.com

Two San Francisco police officers are in the hospital and a man is dead after officer’s opened fire in the the city’s fifth officer-involved shooting this year.

The San Francisco Police Department says the two Sergeants are at local hospitals in stable condition. So far, all that’s known about the that was man shot is that he is Hispanic and in his 20s.

Hours after the shooting, community members came together to protest the police force.

As word spread of the officer-involved shooting, a Stockton couple made the decision to drive to San Francisco. Dionne Smith Downs says police killed her son. That was all the reason she needed to join protesters at Market and 8th streets.

“It’s time for a change and it starts with us as the people to come together and educate ourselves to address the system,” Downs said.

Market Street is closed between 7th and 9th streets in San Francisco as police investigate an officer-involved shooting on Thursday, October 15, 2015. (KGO-TV)

Earlier in the day, the area was filled with law enforcement following the fatal officer-involved shooting.

A nearby construction worker initially flagged down two sergeants. Someone was throwing glass bottles at the construction site, a safety concern that became even more drastic when the sergeants attempted to handcuff the man.

“A violent struggle ensued. The sergeant on the ground yelled to his partner, ‘He’s getting my gun, he’s getting my gun, he’s got my gun. Shoot him,” San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr said.

The Suhr said two shots were fired, killing the man. Also that the sergeants involved are senior officers.

A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed against San Francisco police department for an incident of alleged police brutality against a young black man in the city in April.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and law firm Keker & Van Nest LLP announced the suit Wednesday following the April 10 incident when police allegedly unlawfully questioned, beat, detained and arrested Travis Hall, a 23-year-old graphic designer.

Police used excessive force and “sham charges” to detain Hall, said ACLU attorney Nayna Gupta, who is assigned to the case.

Hall was being dropped off at his home in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood when three undercover officers, Giselle Talkoff, Anthony Montoya and Joshua Cabillo, approached the vehicle containing Hall and three of his friends.

According to the ACLU, the officers began to aggressively question the four about their activities that evening and despite repeated inquiries as to why they were being detained, officers did not respond.

According to the ACLU, Hall became scared during the ordeal and attempted to call his mother, who is white and whose presence he believed would cause the officers to behave more respectfully and help them understand that he lives there.

It was then that Talkoff allegedly seized Hall from the car and threw him to the ground, causing him to hit his head on the concrete curb, according to the ACLU.

Officers allegedly slammed Hall on the ground with excessive force multiple times. Officers punched Hall, twisted his arm and threatened to break his arm, in addition to other threats, ACLU officials said.

Hall was arrested and transported to the Mission Police Station, where he was booked on suspicion of resisting arrest. His case was dropped by prosecutors shortly after the incident, according to the ACLU. Hall was released from custody the following morning.

Hall suffered a concussion and numerous cuts and bruises to his head, neck, face, and body, and suffered headaches for weeks. According to the ACLU, Hall’s injuries almost jeopardized his academic career and graduation from Fordham University, causing him severe emotional distress and anxiety.

“This was more than an abuse of power, it was against the law.  These officers cast an ugly shadow on the San Francisco Police Department, who they share a uniform with,” Hall said. “Police shouldn’t be able to do anything they want just because they’re in uniform.”

San Francisco police referred questions about the case to the city attorney’s office, which declined to comment because their office has not seen the lawsuit.

“No person should be treated the way that Travis Hall was treated,” attorney Ajay Krishnan said. “This was a traumatic event. SFPD had no probable cause. They did not say he acted violently or aggressively.”

According to a study by the W. Haywood Burns Institute released in June on San Francisco police activity in 2013, black adults are seven times as likely as white adults to be arrested in the city and 11 times as likely to be booked into jail.

“We’d like to see SFPD receive better training on implicit and racial bias,” Gupta said. “We’d like to see the use of body cameras on officers and robust demographic data collection.”

Earlier this year, several San Francisco police officers also came under fire for racist and homophobic texts, while police departments across the country are facing increased scrutiny for police brutality cases.

“Even San Francisco, which is supposedly an educated and progressive city, is just as vulnerable as other communities,” Hall’s mother Leigh Stackpole said. “Police brutality should not be a rite of passage for young black men.”

“What if they had slammed his head on the ground one more time or pulled a gun?” Stackpole said. “I would be one of those mothers protesting with only a photo of him rather than with him standing here next to me.”

Zoey, the Stancil family’s pet, was shot and killed by police

SAN FRANCISCO — A police officer shot and killed a dog Sunday after responding to a child mistakenly dialing 911.

A child had been playing with a telephone and accidentally contacted emergency dispatch. Police arrived at the child’s home and encountered a dog, which they shot six times.

The dog’s owner, Jeffery Stancil, says he believes the officer’s conduct was unnecessary. Stancil’s dog, Zoey, was in the family’s back yard when police officers walked onto the property. Stancil says Zoey bit an officer when they did not back down, but believes it could have been handled differently.

“Six shots for a dog? I mean, what can you say?” said Stancil.

Madonna Stancil also takes issue with the actions of the officers. “I understand that they were doing their job … but the fact that they didn’t give us a chance to put her in safety, you know, and we did say ‘stop, we’ll get her,’ they didn’t give us the chance,” she said.

The officer who shot the dog reportedly went to the hospital to treat a dog bite to his hand.

The officers have not been charged with a crime for killing the Stancil family’s pet. The family said they are considering filing a lawsuit.

BART Police Sergeant Tom “Tommy” Smith

BART police Sgt. Tom Smith, frustrated that his department had rejected his requests for more training or the use of its SWAT team during high-risk searches of homes, told his wife that if anything happened to him, she should “sue the s—” out of the agency, her attorneys said Monday.

Specifically, Smith told his wife — fellow BART Officer Kellie Smith — that she should file a lawsuit naming Deputy Police Chief Ben Fairow, whom he said had routinely denied his requests for more training and for tactical teams. Last year, the sergeant was shot and killed — accidentally, authorities said, by a fellow officer who suddenly encountered him as they searched a small Dublin apartment.

The lawsuit Kellie Smith filed on Friday came a day after she wrote a letter to the BART board of directors and Police Department managers, saying the litigation came only after her attempts to “confidentially address my concerns” failed. A veteran of the force for nearly 20 years, she said she wrote the letter “with deep regret and a heavy heart,” noting that she has “deep loyalty to BART PD and its officers.”

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says Fairow “denied training and denigrated officers when training and/or involvement of tactical teams were discussed,” saying that it was all “bull—” and that officers were “pussies” because they had “training like this in the police academy.”

“As a result of these repeated denials, my husband said to me, ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to sue the s— out of BART and Fairow.’ ” Kellie Smith wrote in her letter. “My husband’s words will stay with me forever. I cannot let this situation and his concern for his fellow officers go unanswered.”

On Jan. 21, 2014, BART police Officer Michael Maes mistook his supervisor for an armed suspect during the search of the small Dublin apartment, authorities said. The officers had failed to study the circular floor plan before the search, and suddenly encountered each other in a back room.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring BART from “forcing employees to perform tactical operations without having the requisite training” when there is a safety risk. It names the transit agency, Chief Kenton Rainey, Fairow and Maes as defendants. Maes has declined to discuss the case.

In a statement, Dana Fox, an attorney for the transit agency, said, “The BART family continues to mourn the loss of Sgt. Tommy Smith. BART’s top priority is the safety of their officers and the public. The shooting was a tragedy that occurred despite the training the officers had received, which far exceeded (the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training) standards.”

Fairow, a veteran of the Oakland Police Department who joined BART in 2011, has not responded to a request for comment. But in an interview weeks after the tragedy, he said he was “not rejecting” assertions that he routinely declined to deploy the SWAT team. “There very well may have been instances where I said no,” he said.

Smith and Maes were among a group of BART officers who went to the ground-floor, 723-square-foot apartment at the Park Sierra complex on Dougherty Road to conduct a probation search in hopes of recovering stolen property. The apartment belonged to 20-year-old John Henry Lee, a robbery suspect who was already in custody, having been arrested five days earlier after police said he led San Leandro officers on a chase to Oakland in a car stolen from a BART parking lot.

This story originally reported by Henry K. Lee for SFGate

Bay Area Rapid Transit police face a lawsuit claiming they used excessive force on a drunken woman last year.

The woman claims newly released video of the incident shows officers violently knocking her to the ground for no reason. The encounter allegedly left her with broken bones, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy.

In the new video, Megan Sheehan can be seen waiting for a train after a night of heavy drinking when BART police officers arrested her.

“I was so embarrassed when I saw the videos. I can’t believe what I was saying. I was just so belligerent and foolish,” Sheehan said.

Despite her behavior, she said, nothing she did justifies what happened next at the Santa Rita jail.

“Don’t touch me like that!” Sheehan can be heard saying in the video. Then she hit the floor.

In his police report, the officer said Sheehan “suddenly turned towards me and began violently punching with a closed fist at my face.” He went on: “To protect myself from her attack … I used an arm-bar take-down and guided her to the ground.”

But Sheehan and her attorneys said footage from surveillance and police body cameras tells another story.

“We don’t see Megan Sheehan trying to punch the officer several times in the face,” her attorney Lizabeth de Vries said. “We don’t see her doing anything that would cause any officer to believe she was an imminent threat that requires this kind of force. … What we see is, without any of this happening, two officers held back Megan Sheehan’s arms and threw her face first to the ground.”

“I had a gash above my left eye, I had a few stitches there, I had four broken bones around my orbital socket, and stitches in my lip, and they knocked out a tooth and chipped another one,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming officers used excessive and unreasonable force.

“Whether they thought she was so belligerent and so drunk that she had it coming — I don’t know,” de Vries said.

“I was already arrested, I was already in custody, there was police all around and I don’t know why they had to use that much force,” Sheehan said.

A spokeswoman for BART said the agency would not comment because of the pending litigation.

Dozens of people marched in San Francisco’s Mission District Friday evening, accusing the police department of a cover-up.

The fatal shooting of a 20-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Feb. 26 has two distinct versions.

As the two officers tell it, Amilcar Perez Lopez lunged at them with a knife and they opened fire, in fear for their lives.

As police critics tell it, Perez Lopez was unarmed and running away from the officers, when they shot him a half dozen times.

“Six shots through the back…we say fight back,” shouted the demonstrators, as they wound from 24th Street and Folsom, where the shooting happened, to the Mission Police Station at 17th and Valencia.

“S-F-P-D Stop Police Brutality,” was another chant, as they lit candles in front of the station, with officers standing guard.

Earlier in the day, an attorney for the Perez Lopez family announced the filing of a federal civil rights lawsuit, and a request for a Justice Department review of the case.

“They shot him in the back of the head,” declared lawyer Arnoldo Casillas, “and shot him in the back four times. If I’m charging at you, you can’t shoot me in the back, it’s physically impossible.”

Casillas says private investigators found witnesses who described seeing Perez Lopez shot – not on the sidewalk as police said – but on the street as he tried to run away.

He also believes Perez Lopez, who worked two jobs, in construction and at a restaurant, did not realize the plain clothes officers were cops, and ran because he was fearful.

Most damning, Casillas says, is an independent autopsy, he says concludes all six bullets came from behind, and that Perez Lopez’s arms were at his side.

That contradicts what Chief Greg Suhr told the community just days after the incident.

“The officers were approximately five to six feet away,” Chief Suhr explained at a Town Hall meeting, “when the suspect charged at the officers with a knife raised over head.”

At that meeting, Suhr showed the audience a picture of the knife Perez Lopez was holding.

The police call came in as someone running on the street with a knife, possibly trying to steal a bicycle.

The family’s attorney admits the young man did have the knife but that the weapon was seen and heard falling to the pavement before he was shot.

He acknowledges Perez Lopez had brandished the knife, moments before, during an altercation with an acquaintance. That man was on a bicycle and the feud had to do with Perez Lopez getting into his own apartment.

“That man told us that even he himself was shocked that they shot Amilcar Perez Lopez,” insisted Casillas. “The official version is a lie, people lie, but physical evidence doesn’t lie.”

By Friday evening, the lawsuit had not been received at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, but a spokesman said the conclusions of the original investigation were solid.

“Right now those allegations don’t square with the evidence as we know it,” Matt Dorsey told KTVU, “and based on the eyewitness accounts and the evidence we have, this was an appropriate use of force by the police officers.”

From Guatemala, the young man’s parents spoke via Skype during the news conference.

They depended on their son to send some of his earnings back home. “This is the last thing they expected when they sent him to the United States,” declared Casillas.

The independent autopsy was done by a medical examiner in Sonoma County, who confirmed the findings to KTVU.

Protestors ended their march by lying down in front of the police station to simulate death, but they didn’t stay silent for long.

“We’re here to say right now, Chief Suhr you are a liar, a liar,” shouted activist Jonathan Melrod into a bullhorn.

KTVU reached out to the Chief several times Friday for a response to the allegations, but has not received a response.
KTVU –

Four minutes had passed when I spotted a fire truck and several police cars in the distance and stepped into the street to wave them over. “They arrived,” I told the 911 operator. She thanked me and told me to expect an ambulance to follow.

I identified myself as the caller to the half dozen police who poured out of squad cars and stepped back onto the sidewalk in front of Radius restaurant.