KQED has obtained and released recordings of SFPD dispatch radio activity surrounding the officer-involved shooting of Bernal resident Alex Nieto on March 21:

The radio chatter started about 7:11 p.m. on March 21. Dispatch relays a call to Ingleside Station police, describing a man “in bright red jacket, 6’1, 200 pounds, black pants, has a gun on his hip.”

Police said after the incident that Nieto never had a gun, but that the caller might have mistaken his hip-holstered Taser for a handgun.

About one minute, 15 seconds later, more information comes over the radio.

“He’s got a gun at his hip and is pacing back and forth on the north side of the park near a chain-link fence.”

Another minute passes and a police officer asks for an update on the call about a person with a gun in Bernal Heights.

“He’s eating chips or sunflower seeds,” dispatch responds, apparently relaying information from the person who called police.

At about 7:17 p.m., an officer spots someone:

“Hey there’s a guy in a red shirt way up the hill walking toward you guys.”

Then another officer responds, “I got a guy right here.”

And 25 seconds later, an officer shouts, “Shots fired! Shots fired!” Another two officers also tell dispatch that shots have been fired, and one announces an emergency “code 33.”

More police officers radio that they are responding to an incident that quickly changed from a code 221 (person with gun) to 217 (shooting).

Police closed off the north side of Bernal Heights Park and cleared the way for an ambulance. They also transport two witnesses, one who they refer to as the “original 909″ (code for a citizen requesting interview) to Ingleside Station and begin canvassing the park for other people who may have seen the shooting. Police are repeatedly requested to switch to a different radio channel to discuss the shooting, so this audio may not include all of the chatter about the incident.

Audio files of the scanner activity are available for listening at KQED.

Bernal resident Alex Nieto was killed on Bernal Hill following an officer-involved shooting on March 21. Yesterday, attorney John Burris filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nieto’s family seeking to compel the City to provide additional information about the circumstances surrounding his death. The SF Examiner reports:

Alejandro Nieto, 28, a San Francisco resident, was killed in Bernal Heights Park after being asked to show his hands but instead drawing a stun gun that was mistaken for a real gun, according to police.

On the steps of City Hall on Monday, about 30 people held a banner asking for justice as a lawyer for the family announced the claim filing with the City Attorney’s Office and called on outside agencies to investigate the incident.

“The version of the story that the police have trotted out, we have concerns and frankly skepticism,” said Adante Pointer, one of the family’s attorneys.

The City has 45 days to respond to the claim, after which the Nieto family can sue for what it says was an unjustified killing.

However, well-known civil-rights attorney John Burris, whose firm is representing the Nietos, said any questions about the incident will never be answered under the current system, therefore the family must sue to find out what really happened.

That system of police oversight, from the Office of Citizen Complaints to the District Attorney’s Office, rarely finds police in the wrong, Burris said. Yet at least three recent incidents — a federal indictment of six officers for allegedly violating constitutional rights, a police-involved shooting that ended with a wounded officer and Nieto’s death — show they do in fact mess up and even break the laws, he said.

“It’s always justified,” said Burris of the findings of most investigations into police shootings.

Some of the questions that remain unanswered include how many times Nieto was shot, the names of the officers involved, and why police questioned the Nieto family and searched their home before informing them of Alejandro Nieto’s death.

Alex Nieto’s friends and family have created a website for him at justice4alexnieto.org. In addition, they plan to hold monthly Burritos on Bernal tribute walks on the 21st of each month, starting this Monday, April 21 at 5 pm. The walks will begin in Precita Park, and proceed up to Bernal Hill.

PHOTO: Nieto’s father (wearing 49ers cap) and John Burris (at microphone) yesterday at City Hall. Photo by Steve Rhodes

 

Check out this insanely wonderful selfie drone video created by FOBernalwood Amit Gupta.

PRO TIP: Go full screen!!!

Wow.

Hat Tip: Vic Wong

Neighbor Laurie Wigham should need no interaction to in-the-know Bernalwood readers, because her terrific watercolors of scenes around Bernal Hill have brought a lot of smiles to our faces. Now some of  Neighbor Laurie’s watercolor are on display in the Bernal Heights Library.

I finally got through the Spring Break college tours and had a chance to put up those watercolors in the library. There wasn’t room for nearly as many as I would have liked to show, but you will recognize some of them.

Indeed we do!  For example:

The show is part of the ongoing series of displays in the library foyer by members of the Russellers watercolor group. Neighbor Laurie adds that the group is “open to all, and meets every other Friday downstairs in the library.”

A strange and upsetting story unfolded yesterday afternoon at the Taoist Safeway on Mission Street. A woman was found dead in her car in the Safeway parking lot.

Neighbor Valerie was on the scene, and she says foul play does not appear to have been a factor:

I went to Safeway around 1 pm. I was driving in. and there were a ton of SFPD and SFFD cars/trucks that had just pulled into the parking lot. They went over to an older minivan that was parked on the right side (next to the taqueria), and the paramedics appeared to be attending to someone.

When I was checking out, I could see that there were still several cops/cars hanging out near the van, but all the fire department trucks and the ambulance were gone.

I asked the cashier what was going on. She said someone had died in their car. Apparently the woman was known to the Safeway staff; she went in often to eat samples and then would go into her van to sleep for a few hours. It is possible that the deceased was there for a full day.

Eventually, someone decided to call the cops and found the unfortunate scene. As I was leaving, they had it blocked off with crime scene tape.

PHOTO: Bernal Safeway from Bernal Heights, by Thomas Hawk

Remember that sad house on Bennington Street that was offered for rent in November 2013 for the plutocratic sum of $9999 per month?

Unsurprisingly, no one took the then-landlord up on that offer. So a few weeks later, the home was put on the market. It was purchased by Neighbors Kiren, Caroline, and Jr. Neighbor Ravi, who are upsizing from a smaller home they currently occupy on the west side of Bernal Heights.

Neighbors Kiren, Caroline, and Jr. Neighbor Ravi are very excited about the new place, because, they say, “it has the space to keep us comfortable as our family grows [and] it keeps us in Bernal, which we adore.”

The new homeowners are well-aware of the structure’s, uh, “shortcomings,” and they entered into their purchase with eyes wide-open. Now, to make the tired old house feel more like home, they are preparing to undertake a full renovation, and blogging about it along the way:

Bernal Heights is a “special use district”, which means that it has its own zoning unique within San Francisco. It’s designed specifically to keep houses small – you can’t build over 35 feet high, over 45 feet from the front property line, rear yards must be proportionally larger, adding square footage requires adding extra parking spots, etc. So a major selling point for this house is that it already has good scale – we won’t need to expand it, which is onerous if not impossible in our neighborhood. The house was built in 1900, just before the earthquake. Unlike the Victorians of that era which San Francisco is famous for, this was a working class home, and what little adornment it had has been stripped away over the years. But that’s OK – for our taste, we find many victorians either oerly grand and imposing, or ornate and fussy. The house is built from tight-grained, old-growth lumber that you could only find a century ago. The wood is strong, resists rot, and is beautiful. But that’s about where the charm ends.

This house has been neglected for a long time. It is dark and dingy. The floors are so sloped, cover them with snow and you could go skiing on them. The fixtures are falling apart, there are frayed electrical wires popping up everywhere, water pools in the yard and garage, there’s termite damage in the front, the exterior stairs are crumbling, and the list goes on. The previous owner rented it out to seven people at a time – clumsily splitting the top and bottom floors, and installing an illegal kitchenette without any drainage or ventilation. The home achieved brief neighborhood fame (or infamy?) when the tenants left and the owner tried to rent it for a ludicrous sum (see our neighborhood blog, Why Oh Why Would This House Rent for $9995 a Month? for theories including it sitting on a diamond mine, or else including a vast rocket hanger and orbital launch facility.) Aside from the radically sloped floors, the house is structurally OK, but well outside of modern codes. The floor plan is dark and claustrophobic. No fixtures are worth saving.

But it’s in the neighborhood we love. And now it’s ours. So there’s nothing to do but to take it down to the studs, shore it up, and dream up something new to fill the empty shell.

Your Bernalwood editor read all this with great empathy and no small amount of deja vu, because our house was in a very similar state when we bought it in 2003. It was a mess, it smelled horrific, everything from the foundation to the sheetrock needed to be redone, and by the time we arrived there was no vintage “character” left to preserve. What followed was a top-to-bottom gut-and-remodel that retained just four elements of the original house: Three exterior walls, the wonderful Douglas Fir floors, the roof, and one tiny triangle of moulding on the stairway leading up to the bedrooms.

As proof, I submit as evidence this photo of my home, as it looked at the nadir of our renovation in July 2004, at the very moment when our lead contractor declared that he was withdrawing from the project to divorce his wife and launch a new career in marijuana cultivation:

On the bright side, it all turned out well, eventually, and now our Bernal house is a home we love.

Best of luck to the new homeowners on Bennington!

PHOTOS: Top, via Bernal Renovation blog. Bottom, by Telstar Logistics