After eight hours of deliberation, the jury in the wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of Bernal neighbor Alex Nieto decided yesterday that the San Francisco Police officers involved in the March 2014 incident were justified when they shot Nieto on Bernal Hill.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Four San Francisco police officers did not use excessive force in 2014 when they shot and killed a man who allegedly pointed a stun gun at them that they mistook for a pistol, a federal jury found Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the man’s family.
The eight-member jury decided that the officers had not violated the constitutional rights of Alejandro “Alex” Nieto, a 27-year-old City College of San Francisco student and security guard, when they fired multiple shots at him in Bernal Heights Park.
Officers Richard Schiff, Nathan Chew and Roger Morse and Lt. Jason Sawyer fired at least 48 shots after they said Nieto pointed what they believed was a handgun at them, but which later turned out to be a Taser stun gun.
The legal team representing the Nieto family relied heavily upon testimony from their star witness, Antonio Theodore, to undermine the narrative provided by the officers involved in the incident. But in the end, Theodore’s testimony was itself undermined by inconsistencies and concerns about his reliability, as MissionLocal explained:
Much of the plaintiff’s case rested on the testimony of one man, Antonio Theodore, who said he saw Nieto with his hands in his pockets during the shooting. He was the only known non-police eyewitness to the shooting, and also testified that the shooting occurred dozens of yards from where police testimony — and physical evidence — indicates it did.
Theodore’s testimony was corroborated by the physical evidence, Pointer said. The safety on Nieto’s taser was on in photographs after the shooting — which would have prevented it from firing — and a bone fragment was found in Nieto’s jacket pocket.
All of that, [paintiff’s attorney Adante] Pointer argued, backed up Theodore’s claim that officers fired on a man with his hands in his pockets and never drew his taser.
“Alex Nieto was just another notch on the SFPD’s belt,” Pointer said on Thursday.
But under cross-examination from the defense, Theodore admitted that he is an alcoholic with trouble recalling specific details and that he has a mild astigmatism.
Still, even if the trial had the ultimate effect of reinforcing the official narrative of what happened on Bernal Hill during the evening of March 21, 2014, it also highlighted the magnitude of the Nieto family’s loss. Examiner reporter Jonah Owen Lamb described some of that :
Friends of Nieto as well as his family lawyers called the verdict one more example of the impunity police have when they use violence against people of color.
“SFPD can shoot 59 bullets and get away with it,” said Oscar Salinas, one of a handful of angry Nieto supporters outside the courthouse Thursday.
Adante Pointer, who led the team of lawyers for the Nieto family, said in a comment to the San Francisco Examiner that this is a “sad day for the Nietos, [and a] worse day for San Francisco.”
After the verdict he said that this is just one of several cases in which the San Francisco police have allegedly used excessive force.
“This is not the only case I think they have killed someone unlawfully,” he said. “SFPD is on the map.”
Ely Flores, a friend of Nieto, said he was angry, nervous and sad when he heard the verdict. But he said the trial was also a kind of vindication. Telling his late friend’s story in court was a victory in itself. Now, he said, it’s up to the public to decide on whether it was right or not.
In a blog post called “A Letter to Privileged People” published in the early hours of this morning, activist Ben Bac Sierra captured the sentiment of Nieto’s surviving family and friends:
The jury decided against Alex Nieto and for the San Francisco Police Officers.
We, the people, did not lose.
Education lost: your fairy tale books about the way intelligence works were proven to be a farce. We argued better than you, with stronger evidence and more compelling logic. Does the stupidity of the verdict answer to you why we refuse to value your schools and teachers and puppet administrators?
We, the people, did not lose.
Your justice system lost: your sham is simply a tool to make-believe everything is fair and just and that we should accept your verdict like good players in a fixed game, where the odds are totally stacked against us.
We, the people, did not lose.
Your morality lost: you, with your white smile and perfect teeth, you were proven to be cowards who could not stand up for the right principle, for a real human being who was unlawfully killed. You feared going back to your villas in Clayton and Danville and telling your friends and family that you voted for a brown person and not the white, clean-cut poster officers.
We, the people, did not lose.
Your United States of America Constitution lost. It lost. You lost. Your lie of equality and freedom lost.
And it is only your naked conscience now that remains, your own personal empty humanity, stripped of predilections, fantasies, and superior justifications. Now, standing there exposed in your own soul, how will you respond?
If you are offended, it is not my fault. You made up the rules.
If you are challenged, it is your chance to do right and spread the news. Fight your father, your uncle, your sister, your privileged community.
We, the people, did not lose, for we continue with the truth, la pura neta: not forward, but upward, we march, we fly.
Bernalwood 