https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADr7I8m0HNA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADr7I8m0HNA)
Tempers Flare as Protesters Confront San Francisco Police Officials Over the Brutal Shooting Death of Mario WoodsDecember 10, 2015 | Posted by
Jason Moore (http://atlantablackstar.com/author/jason-moore/)Click here for video (http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/12/10/tempers-flare-protestors-confront-san-francisco-police-officials-brutal-shooting-death-mario-woods/)============================
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Mario-Woods-unnecessary-death-6686745.php (http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Mario-Woods-unnecessary-death-6686745.php)
Mario Woods' unnecessary deathBy Franklin E. Zimring
December 9, 2015 Updated: December 11, 2015 1:41pm
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Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle
A member of the xommunity stands near chalk art showing the names of those killed by police at the site where Mario Woods was shot and killed by San Francisco Police to commemorate the young man in the Bayview ... more
The killing of 26-year-old Mario Woods by five San Francisco police officers Dec. 2 was typical of many other such shootings in both its circumstances and likely legal outcome. The target of the shooting had displayed a weapon (a knife) and refused to drop it.
At least five police officers fired at Woods (http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bayview-crowd-calls-for-S-F-police-chief-to-quit-6677273.php)at least 15 times. The police chief almost immediately announced that the killing was justified. This is also the likely outcome from the district attorney under California law. But the killing of Woods also was totally unnecessary to protect San Francisco police from a life-threatening attack or to allow them to disarm this suspect.
The fact that many cops are taught to do exactly what the San Francisco police officers did to Mario Woods means that the number of unnecessary deaths in the United States is measured in the hundreds every year. Sanctioning unnecessary killings by police is common. As many as 400 of the more than 1,000 killings by police each year are not in response to life-threatening assaults. Hundreds more killings involve "shoot to kill" shootings that result in multiple wounds to the victim and are not required to protect officer safety or law enforcement efficiency.
At issue in any fair assessment of the Woods shooting is the degree to which this suspect's knife posed a threat to the lives of police. Here the statistics I and my research team analyzed for a forthcoming book are clear — and surprising. Knives are very dangerous when used in attacks against ordinary citizens (they cause more than 13 percent of all homicides) but not when they become instruments of attack against uniformed police officers. We analyzed every killing of police by assault over six years (2008-13) in the United States: There was a total of two knife deaths (that is, less than 1 percent of total police deaths.)
THE MARIO WOODS KILLINGThere was never any attack with a knife that killed an officer unless he was alone with his attacker, and there was never a fatal attack when the officer and the attacker were any distance apart. Based on these statistics, the death risk to the officers in the Woods encounter was zero.
A 2014 article by an expert in
Police Magazine (http://www.policemag.com/)called the assumptions of knife-assault danger "
speculative dogma (http://www.policemag.com/channel/weapons/articles/2014/09/revisiting-the-21-foot-rule.aspx)that often goes unchallenged and becomes accepted as fact." But police kill as many as 150 people a year because they display knives.
The reason uniformed police are at such minimum risk from every attack weapon (knives, clubs, bats) except guns is tactical training and bulletproof vests. On-duty death rates for uniformed police have dropped by 75 percent over the 39 years since 1976, when Kevlar vests were widely adopted by law enforcement. This huge decline in officer deaths has not produced any equivalent benefits for civilians, where less reliable statistics suggest, at best, a 9 percent decline.
So the first reason why Woods didn't need to die was that five officers could have arrested and disarmed him without firing a single shot. There are a lot of kitchen knives in England and Wales (population 56 million), yet the police have shot to death
only one citizen (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9122250/Police-refuse-to-say-if-shooting-victim-Anthony-Grainger-was-armed.html)from 2012 through 2014. If it is unnecessary to kill in Manchester or Liverpool, then why is it necessary to shoot in the Bayview?
The second reason why Woods didn't need to die: Five police officers fired "at least 15 shots" at him in a very brief time.
There is only one reason this many shots are fired — the police are shooting to kill. Why not pause after the suspect is wounded to reassess the situation?
In police shootings, it turns out, each additional wound increases the chances of death rather substantially. In seven years of Chicago police shooting incidents, the death rate when one wound was inflicted was 21 percent; two wounds, 34 percent; three or four wounds, 56 percent; more than four wounds, 74 percent of all cases. The San Francisco police increased the chances of Woods dying fourfold by continuing to shoot him. Why, Chief Greg Suhr, were the second through 15th shots necessary?
A terrible but factually accurate answer to that question is that shooting to kill is accepted police practice — it's what these police were trained to do. But this overkill response to knife, club and baseball bat attacks has not a shred of statistical support in the study of half-a-million assaults and killings over a decade's time in the
Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted reports (https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/october/in-the-line-of-duty-2014-leoka-report-released/in-the-line-of-duty-2014-leoka-report-released)published by the FBI. The awful truth is that police are taught that fostering the survival of the people they shoot has no value.
Until recently, San Francisco's was a less deadly police department than many other big city forces. In the four years between 2009 and the end of 2012, the city reported a total of
two police killings (http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/murdermap.html), the lowest rate of the 14 biggest cities in the nation. Those days are gone. The officers who opened fire and kept shooting should not be the focus for blame. This is approved police practice in the United States. And that is why unnecessary killings by police are an American epidemic.
Franklin E. Zimring is professor of law at UC Berkeley and author of "When Police Kill," (Harvard University Press, forthcoming). To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com./submissions. (http://www.sfgate.com./submissions.)
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/family-sues-as-video-casts-new-light-on-police-killing-of-mario-woods/ar-AAgijM1?li=BBnb7Kz (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/family-sues-as-video-casts-new-light-on-police-killing-of-mario-woods/ar-AAgijM1?li=BBnb7Kz)
Family sues as video casts new light on police killing of Mario Woods
San Francisco Chronicle (http://sfgate.com/)
By Vivian Ho2 hrs ago
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A new video of the fatal shooting of Mario Woods shows San Francisco police officers fired a barrage of shots at him while he held his arms at his sides, an apparent contradiction to the Police Department's account that he prompted his killing by threatening an officer with a kitchen knife.
The video was released Friday as attorney John Burris, whose is representing Woods' relatives, announced that the family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city in connection with the Dec. 2 killing in the city's Bayview neighborhood.
Burris said at a news conference that the footage disproved Police Chief Greg Suhr's assertions at a Dec. 4 town hall meeting, where he presented a blown-up frame from another civilian video that he said showed Woods' arm outstretched before the first shot was fired, proof that he was pointing his knife at the officer.
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Gwen Woods, mother, left, Monroe Witt, brother, center, and Michael Woods, right, all sitting, are consoled by unidentified individuals while the family's legal counsel displays autopsy photographs of Mario Woods who was shot and killed by SFPD on December 2, during a press conference announcing civil action at Southeast Community College in San Francisco, Calif., Wednesday, December 9, 2015.
"Mario's arms were at his sides," Burris said. "He was not committing a dangerous act. He was not threatening police officers at the time. He was walking slowly. It was the police officer that created confrontation when he jumped in front him."
Woods died shortly after at least five officers fired at him in the Bayview about 4:30 p.m. He was the suspect in a stabbing and was allegedly still armed with the kitchen knife used in the earlier crime.
Suhr said the officers fired at least 15 times, and had no choice but to use lethal force after attempts to disarm Woods with beanbag rounds and pepper spray were unsuccessful.
Burris said attorneys at his office counted 20 bullet wounds on Woods' body, including several in his back and to the back of his head.
Suhr's presentation of the video frame that he said showed Woods with his arm outstretched had met with disbelief and opposition from many in the Bayview community, who have called for his resignation since the deadly confrontation. Burris on Friday called the chief's comments "duplicitious."
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Gwen Woods, mother of Mario Woods, is consoled by an unidentified individual during a press conference announcing civil action in response to the killing of Mario Woods by SFPD on December 2, at Southeast Community College in San Francisco, Calif., Wednesday, December 9, 2015.
"I'm insulted by the chief's comments, that he would make a comment to justify and support the police officers' conduct so quickly when in the video he had, had he looked closer, he would see that the person's hand did not come up until after the officers had shot at him," Burris said.
"I viewed what the chief said as an effort to stop any discussion about it, and to make sure that nobody gives a second, third thought to anything that has taken place," he said. "They want the public to believe that Mario got what he deserves because he started it. This is why the community is outraged."
Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman, said Friday that the chief was not trying to mislead the public, but was making a statement based on what investigators knew at the time.
"What the chief has said thus far has been all based on preliminary statements," he said. "This is still an active and ongoing investigation. Any statement the chief made would be from that standpoint."
Investigators will be following up on the new video, Andraychak said.
Woods' mother, Gwendolyn Woods, cried quietly next to her two other sons during the news conference, averting her eyes as attorneys played the video and displayed photos of Woods' wounds.
"He was the best of me," she said in a brief, emotional statement.
Family spokesman Shawn Richards, founder of Brothers Against Arms, said the family hoped the lawsuit would change the culture of the police force. He referred to Suhr's acknowledgment that one of the officers at the shooting was a trainee, and that Bayview station, which serves a predominantly black neighborhood, is used as a training station.
"We're pushing for new policies," Richards said. "We're pushing for things to be right in this community. This shouldn't be where young black men and women are afraid to walk down the street, not knowing their fate if they will make it home. That is what happened to Mario Woods."
Board of Supervisors President ukkk Breed and Supervisor John Avalos echoed Richards' sentiment in a joint statement.
"The tragedy of Mr. Woods' case is not that police officers acted outside of proper SFPD procedures — an independent investigation will evaluate that," the statement reads. "The tragedy is that police procedures themselves can seem to encourage violence. Now is the time for the San Francisco Police Department to become a model for deescalation. We need mandatory crisis-intervention training for all officers, a renewed emphasis on community policing, more nonlethal options like shields, and a stronger sense that guns are a tool of absolute last resort."
The supervisors also responded to a letter from the police officers' union slamming Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, for calling the officers who shot Woods "an ethnically diverse firing squad."
Union President Martin Halloran had said Cohen's comment "displays little concern for public safety and is more designed to appease certain anti-police groups."
"We support Supervisor Cohen," Breed and Avalos said. "We share her concerns. We feel the anger and sadness of a community that's endured too much violence on our streets."
At his news conference, Burris questioned whether Woods had a knife on him at the time of his death. On the video, it is unclear if he is armed. He also asserted that the officers involved should be indicted.
As of Friday afternoon, the Police Department had not released the names of the officers at the scene, even though Suhr said he would do so by the end of the week.
At the same time that Burris released the new video, hundreds of San Francisco high school and middle school students across the city walked out of class and took to the streets to protest Woods' shooting.
"It's scary," said Pierce Whitney, a 12-year-old seventh grader at San Francisco Community School in the Excelsior district. "It feels like you see it on the news almost every day and it didn't always seem like this. You wonder what's happening to the world."