Monday, July 18, 2011

Police in SF murder second man in 2 weeks


On Saturday July 16, at 4:40 pm. a 19 year-old man was shot 6 to 10 times by SFPD, and his lifeless body was left in plain view in a pool of blood. He had originally been detained by officers for not possessing a MUNI transfer pass. Police claim that he was armed and fired at them (while running away) before they murdered him, but it took almost 6 hours for them to produce the alleged handgun.
Another video was posted on youtube that claims to capture footage of the handgun, but it is far from conclusive regarding whether or not the shiny object is in fact a weapon. The person who took the footage doesn't appear interested in the alleged handgun while they are filming the video, so it's hard to know if they knew whether or not it was a gun when they were shooting the video, or if they decided that after hearing the police account and viewing their footage on a bigger screen.
The video does not focus on the alleged weapon, but it does catch a witness on the scene pointing to and picking up a shiny, flat, rectangular object (it looks like a cell phone) that had been lying on the ground several feet from where the alleged gun was allegedly lying. He does not point to any other objects lying on the ground, nor does he appear to be looking at anything else on the ground. The witness disappears off camera after that and is not seen again. Police have claimed that this footage proves that the man picked up the gun and hid it from police for 6 hours.

This killing happened 13 days after the lethal shooting of homeless man Charles Blair Hill on the Civic Center BART platform by BART police.

A press conference has been scheduled for noon by SF Education Not Incarceration, the Idriss Stelley Foundation & the SF Bayview Newspaper. It will take place at the corner of 3rd Street & Oakdale.

Interestingly, the SF Bay View website has been down all morning...