[HPN] ALERT: San Deigo Police "Deadly Force" policy - HEARING Tues 22 Feb Feb

[Tom Boland]

PLEASE CIRCULATE ALERT below & email updates To: "HPN via" <wgcp@earthlink.net>

[San Deigo, CA, USA]

"Mayor Susan Golding has announced a public review of the [San Deigo Police
"deadly force"] policy at a City Hall workshop scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb.
22. Experts and members of the community are expected to give testimony.

"Additional community forums with police officials are to be held Tuesday
at Rosa Parks Elementary School, 4510 Landis St.; Thursday at the Scottish
Rite Center, 1895 Camino del Rio South; Feb. 24 at Smythe Elementary
School, 1880 Smythe Ave.; and March 2 at Southwest High School, 1685
Hollister St. The times for the forums were not set as of yesterday." --
from article below

http://www.uniontrib.com/news/metro/20000212-0010_3m12stick.html
FWD  [California, USA] San Deigo Union-Tribune / February 12, 2000

     POLICE MAY RELEASE VIDEO OF SHOOTING

     HOMELESS MAN'S DEATH CONTINUES TO SPARK PROTESTS

     By Kelly Thornton
     UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

DOWNTOWN -- San Diego police officials yesterday debated whether to make
public a videotape of the shooting of a homeless man by officers in Point
Loma Heights.

"My sense is we're going to release it next week," said police Capt. Ron
Newman.

The tape was recorded from a police helicopter circling above Tuesday's
confrontation in front of a McDonald's restaurant on Midway Drive. It is
said to be of poor quality, in black and white, with a shaky, wandering
picture that is grainy and hard to follow.

"You can't really make a judgment from the tape," a police official said.
"You can't identify people. At times you can hardly tell the man and the
phone booth apart.

"It's pretty clear from the video the guy does run very fast at one of the
officers. I was surprised at how close he came to them, almost collapsing
at their feet."

William Anthony Miller, 42, a longtime San Diegan who had lived on the
streets for the last several years, was shot seven times after police
responded to 911 calls about a man hitting people with a tree branch.
Police said the branch, between 3 and 4 feet long and 1 to 2 inches in
diameter, was sharpened at both ends.

Three officers fired when Miller ignored orders to drop the branch and
charged to within several feet of them, Newman said. Miller died of his
wounds at a hospital about 75 minutes after the 9:30 a.m. incident.

San Diego police Chief David Bejarano, who was attending a conference in
Hawaii at the time of the shooting, returned to San Diego early, but not in
time to attend a community meeting Thursday night.

Bejarano met with his top advisers yesterday to be briefed on the shooting
and the community meeting, during which angry critics denounced police
actions as excessive force.

Police spokesman Bill Robinson said the officers who fired their weapons
have six years, five years and 11 years with the department, respectively.
Their names were not released.

They are assigned to desk duty until the district attorney reviews the
case. The officers have taken the shooting hard, said Capt. Lou Scanlon,
their supervisor.

"They're OK," Scanlon said. "Obviously this is terribly traumatic for
everyone involved. Police officers don't take things like this lightly. It
has a tremendous impact on everyone involved."

About 20 homeless people and activists protested the shooting in front of
the downtown Hall of Justice at noon yesterday.

Among the protesters was Sagon Penn, 38, who was acquitted in the mid-1980s
of fatally shooting a San Diego police officer. In that case, Penn's
attorneys argued the shooting was justified because the officers, who were
white, had used excessive force. Penn is black.

Penn said he attended the rally because he was disturbed by the shooting of
a homeless man.

"It touched the hearts of a lot of people to see a person like that lose
their life unnecessarily," he said.

"I know for a fact I could have disarmed that homeless person without
taking his life. If they want a demonstration, I could tell them how to do
it.  When a police officer loses their life, there's all this mourning. But
when a homeless person gets killed, everyone just goes on with their lives.
It's not like a roach got killed here. That's a human being."

Ron "Doc" Sills, a homeless man who lives in the Mid-City area, was holding
a sign that read: "We the homeless refuse to be counted among the
disappeared ones."

"The war on poverty is not supposed to be a shooting war," Sills said. "I'm
50, and hoping to make it to 51."

Mayor Susan Golding has announced a public review of the policy at a City
Hall workshop scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb. 22. Experts and members of the
community are expected to give testimony.

Additional community forums with police officials are to be held Tuesday at
Rosa Parks Elementary School, 4510 Landis St.; Thursday at the Scottish
Rite Center, 1895 Camino del Rio South; Feb. 24 at Smythe Elementary
School, 1880 Smythe Ave.; and March 2 at Southwest High School, 1685
Hollister St. The times for the forums were not set as of yesterday.

END FORWARD

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