The face of a young Latino man — goateed, sleepy-eyed, wearing a Giants baseball cap and starchy polo shirt — wallpapers the bus stop at Mission Street and Brazil Avenue in San Francisco's Excelsior District. "Justice for Alex Nieto," the poster says. "Brown lives matter." Beside it is a similar illustration with another familiar face — a little rounder, a little more brooding, bereft of the tasseled graduation cap that appeared, over and over again, in so many newspaper articles: "Justice for Michael Brown: Black lives matter."
Perhaps it's little surprise that the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., conferred new significance on other cop killings that have occurred throughout the country, or that it ennobled the other victims. Within days of the uprising in Ferguson, Alejandro Nieto's family had filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco and its police department. They alleged that officials concealed important details about the incident (including the names of officers involved), then tried to justify their actions by besmirching Nieto's character.
Those charges, compounded with the recent protests in Ferguson, sparked an uproar. Protesters marched along Mission Street demanding justice for Nieto; fliers went up in bus stops. The ones juxtaposing Nieto and Brown were accompanied by another with 14 faces — all shooting victims who'd become civil rights martyrs — and the slogan "Frisco 2 Ferguson."
The message seemed clear: These cities might have different governments, different populations, and different police departments, but really, it's all one attack.
Yet the Nieto suit also revived a thorny discussion about how to document officer-involved shootings in San Francisco. Back in April, Supervisor John Avalos called for a hearing to assess the cost of body-mounted police cameras, which, he says, would have cleared up the murky details surrounding 28-year-old Nieto's death. Police shot him on a Friday evening in March, after receiving reports of a man waving a gun and acting eratically at Bernal Heights Park. The officers say they acted in self-defense when Nieto drew his weapon, which turned out to be a Taser. Yet the Nieto family's attorney, John Burris, says he's found evidence disputing that version of events. Because there are no recordings of the shooting, there's no incontrovertible recap of what happened.
Public defender Jeff Adachi, who emerged as a body camera stalwart in recent weeks, says video technology could have easily pre-empted the Nieto shooting. "Officers are more circumspect about their actions when they have a camera on them," he says, adding that cameras also reduce the number of citizen complaints against police forces, and sometimes absolve an officer of false charges.
Last week, Oakland police used body camera footage to fend off the bad press they had gotten for accidentally detaining an off-duty Oakland firefighter. "This incident captured on PDRD [Personal Digital Recording Devices] illustrates our commitment to transparency and the value of body worn cameras," department spokeswoman Johnna Watson wrote in a press release. She said that the officers had acted within policy.
Yet, despite the apparent benefits to cops — and to cities, which could see a reduction in lawsuits if fewer complaints are filed — San Francisco has been slow to adopt the technology. When Avalos floated his proposal in April, Police Chief Greg Suhr pointed out that the devices might be prohibitively expensive. The cost of storing camera data and sorting through it, in response to Sunshine Act requests, might exceed the amount saved from reduced lawsuits, Suhr said.
On Friday, SFPD Deputy Chief Sharon Ferrigno announced that the department had received a $250,000 Department of Justice grant for a body camera pilot program, and that it currently has a contract to purchase the devices. Department brass will re-evaluate their efficacy at the end of the program, Ferrigno says, since they still pose a significant long-term cost.
Avalos says he's also heard concerns from civil libertarians, who stressed the need to set strong protocols to prevent cops from switching the cameras off at will. Some argued also that cameras haven't been the solution to police brutality they were once purported to be.
"There was ... a lot of concern that there are many incidents of body-mounted cameras capturing police doing some pretty brutal acts, without any accountability," Avalos says. Some skeptics argue that they're not an effective deterrent. Others insist they're just one more iteration of Big Brother-style law enforcement, and that they violate both the officers' and the defendants' right to privacy.
Adachi is still resolute. Cost is doable, he says. So is camera policy: He points to the police department in Duluth, Minn., which equips all of its patrol cars with mobile video recording systems. Officers are required to activate them whenever they have a traffic stop, a priority response, a vehicle pursuit, an arrest, a vehicle search, a use of force, a physical confrontation, or a statement from a suspect or witness. That, Adachi says, should be sufficient to build trust in the police.
With so many other Bay Area cities — including Oakland, Union City, Los Gatos, and Vallejo — using personal recording devices, San Francisco seems to have fallen behind the curve. That's an awkward position for a city that prides itself on being progressive and tech-savvy. And it doesn't bode well for people like Alejandro Nieto, whose face might remain a symbol, but whose death might remain a mystery.
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