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Her son, Idriss Stelley, 23, had gone to the movies at the Metreon with his girlfriend on June 13, 2001. An honors computer student and volunteer tutor, he had a long history of depression that, among other things, had resulted in his being drummed out of the Navy the year before. Stelley was off his medications when he had a psychotic episode at the theater that day. The girlfriend called Stelley's mom, who told her to call police. Monge-Irizarry, whose work with substance abusers and the homeless over the years made her well-versed in cop vernacular, calmly instructed the girlfriend to tell police that it was a "5150," law enforcement lingo for a mental health situation.
Stelley kissed his girlfriend and asked her to leave the theater. He also stood up and asked the other patrons to leave. By the time cops arrived -- nine of them -- he was there alone. There were no witnesses other than police to what happened next. But what is known is that three of the cops pumped 10 bullets into Stelley. They said that he was swinging a knifelike instrument with a 2-inch blade on the end of a chain and that he lunged at them as they approached him near the back of the theater. The officers later said that they'd used pepper spray, but that Stelley was wearing glasses and it didn't seem to faze him. Two of the cops tried and failed to knock the weapon from his hand with their batons, they said. In all, at least 20 shots were fired -- a deadly hail that also left one officer wounded in the leg and buttocks.
"Someone called for mental health, and they sent in the cavalry," says Andy Schwartz, the attorney who represented the Stelley family in a lawsuit against the Police Department. After cremating her son, Monge-Irizarry filed a complaint with the OCC. To this day, she doesn't know if any misconduct charges were sustained. If they were, they never made it past the department brass. In fact, it was only after much public kicking and screaming that the SFPD agreed, two months after the tragedy, to release the names of the officers who were present at the theater that night.
Not surprisingly, no one in an official capacity has ever hinted that police may have overreacted when they blew away a mentally distressed student on a date during a screening of the movie Swordfish. But in textbook fashion for San Francisco, the Police Commission in June of this year quietly put the matter to rest. Meeting behind closed doors, the commissioners approved a $500,000 settlement with Stelley's family in which the cops acknowledged no wrongdoing. Monge-Irizarry used some of the money to set up the Idriss Stelley Foundation, which provides services to families of those who have been disabled or killed by police. But she hardly calls the outcome justice. "The Police Commission and the OCC are set up to go through the motions," she says. "Does anyone in power really want to hold the police responsible? I don't think so."
The commission's use of taxpayer money as a substitute for police responsibility is a familiar scenario. The panel did so in 2000 in the case of 17-year-old Sheila Detoy. She was shot and killed by police in 1998 while a passenger in a car leaving the Oakwood Apartments in Bayview-Hunters Point. The police had staked out the apartment complex hoping to arrest one of two men in the car with Detoy who was wanted on drug charges. When the suspect prepared to leave the complex, police blocked one end of a horseshoe driveway with a van. Officers said that the driver, Michael Negron, 22, who was not the target of the stakeout, put the car in reverse and sped backward down the other end of the driveway toward two cops, and that one of them, Gregory Breslin, fearing he was about to be hit, fired at the car. His bullet struck Detoy in the head, police said.
But a month later, a witness came forward to challenge the official account, saying that she saw the car Detoy was riding in drive forward, not backward, down the driveway and that Breslin and another officer who fired at the car were never in danger of being hit. The family sued, and in 2000 U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Detoy's case was strong enough to go to trial. "A reasonable jury could find that Breslin was not merely reckless, but rather acted with an intent to injure unjustified by legitimate government interest," the judge wrote.
An SFPD internal probe and one by the DA's Office cleared Breslin of wrongdoing. He was later promoted to sergeant and transferred to a security detail at SFO. And true to form, the Police Commission in November 2000 quietly approved a $505,000 legal settlement with Detoy's mother. As part of the deal, there was no admission of police wrongdoing. "No one can credibly say that the officers acted reasonably," says attorney Kaldoun Baghdadi, who represented Detoy's mother. "If I'm wrong, why did the city pay out half a million dollars?"
But unlike some other high-profile cases, the door has remained tenuously ajar in the Detoy matter in a way that demonstrates how impotent the city's oversight of the cops has become. Almost forgotten in the aftermath of the Detoy settlement is the fact that five years ago the OCC also sustained allegations of unnecessary force and conduct discrediting the department against Breslin in the Detoy case. In circling the wagons to protect his officer, former Police Chief Fred Lau essentially vetoed the agency's findings by ignoring them. Only in this case, the OCC, shortly before Lau left as chief in 2001, did something it rarely does. It went over the chief's head to the Police Commission, requesting that the panel pressure Lau to follow through in disciplining the officer. Then the commission did something equally unusual. It instructed Lau to file misconduct charges.
