Not the First Time
Mario Woods was hardly the first man shot by the police in my adopted hometown. In fact, in the last couple of years two such killings happened in my neighborhood.
Alejandro “Alex” Nieto died on Bernal Heights. It’s a hilltop near my house where people go to run, often with their dogs, and take in glorious views of the city that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen used to call “Baghdad by the Bay” to emphasize its exotic character, long before Iraq became part of the Axis of Evil. Alex Nieto, a community college student who made his living working as a security guard, came from the largely Latino and immigrant-populated Mission District.
On the night of March 21, 2014, Nieto sat on a bench on Bernal Heights to eat a burrito before going to work. On his hip was the taser he carried on the job. An anonymous call to 911 reported a man sitting in the park with a gun on his hip and the SFPD responded.
In January 2016, his parents, Refugio and Elvira Nieto, would finally file a wrongful death suit against Chief of Police Greg Suhr, up to 25 as-yet-unidentified police officers, and the city and county of San Francisco. The suit alleges that as their son, having finished his burrito, was “casually” walking down a jogging path towards the park entrance, the police arrived. Two officers took cover behind a patrol car, while several others, carrying what witnesses said looked like rifles, took up positions behind Nieto. One of the officers behind the police car, yelled, “Stop.” Here, in the words of the suit, is what happened next:
Within seconds a quick volley of bullets were fired at Mr. Nieto. No additional orders or any other verbal communication was heard between the first Officer yelling “stop” and the initial volley of gunfire that rang out. Mr. Nieto fell to the ground. After a brief pause of just a second or two, a second barrage of shots were fired. The Officers’ bullets struck Mr. Nieto in his forehead and at least nine other places leaving his body grossly disfigured and mortally wounded.
The police claimed that Nieto pointed his taser at them and they had to kill him. But eyewitnesses say that he never threatened anyone. Instead, as Sergeant Furminger might have expressed it, those police officers evidently decided to “put him down” like a dangerous animal. The SFPD has never even released the names of those involved in Nieto’s death. (In the civil suit, they are referred to as John Doe 1 through 25.) As far as anyone knows, none of them have ever been disciplined in any way. Alex Nieto’s parents continue to tend a little shrine on Bernal Heights where he died.