Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

San Francisco DA blasts move to end cooperation in police probes

Critics say withdrawing from the deal would be a step backwards for police accountability, but the police union says DA Chesa Boudin's office can’t be trusted to fairly investigate officers.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Facing accusations that his office withheld evidence in the prosecution of a police officer, San Francisco’s progressive district attorney on Thursday blasted the police chief’s decision to stop cooperating with the DA’s office on use-of-force investigations.

“The whole reason for the signing of the [memorandum of understating] to begin with back in 2019 was to provide for our independent investigation of police officers,” San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said at a press conference Thursday. “Walking away from the MOU means abandoning that commitment to justice.”

Boudin was responding to San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott’s announcement Wednesday that he plans to pull out of a pact that makes the SFDA’s office lead investigator for police shootings and use-of-force incidents and requires cooperation between the two agencies.

Scott cited “serious concerns” about recent court testimony by a DA's Office investigator who said she was instructed to remove evidence from an arrest warrant for Terrance Stangel, an officer facing assault charges for beating a Black man suspected of domestic violence in 2019.

The investigator, Magen Hayashi, testified she was told to delete details about her interviews with two witnesses who said they saw the suspect, Dacari Spiers, assaulting a woman. Stangel’s attorney, Nicole Pifari, argued that evidence would have supported her client’s position that Spiers was dangerous and her client's use of force was justified.

In a letter to Boudin Wednesday, Chief Scott said the cooperation pact was supposed to ensure police use-of-force investigations would be conducted “justly, fairly, impartially and in accordance with” the terms of the agreement.

The agreement requires the police department and DA’s office share all information obtained in their investigations.

“It appears that the DA's Office has an ongoing practice of investigations against SFPD officers that includes withholding and concealing information and evidence the SFPD is entitled to have to further ancillary criminal investigations in accordance with the MOU,” Scott wrote.

During the press conference Thursday, Boudin and police accountability advocates recalled a spate of fatal police shootings that occurred in San Francisco in 2015 and 2016 that led to the resignation of former Police Chief Greg Suhr and a voluntary review of SFPD policies and practices by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Terminating the agreement “will take us back to the days when the police beat or killed people, most often Black and brown people, only to investigate themselves and declare that nothing was done wrong,” said Yoel Haile, criminal justice program director for the ACLU of Northern California.

Boudin said the problems Scott identified in his letter occurred before he assumed office in January 2020. The DA also questioned the timing of the decision to end cooperation with his office, just as the first criminal trial against a San Francisco officer for on-duty conduct is getting underway. Opening arguments in the Stangel trial are set to begin Monday.

“It is no coincidence that it is in the middle of that trial that the department chooses to walk away from this MOU that has been working based on allegations that predate my administration,” Boudin said.

The proper remedy for potential violations of the deal is to meet and discuss how to prevent future problems, Boudin said.

“I’ve had that conversation with Chief Scott many times when SFPD had violated the terms of the agreement,” Boudin said.

Under terms of the cooperation pact, both the DA and police chief can terminate the agreement within 15 days after giving notice. Boudin said he plans to meet and confer with Scott about the dispute within the next few days in accordance with the deal's terms.

Boudin, a former public defender who ran on a progressive platform vowing to end mass incarceration and hold police accountable for misconduct, faces a recall election in June organized by opponents who claim his “soft-on-crime” approach has made San Francisco less safe.

In an emailed statement Thursday, the president of San Francisco’s police union, Tony Montoya, said Boudin cannot be trusted to impartially investigate officers.

“Implicit bias against police officers is rampant amongst the cadre of public defenders and criminal defense attorneys that Boudin recruited to his office,” Montoya said.

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju on Thursday urged the city's police commission to intervene and stop Scott from unilaterally withdrawing from the deal.

“Without this MOU in place, the SFPD will go back to policing themselves, which presents a clear conflict of interest that San Franciscans have long rejected by creating oversight bodies and mechanisms to provide transparency," Raju said.

The police department said Scott reached out to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office about “possible options for an alternative MOU moving forward.” Bonta’s office is tasked with investigating fatal police shootings of unarmed people under a 2020 state law, AB 1054.

Also this week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday delayed voting on a proposed $700,000 settlement to resolve a civil rights suit filed by Spiers over the October 2019 incident in which officer Stangel beat him with a baton.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani moved to delay the vote, arguing the board needs more details on the accusations of withheld evidence in the case. Stefani noted that Spiers has been arrested for domestic violence multiple times and that he was convicted in Oakland for “kicking the front teeth out of an unconscious man and continuing to beat the person until the unconscious victim defecated himself."

Stefani also criticized Boudin for describing the 911 call that led to Spiers’ interaction with police as a “Karen call.” The name “Karen” is a slang term used to describe an entitled white woman who engages in acts such as calling police to unjustly target a person of color.

“The women reporting this crime were both Black women who were making sure the victim that night lived another day,” Stefani said. “I’m very concerned about how nonchalantly the underlying domestic violence case is being brushed aside.”

Follow @NicholasIovino
Categories / Criminal, Regional

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...