The morning after a rally at San Francsico's Hall of Justice demanding more transparency from the San Francisco Police Department after officers shot and killed a Mission District resident in 2015, the city's police department shot a man who they say attempted to grab one of their batons.
According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Giselle Talkoff, officers were called to a home on the 500 block of Capitol Avenue, which is between Lobos and Minerva Streets, at 3:51 a.m. Friday on reports of a restraining order violation.
The Chron report that "one resident called 911 to report that a neighbor they were involved in an ongoing conflict with was banging on a wall."
One of the men involved in the dispute "became physical" with the two officers dispatched to the scene, Talkoff says. Officers sprayed him with pepper spray when, the Chron reports, the man attempted to grab one of the officer's batons.
"Pepper spray was deployed, the officer’s baton was taken and shots were fired,” Talkoff says.
The man fled into a residence, and refused to come out. While inside the home, he called 911 to report that he had been shot. Eventually, tactical officers stormed the residence and took the man into custody.
Two officers were injured during the incident, Talkoff says. One sustained a head injury in the struggle, and it's unclear how the second officer was hurt. Both were transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of their injuries. The barricaded man, who KRON 4 says had been shot in the leg, was also taken to the hospital. None of their injuries are considered life-threatening, Talkoff says.
@SFPD Suspect and both #SFPD officers were transported to the hospital to be treated for their non-life threatening injuries. Avoid area.
— San Francisco Police (@SFPD) January 6, 2017
The shooting follows a Thursday evening in which 200 police chiefs and law enforcement professionals gathered at the University of San Francisco "to talk about police accountability and use of force issues," ABC 7 reports.
At the meeting, interim SFPD Chief Toney Chaplin sang the praises of body worn cameras, saying that they are "an accountability piece but it's also a piece for the officers who are falsely accused of things they didn't do."
A call by SFist to SFPD to determine of the officers in Friday morning's shooting were wearing body cameras was not returned as of publication time.
Also on Thursday, Public Defender Jeff Adachi rallied at the Hall of Justice for charges to be filed against officers in police shootings like that of Amilcar Perez Lopez, a 21-year old Mission District resident who was shot and killed by police on Feb. 29, 2015.
“We’ve been promised accountability by the District Attorney, by the Police Commission and so many others, yet we have failed to see that materialize,” Mission Local quotes Adachi as saying in their report from the rally.
As with previous shootings by the SFPD, this morning's is under investigation by San Francisco police homicide and internal affairs investigators as well as the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.