The man shot and critically injured by SFPD officers during an altercation at his home last week turns out to have been suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and his mother, a longtime nurse at SF General herself, excoriated officers at a Town Hall meeting in Oceanview Thursday night for what she viewed as the incredibly inhumane treatment of her son. As CBS 5 reports, and as you can see in the footage above, Cleo Moore spoke angrily at the meeting, saying, "He's not an animal," and adding, “If they couldn’t handle the situation, back off, call Crisis Intervention and have them come out and help you."
Police allege that 40-year-old Sean Moore, who is described as a large man, assaulted them following a confrontation over a restraining order filed by his neighbor. The situation began around 4 a.m. last Friday, when the neighbor called police to say that Moore was violating the restraining order by banging on the shared wall between their homes. Police arrived and spoke to Moore, who they say remained behind a locked gate as they spoke to him and presented him with the restraining order paperwork.
Per the Examiner, and officers' accounts at the meeting:
During this discussion, Moore allegedly grabbed the restraining order paperwork from one of the officer’s hands. The officer’s partner deployed pepper spray. In response, Moore kicked an officer in the face, resulting in cuts and bruises.The police retreated down the stairs, at which point Moore came through the gate.
“Officers moved to arrest him, and one officer hit him with a baton,” McEachern said. “Moore punched the officer in face, and advanced on the second officer, who fired his weapon as he was retreating down the steps.”
After being struck by the gunfire, Moore returned to his apartment and called 911.
It was then well over an hour before, at about 5:45 a.m., tactical officers busted down Moore's door and found him bleeding profusely in the home. He was hospitalized with two bullet wounds to his stomach and groin, and damage to his liver and colon, and he remains in critical condition a week later. His family has yet to be allowed to speak to him, and he remains in police custody.
The incident happened on the 500 block of Capitol Avenue, which is between Lobos and Minerva Streets, in Oceanview.
Says Cleo Moore, who spent 40 years as a nurse at SF General, "I don’t believe he deserved to be shot for knocking on the wall in his own home." She does not, however, acknowledge the extenuating circumstances that led to the incident, and the restraining order that was issued on December 23. According to the neighbor who called police, Moore had assaulted the family's adult son in 2011, and had been making threatening remarks to them ever since. And as the Chronicle reported earlier this week, as soon as a previous criminal protective order expired, Moore "began standing on the sidewalk outside their home, saying he was going to kill the 67-year-old family patriarch."
Other community members spoke angrily at the meeting saying that officers should have called for backup and should have expected a person to defend themselves if they were being attacked on their own front porch.
The SF police union has already issued a statement claiming that if Tasers had been available to officers, this incident never would have happened.
Body camera footage from the two responding officers has yet to be released, but will clearly be key in this case.
According to CBS 5, Betty Mackey of The Anti Police-Terror Project attacked police at Thursday's meeting for discharging their weapons in the course of dealing with a mentally ill suspect.
"Maybe you missed the part where one of the officers was kicked in the face?" replied Interim San Francisco Police Chief Toney Chaplin.
And Mackey replied, "I need to see the video, I don’t believe you."
As for dealing with the mentally ill, Chaplin said at the meeting that the city was working to flag addresses in their system indicating the homes of mentally ill citizens, and the department was working to improve their protocol for handling these situations. As the Examiner tells it, he said, "We’ve been working on this for a long time."
Previously: As Police Union Attacks New Use Of Force Policy, Condition Of Man Shot By SFPD Worsens