A tragic footnote to a high-profile police brutality case whose trial dominated SF headlines during the Chesa Boudin days, as we learn that the victim of a fatal Saturday shooting turns out to be the man who made news for being on the wrong end of an SFPD beatdown in 2019.
We noted over the weekend that there had been a fatal shooting Saturday in the Mission District, where an unnamed man was shot at about 4 am Saturday morning on Weise Street, a small alley between 15th and 16th streets just west of Mission Street. There are currently no suspects, and the unnamed victim was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.
But we now know who that victim was, and his identity is newsworthy. Mission Local reports that the man who was shot dead Saturday morning was Dacari Spiers, who’d previously been in the news for suffering a grievous 2019 police beating in Fisherman’s Wharf that led to a high-profile criminal trial of the police officer in 2022.
Spiers was 36 years old.
He unintentionally ended up in the news after the night of October 6, 2019, when police responded to a domestic violence call allegedly involving Spiers near Fisherman's Wharf. The police response quickly turned violent, and SFPD Officer Terrance Stangel beat the unarmed Spiers repeatedly with a baton, breaking his wrist and leg, and leaving him in the condition seen below.
Spiers was never charged over the incident, and was awarded a $700,000 civil settlement for his injuries. Then-DA Chesa Boudin charged Officer Stangel with assault and battery in late 2020, resulting in what was believed to be the first known excessive-force trial for charges brought against an SFPD officer acting in the line of duty.
The high-profile trial was a big local news story in 2022, as police claimed that Boudin’s office buried evidence that would have proven Spiers’s guilt regarding the domestic violence charge. Spiers and his then-girlfriend both testified that there was no domestic violence. But the jury sided with Officer Stangel, acquitting him of three charges and deadlocking on a fourth charge.
Spiers is reportedly survived by two children, according to Mission Local.
There are no suspects identified and no arrests have been made in Spiers’s killing on Saturday. But according to the Chronicle, "Three sources with knowledge of the investigation said that Spiers was at an illegal gambling operation when he was shot."
Anyone with information on this incident is asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.
Image: Attorneys for Dacari Spiers
