The System Says: All 59 Police Bullets Were Justified, Every One

4 San Francisco cops cleared in Alex Nieto killing

By Henry K. Lee and Kale Williams, sfgate.com

Friday, February 13, 2015 

March 24, 2014. Nieto was fatally shot by San Francisco police officers Friday evening at Bernal Heights Park. San Francisco police released the names of four officers involved in the shooting on Friday, Jan. 2, 2015, following a court order.

Four San Francisco police officers will not face charges for shooting and killing Alejandro “Alex” Nieto last year in Bernal Heights Park, because Nieto pointed a Taser shock weapon that the officers reasonably mistook for a pistol, the district attorney’s office said Friday.

The officers fired a total of 59 shots, District Attorney George Gascón said in a letter to Police Chief Greg Suhr. Two later-arriving officers opened fire on Nieto after they heard the popping of their colleagues’ gun blasts and believed Nieto was firing back, the letter said.

But Gascón’s report said all four officers had “continued to believe their lives were in danger … until Mr. Nieto’s head and weapon went down.”

The four — Lt. Jason Sawyer and Officers Roger Morse, Richard Schiff and Nathan Chew — had responded to witness reports that Nieto, a 28-year-old Mission resident, had a gun and was acting erratically on March 21.

—————————–

The Broken System: No consequence, no confidence. A response to the non-indictment of Alex Nieto’s killers. 

justice4alexnieto.org, February 13, 2015

The System That Failed Eric Garner and Michael Brown Cannot Be Reformed

 by Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation blog, December 3, 2014

 

That a grand jury decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing 43-year-old Eric Garner the same week that President Obama proposed spending $75 million in federal money to outfit 50,000 police officers across the country with body cameras would seem to be hack Hollywood writing with neatly applied plot points. Garner’s death was caught on video—video that the police were aware was being taken—and it still was not enough to indict anyone, least of all the man responsible for choking Garner to death, for any type of wrongdoing. It’s as if this decision was handed to us at this time in order to get us to say, “Now what?”

Mexico: 176 arrested as student teachers protest English and other curriculum “reforms” in rural areas

Student protest in Mexico turns violent, 176 arrested

By Agence France-Presse, Tuesday, October 16, 2012

MORELIA, Mexico — Mexican students protesting a new curriculum threw homemade explosives, fired rockets and hurled stones at police in a melee that left 176 arrested and 10 police officers injured, officials said.

The protesting students are preparing to become teachers in rural areas, and they are angry because the new curriculum includes English and computer science, which they see as low-priority subjects in poor rural areas of Mexico.

Police used tear gas and rubber bullets against the students in this city in western Michoacan state.

Students protested after talks with state authorities on the disputed curriculum collapsed. They also fought police with sticks and firecrackers.

The students have been holding more than 40 city buses in their possession since October 4, and during Monday’s protest they set fire to 13 of them.

—————————————————

176 Arrested in student protests in Mexico

Latino Fox News, October 16, 2012

A total of 176 people were arrested when police stormed three schools in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, where students were holding 82 commandeered vehicles belonging to foreign businesses, state officials said. The police operation, launched in the pre-dawn hours on Monday, was aimed at recovering the more than 50 buses and delivery trucks seized on Oct. 4 and taken to three normal schools in an area of Michoacan populated by Purepecha Indians.

The schools are located in the cities of Cheran and Arteaga, and the town of Tiripetio. Students set 13 vehicles, including buses, patrol cars and private vehicles, on fire. The students had seized vehicles belonging to Coca-Cola and Sabritas to protest changes to the curriculum at Mexico’s normal schools. Those institutions – once common in both Europe and the Americas – prepare young people for careers in teaching.