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\nIt was a mere two days after the one-year anniversary of Alejandro Nieto\u2019s death at the hands of four San Francisco police officers, and Nieto\u2019s father, Refugio, hadn\u2019t the slightest idea of what to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is a day of surprise for me, I didn\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t know until this morning,\u201d Refugio said on Monday, March 23, as he stood alongside his wife, Elvira, amid the crowd of demonstrators, who were honoring his son\u2019s memory by blocking traffic in front of the Mission Police Station on Valencia Street between 17th and 18th streets. \u201cInstead of feeling sad, it gives me joy to see what the community is doing for Alejandro Nieto.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more than four hours, hundreds of protesters danced and drummed and demonstrated against police brutality, recognizing Nieto and others who have been killed by SFPD.<\/p>\n
The demonstration came more than two months after the SFPD was forced to finally release the names of the four officers who fatally shot Nieto 14 times. Protesters held signs with face-sized portraits of the officers Jason Sawyer (who was actually promoted after the shooting) and Roger Morse, as well as blank faces for officers Richard Schiff and Nathan Chew, whose photos have not yet been released.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a lot of information released,\u201d said Kevine Boggess, director of youth organizing and school discipline campaigns at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. \u201cI think that\u2019s something that is really concerning: the way the police are able to kind of spin and frame things and withhold the names of their officers, but kind of start the trial on the person who they murdered the moment they let off those shots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boggess has firsthand experience; he was 13 when he first had a gun pulled on him by police. He was a black kid attending A. P. Giannini Middle School in the Sunset District when a fight broke out on a Muni bus. After he and his friends began walking to the next stop, a police officer drove up onto the curve on Sunset Boulevard and forced them on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince then, I\u2019ve always had feelings of mistrust and [a] lack of confidence in the police, wondering if they\u2019re there to protect me or to arrest me,\u201d Boggess said. \u201cI think what we want to do is to show police officers at this station and throughout the city that we need them to stand up and to do what\u2019s right and to stop defending other police officers\u2019 [misconduct].\u201d<\/p>\n
The demonstration came at a time when the police department is reeling from the recent revelation in federal court of several homophobic and racially bigoted text messages involving members of the SFPD. Those messages involved Sgt. Ian Furminger\u2014who worked as a plainclothes cop out of the Mission Station before being convicted of corruption charges in February, according to the San Francisco Chronicle\u2014and at least four other officers, who have been identified as Michael Robison, Noel Schwab, Rain Daugherty and Michael Celis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bringing to light exactly what the mentality of SFPD is, something that we\u2019ve always known. But now, it\u2019s starting to be official,\u201d said Oscar Salinas, a friend of Nieto\u2019s. \u201cCops are starting to go to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demonstrators also recognized Amilcar Perez-Lopez, the 21-year-old Guatemalan man who was killed in the Mission on Feb. 26 by plainclothes officers Eric Reboli and Craig Tiffe, for allegedly trying to retrieve his stolen cell phone with a knife.<\/p>\n
Reboli, El Tecolote has learned, was accused in 2004 of beating someone unconscious in an elevator while serving as a bouncer at Harry Denton\u2019s Starlight Lounge in the city\u2019s Sir Francis Drake Hotel.<\/p>\n
SFPD released Reboli and Tiffe\u2019s names nearly a week after the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was [Perez-Lopez] doing?\u201d asked Refugio. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t doing anything wrong. For carrying a knife? They didn\u2019t give him a chance to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust like Alex,\u201d Elvira said.<\/p>\n
The demonstration lasted well beyond its intended length of four hours and 15 minutes, which was to symbolize not only the city\u2019s area code, but the police code for \u201cdisturbance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For more than four hours, hundreds of protesters danced and drummed and demonstrated against police brutality, recognizing Nieto and others who have been killed by SFPD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":25999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3006,3086,4245,4631,346],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alejandro-nieto","tag-alex-nieto","tag-amilcar-perez-lopez","tag-coleman-advocates-for-children-and-youth","tag-sfpd","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n