The Amilcar Perez Lopez shooting took on a new twist this week as police-reform advocates called for the officers involved in the shooting to be disciplined for failing to notify the district attorney of the incident and for ordering the body removed before the DA’s Office could arrive on the scene.
Activists have already called for criminal charges against the cops who shot Perez Lopez in the back, and DA George Gascon is investigating the case.
But Father Richard Smith, an Episcopal priest and pastor of St. John the Evangelist in the Mission, told me that Gascon has complained that the cops undermined his investigation by failing to follow proper procedures after the shooting.
Under long-established rules in San Francisco, the DA’s office is supposed to be called immediately when there’s an officer-involved shooting. That’s because the DA has to investigate any homicide, including one perpetrated by police officers.
An investigator from the DA’s Office is supposed to be present before a crime scene is closed.
But in this case, police officers did their own investigation, called the coroner to pick up the body, and closed the scene before the DA was formally notified.
At a protest outside the Police Commission Wednesday, while the SFPD was trying to avoid shooting yet another person of color, Mission Local reports that Smith and other community and faith leaders accused the cops of tampering with the scene.
The groups “were informed of the tampering on June 2 by District Attorney George Gascon [who said] SFPD serious broke the required protocol.”
Gascon has been meeting with community activists who want charges filed in the case.
Max Szabo, a spokesperson for Gascon, told me that he couldn’t comment on the case since it’s still under investigation.
There’s already significant evidence that the cops provided inaccurate information after the shooting; in fact, the version of events then-Chief Greg Suhr provided to the public have been directly contradicted by forensic evidence.
Which means either the officers who responded and reported on the case made serious mistakes, or there’s some sort of cover-up.
Either way, Smith says, the Police Commission needs to take action.
Now: It’s possible that the incident commander on the scene forgot to call the DA’s Office, or called the wrong number. It’s possible that the crime-scene problems were all just screw-ups.
Still, messing with a crime scene before all the appropriate procedures are followed is a serious issue, and even if it was a mistake, someone ought to be held accountable.
But in the overall pattern of this shooting, it’s entirely reasonable to believe that the latest problem is more than a coincidence.
And it plays into the much-larger problem at the SFPD: There’s a culture of impunity, and officers who break the rules routinely get away with it.
And people keep dying.
