Dueling S.F. Days of Remembrance Show Division Over Police Killings

Friday marks an official day of remembrance for an African-American man killed in a hail of bullets fired by San Francisco police officers late last year. The San Francisco Police Officers Association also held its own remembrance ceremony Friday for public safety officers killed in the line of duty.

The more than 20 gunshots that killed Mario Woods on Dec. 2 as a bus full of bystanders watched, and some recorded, started a shock wave that continues to shudder through the mechanisms of the city that oversee police procedure, the people who comprise those systems and the people who want to see them change.

But the dueling days of remembrance highlight a widening divide between law enforcement and communities, especially those of color, in San Francisco and across the nation. Despite significant shifts in policing philosophy and training, video recordings of potentially criminal police killings continue to surface, and law enforcement officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have been killed this month in what some see as retaliatory attacks.

As Mario Woods Remembrance Day and the POA's day of remembrance approached, KQED spoke with two black men from very different sides of the issue of violence by and against police.

Shante Williams is a veteran SFPD officer who was among more than a dozen officers surrounding Mario Woods the day he was shot, but he wasn't among the five officers who shot at Woods. Tyson Amir is a teacher for the San Francisco jail's Five Keys Charter School. He knew and mentored Woods into earning his high school diploma after meeting him in the jail, and he's a member of the Justice for Mario Woods Coalition.

"He had goals and dreams for himself once he came home," Amir said. "When he got out of prison, he completed his high school diploma. That was an agreement that he made with his mother, and so he had reached that. He had recently gotten a license. He had a new job. So he was really taking strides to become the person that he wanted to become, that his mother wanted him to become. I love that. I respect that."

When Amir saw one of multiple videos of the shooting begin to circulate on social media the night of Dec. 2, he immediately recognized Woods.

"I witnessed the death of my student," he said. "That's painful."

That pain is something Officer Shante Williams says he understands.

"I empathize for his family," Williams said. "I'm not a robot; I'm human. There's a life that's gone. There's a mother who's grieving. There are family members that will never have their family member again."

He continued:

"And there are officers who upheld the law to protect those people who were standing behind those officers so they could exercise their First Amendment rights and video record the entire incident. I'm all for that. Those officers put themselves in harm's way, whether people want to look at the entire totality of the circumstances or not."

Williams started his law enforcement career in East Palo Alto before transferring to the SFPD. His former partner, East Palo Alto Officer Richard May, was fatally shot in the line of duty after he approached a group of men fighting on the evening of Jan. 7, 2006.

"To me it's a huge honor to do the job the way that Rich would have wanted it done," Williams said. He had just returned to San Francisco after traveling to a memorial for five Dallas police officers killed in the line of duty when a gunman took aim at officers at a peaceful July 7 protest over the recent, video-recorded deadly police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

Williams said he's glad his union is calling attention to public safety officers killed in the line of duty.

"It stings, and this is just me, the fact that we're honoring someone who committed a crime," he said, "where we've had officers killed in the line of duty within the past 15 years, and there's no day of remembrance."

But to Amir, who has dedicated his career to teaching San Francisco jail inmates, the fact that people may have committed crimes shouldn't dehumanize them. He mentioned depictions of Woods as a "thug," "gangbanger" and "drug dealer."

The city medical examiner found methamphetamine, marijuana and prescription drugs in Woods' system.

"Does that define who you are as a human being?" Amir asked. "Why couldn't he have been a high school graduate? He had just obtained his high school diploma. He was going to be graduating in January. Why can't he be referred to as that? It's easier to demonize, belittle, degenerate someone, especially someone that you're willing to pull a trigger on, than to refer to someone in a way that's humane."

Humanity is a common theme for Amir, and it's why he thinks Mario Woods Remembrance Day is important.

"I see the statement that was made by the Board of Supervisors as a way to try to affirm his humanity, but it's after the fact," Amir said. "We're doing that after this man has already been put in the dirt. But hopefully it's a sign that in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, in California, we're pushing for that. We're trying to see the humanity in people."

He said that was lost in the hail of bullets that killed Woods.

"Don't treat people like beasts, or worse than that," he said. "That's overkill. That's way too much. That's uncalled for. That's not seeing the humanity and dealing with the situation in the way it should have been dealt with. Mario should be here today. He's not."

Both days of remembrance are seen by some from opposing perspectives as an insult.

Retired SFPD officer and former POA president Gary Delagnes called the board's resolution that created the day "a slap in the face" and "without a doubt, the most disgusting, idiotic and pathetic legislation I have ever seen in my 35 years of POA involvement."

SFPD public information officer Carlos Manfredi tweeted Friday about Hayward police Sgt. Scott Lunger, who was killed in the line of duty on July 22, 2015. Manfedi included a hashtag, "TheRealRemembranceDay." As of Friday afternoon, he was the only one who had recently used the phrase.

"We hear about this concept of Blue Lives Matter and people pushing back against these other movements that are trying to hold police officers accountable," Amir said, "but when the offenses happen and we don't see any type of thorough investigation or any consequences to these investigations where people are being punished -- you can't just kill people and then hide behind 'I felt threatened for my life.' "

The five officers who fired at Woods have long since returned to duty, but multiple investigations into the shooting are ongoing.

"When it comes to everyday people, we have to be accountable for the things that we're doing," Amir said. "And when it comes to law enforcement agents, they need to be held accountable as well, and there should not be a double standard."

Both Williams and Amir said there's room for common ground in the national struggle over police violence, and both said those conversations need to happen now.

"We're better than this as humans," Williams said. "We got to take a step back and realize that life is precious."