San Francisco cops fire 65 shots at suspect
San Francisco police released the bodycam footage.
The San Francisco Police Department on Monday night released dramatic body-camera footage of a standoff last week with an armed robbery suspect who appeared to fire a shot toward officers before being struck roughly 25 times in a hail of bullets.
The March 6 video shows officers asking the suspect in a car’s trunk, later identified as Jesus Delgado, to show his hands. The officers continue to address Delgado and eventually speak to him in Spanish.
“Los manos,” one officer is heard yelling. Another police officer tells a translator to tell Delgado that he will get shot if he doesn’t show his hands. As the standoff continued with Delgado, who appeared to be half inside the trunk, one of the officers fired a beanbag in “an effort to gain compliance,” police said.
The video appears to show Delgado fire a weapon in the direction of the 10 officers, who returned fire unloading roughly 99 shots. Authorities performed CPR on the suspect, who later died at the scene.
Police said a 9mm pistol was located in the car’s trunk. Preliminary evidence indicates the weapon was fire one time, according to police.
The driver of the vehicle, Victor Navarro Flores, cooperated with officials and was detained, as well as Christina Juarez Alfaro, police said.
The video drew criticism from some activist who questioned how officers handled the situation and their use of deadly force.
“He aimed at the f-----g floor and they shot 99 bullets at him,” Benjamin Bac Sierra, a City College of San Francisco teacher and activist told the San Francisco Examiner Monday night at a town hall where authorities released the footage. “This is a f-----g circus, to be honest with you.”
The mother of Alfaro, who police said was still in the car when officers sprayed the vehicle with bullets, said her daughter “had no chance” if she got out of the car, according to the paper.
“They knew that my daughter was in there with them [too], they knew because they asked her to put her hands up,” Juarez’ mother said, addressing Police Chief Bill Scott, according to the paper. “They asked her to get out but the car was a two-door car, she had no chance. If she put one of her hands down to open the door, you know you guys would have killed her.”
The names of the 10 officers involved in the shooting are expected to be released in the next 10 days, police said.
The department has been trying to make improvements recommended in a federal review of the agency after 26-year-old Mario Woods, a black man suspected in a stabbing, was killed in a fatal shooting in December 2015, The Associated Press reported.
Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned after cameras caught the incident on video and ignited community uproar.
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