District Attorney Brooke Jenkins will dismiss San Francisco’s last police shooting case, filed by her predecessor and one-time campaign rival Chesa Boudin, for the killing of Sean Moore by Officer Kenneth Cha. It is the third and final police shooting case brought by Boudin only to be dropped by Jenkins.
Kenneth Blackmon, Moore’s brother, said Sunday evening that he was informed by the lead prosecutor on the case, Assistant District Attorney Darby Williams, that the DA’s office would drop the charges against Cha.
“I was sitting at home on Friday, and I get a phone call,” said Blackmon, saying Williams was on the phone asking to speak to him and his mother.
The prosecutor then told him, “‘I just want to inform you that I filed a motion to dismiss the case today.’”
“I was like, ‘What?’” Blackmon said, adding that he felt “angry” about the decision, and quickly ended the call. “I just said, ‘I want to end this conversation right now, because this is totally wack.’”
“I’m very angry, I’m beyond angry,” he added. “I’m in disbelief, to be honest with you.”
Williams did not give Blackmon a reason for the dismissal, except to say that it was related to actions by a “former prosecutor.”
Jenkins, in a statement, said her office could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cha acted unlawfully. She pointed to a draft memo declining to press charges against Cha written by then-District Attorney George Gascón’s office, and said that Moore’s subsequent death “did not change the analysis” by Gascón’s office.
Jenkins said that Gascón “declined to charge this case.” While it is true that Gascón did not file charges, he did not decline to do so in the future: Rather, Gascón explicitly left the decision to his successor, Boudin; the District Attorney’s Office then wrote a letter to a state judge asking for more time to weigh whether to bring a criminal suit.
The memo cited by Jenkins remained an unpublished internal draft, her statement noted.
Boudin brought a homicide suit in 2021. In her statement, Jenkins pointed to Boudin’s election as the only changed circumstance in the case.
“No new evidence has come to light that could change the analysis that was done by multiple attorneys,” the statement read. “The only identifiable change was a change in administration and personnel.”
On Thursday, only one day before the call with Moore’s brother, Assistant District Attorney Williams stood in court and scheduled a preliminary hearing, the first significant movement in the case after months of delays.
Blackmon said he was livid that Williams apparently knew of the pending dismissal but went through the motions of scheduling the hearing anyways. She did not tell Blackmon or the court about any notion of dropping the case on Thursday.
“What was yesterday all about, then?” Blackmon said he asked Williams. “That’s ridiculous, man. What changed?”
Moore, an unarmed Black man, was shot on the front steps of his Oceanside home in 2017 after telling two officers, repeatedly, to leave.
The officers, Colin Patino and Cha, were responding to a noise complaint. In the seconds before the predawn shooting, Patino swung a baton at Moore, twice, and Moore pushed him down the stairs. Cha then fired two shots, striking Moore in the abdomen and leg.
Moore died three years later as a result of his abdominal wound. He was 46.
The homicide charge was the last still-standing criminal case against a San Francisco police officer. No district attorney in modern San Francisco history has successfully held a police officer criminally liable for on-duty use-of-force.
Before Boudin, no city DA had ever charged a police officer with homicide.
In dismissing San Francisco’s two prior police shooting cases, Jenkins has relied heavily on contrasting her approach to that of Boudin’s.
She has written relatively few words analyzing the circumstances of the shootings themselves in her public pronouncements on each case. Instead, she has questioned the decision to file charges against the officers, writing that the Boudin administration prosecuted for “political reasons” or “political gain.”
Legal experts have challenged her reasoning in both prior instances, saying Jenkins’ arguments for dropping those cases do not bear on the material facts of the shootings, nor do they answer whether officers were justified in their actions.
“The pattern suggests that Brooke Jenkins doesn’t have much of an appetite for prosecuting police,” said Professor George Bisharat of the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, speaking before news of Moore’s dismissal.
Bisharat, a former trial attorney, has criticized Jenkins in the past for her dismissal of the charges against the officer who shot fleeing carjacking suspect Keita O’Neil. “It indicates to the police that they don’t have to worry about prosecutions, or at least don’t have to worry as much.”
Added Adante Pointer, a civil rights attorney who led the civil suit on behalf of Moore’s family against San Francisco and won $3.25 million, also speaking earlier: “Essentially, you can misbehave, you can kill people, you can shoot people, it can be on video, and nothing will happen to you. It gives a green light for officers to misbehave.”
Rebecca Young, the Moore family’s lawyer, said she was calling for California Attorney General Rob Bonta to take over prosecution of the Cha case. Bonta considered doing so for O’Neil, but in May declined to prosecute that case.
“This DA’s office is too compromised to do anything regarding prosecuting the police,” Young said.
Blackmon, for his part, said that the family would consider all legal options. He added that his mother, Cleo Moore, who is in poor health, is “at the point that she just wants to go on with her life.”
“It’s hard on her, I know it is,” Blackmon said. “I know one thing, this is definitely a miscarriage of justice.”
It is clear that you based your argument from an emotional perspective and did not support your argument with the rule of law. You may want to read a little about use of force standards. Start with reading AB 392 and penal code 835a. However, I suggest you read it with an unbiased mind.
You can’t judge a shooting from 20/20 hindsight, it is based on the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time. It is analyzed from an objectively reasonable standard not emotional standard like most people do. The individual pushed the officer down the stairs which clearly showed violent tendency. It’s unfortunate that this individual died but the rule of law still applies. If he would have just complied we would not be having this conversation. People need to learn to comply and follow up with complaint request.
Chesa, one again, was trying to prosecute cops for doing their jobs, while simultaneously failing to prosecute real criminals. What were these officers supposed to do with this violent criminal, just walk away? That would have been totally unfair to the neighbor who reported him for violating his restraining order.
It’s disturbing how many media reports characterized this as a “police shooting” of an “unarmed black man”, rather than what it actually was: a police officer defending his partner who was being attacked by Moore.
For sure, walk away on that one. A confrontation in that stairwell chute was a recipe for disaster; there was no proof of any crime and Moore was under no obligation to talk.
The officer who recently shot the man in the Richmond District was confronted in a hallway, which was similar in confinement to the Moore stairwell. When advanced on, he high-tailed it out of there, taking the old man with him. I give him credit for that.
What a ridiculous comment. They were trespassing on his property and provoked an unnecessary physical confrontation. You make it sound like their only options were to walk away without doing anything or to shoot him. There are plenty of other things they could have done, such as talk to him from the sidewalk, which would not have required them to trespass and which would have been less likely to result in a physical confrontation. They could have documented the incident in a police report for the D.A. to follow up with filing charges later. They could have pepper sprayed him. I could go on, but it clearly wouldn’t change your mind so I won’t bother.
Watch the body cam video and decide for yourself if it was a justified shooting.
https://youtu.be/MtK04qf_t60
Neutralize the palm greasers. Do wear mil-grade protective equipment when doing so, considering current impunities.
Brooke Jenkins’ reign of violent terror continues apace when she gives the green light to cop impunity. People are scared, frightened.
Hey Recallers,
Are these the results you thought you would get from subjecting us all to 3 DA elections in 2 years? I seem to remember something about crime going down, fewer folks on the streets, fewer drug overdoses. When can we expect those? Or, did you pick a ludicrous fight backed by a few rich folks that are, basically, openly comptemptuous of your gullible selves?
Boudin’s office tried and failed to win an assault conviction against Ofc. Stangel. This case has even worse facts for the prosecution.
Everyone knows it’s extremely hard to win convictions against cops; prosecutors should still try when a crime was committed and the chance of a conviction is not vanishingly small. Clearly our DA doesn’t have any interest in doing so.
Our DA is in no way qualified and is “City family” picked by our Mayor and compromised. She needs to be added to that corruption diagram.
^ You clearly don’t know how the Justice system works, the ethics required of a prosecutor, the level of prof needed to sustain and case, just to make a few. It’s not just, “throw it up and see how it goes.”
You clearly don’t understand there must be big merits of the evidence for a settlement of 3.25 million to be doled out by the City for this wrongful death. And clearly the many prosecutors who evaluated the evidence, knowing the ludicrously high bar to convict killer cops, would not aim to prosecute if they did not think the evidence was strong enough. Glad you brought up “ethics”, since this DA doesn’t have any.
Criminal vs civil case. The City paid out of a civil case. It’s not uncommon for the City to pay and settle (no guilt admitted) on these types of politically and racially charged cases.
The legal standard is considerably lower in civil cases v criminal cases.
Hard to speak of Jenkins while preaching ethics. Our DA has violated so many basic levels of ethics that she could almost make Clarence Thomas blush.
It’s a shame police officers have so little faith in our justice system and juries of their peers when their job is predicted on it being, well, just. If it was so just a homicide, what did they have to fear from twelve fellow citizens?