San Francisco DA won’t charge officers in 3 cases

San Francisco County District Attorney Chesa Boudin has declined to prosecute several police officers involved in three separate use of force incidents, including a fatal shooting that he talked about while he was a candidate running for the office.

The decisions not to charge the officers involved in the shooting death of Jesus Delgado-Duarte in March 2018, the in-custody death of Christopher Kliment in January 2019 and the use of force against Lafayette Reed in September 2019 come on the heels of what Boudin said is believed to be the first homicide prosecution of a police officer in San Francisco history.

Last November, Boudin filed manslaughter and other charges against a former rookie police officer accused of shooting to death an unarmed carjacking suspect through the passenger window of his patrol car in 2017. Boudin said the charges are believed to be the first of their kind filed by a San Francisco DA.

“For too long, we have seen the failures of our legal system to hold police accountable for the violence committed against the members of the public they are entrusted to keep safe,” Boudin said when announcing the charges. “In my administration police officers are not above the law.”

Boudin, a former public defender whose parents were convicted and imprisoned for the murder of two police officers and a security guard when he was a child, pledged during his campaign for district attorney in 2019 to crack down on police misconduct.

During a candidate forum at Mission High School in October 2019, Boudin, who was seeking to replace George Gascón after the former DA had resigned for what later became a successful challenge to unseat Los Angeles County DA Jackie Lacey, was asked if he was prepared to charge officers who shoot civilians, according to the news outlet Mission Local. “Your family gets justice the day I take office,” Boudin reportedly told the family of Jesus Delgado-Duarte in response.

After a police pursuit following reports of an armed robbery in March 2018 in San Francisco’s Mission District, Delgado-Duarte jumped in the trunk of a sedan and refused to exit and show his hands, according to Boudin. After officers fired a beanbag round at him, Delgado-Duarte “produced a handgun in his left hand that had been hidden out of sight, and fired at the line of police behind the Honda,” Boudin said in a news release Friday.

Ten officers fired dozens of shots at Delgado-Duarte that killed him, according to Boudin, who said in a statement Friday explaining his decision not to charge the officers that witness statements, physical and video evidence concluded they each acted in self-defense.

Responding to inquiries about the DA’s pledge to bring justice to Delgado-Duarte’s family, spokeswoman Rachel Marshall said, “The concept of justice is not limited to a certain outcome.”

“It is far more complex than whether a charge gets filed, a conviction secured, or a sentence imposed,” Marshall said. “That is a fundamental framework of the progressive prosecution movement. Justice demands a careful, thoughtful, and truly independent review of a case without a predetermined outcome and guided by the courage to do what is right. The family impacted by this case received exactly that.”

“Any time someone is killed, especially by law enforcement, it is a tremendous tragedy,” Lateef Gray, who leads the DA’s Independent Investigation Bureau, said in a statement. “We know that this finding may cause Mr. Delgado-Duarte’s family pain, but we do hope they understand the scrutiny with which we evaluated this case and that our decision also brings them closure for their painful loss.”

Gray added that while the office’s actions were in compliance with the law, the number of shots they fired “calls for immediate changes to be implemented to ensure that innocent bystanders are not hurt by officer-involved shootings.”

The other two cases Boudin in which declined charges include a man who died from drug intoxication while in police custody, and a man who was involved in a nonlethal physical altercation with police after resisting arrest.

“My office has demonstrated that we carefully examine cases involving officer use-of-force and deaths of persons in police custody and will not only file charges when officers break the law but will also work to quickly exonerate officers who behaved lawfully,” Boudin said in his statement Friday.

Last December, Boudin declined to charge officers who shot and killed two armed civilians in separate incidents in 2020, one of whom was shown by surveillance and body camera footage wielding a knife before charging at two officers near Market Street.