The Final Call

Financial payback is being sought by civil rights attorney John Burris in a federal lawsuit on behalf of Gwendolyn Woods, the young Black man’s mother.

Atty. Burris told The Final Call his client is a little bewildered by it all. “This is a shocking event. She’s had some losses in her family before, and this is another devastating loss on top of all of that, and so it’s difficult for her.”

Tokens of sympathy and outrage fill an ever growing memorial in San Francisco, CA. Photo: Charlene Muhammad

The stunning shooting Dec. 2 was caught on two cell phone video cameras. What had been seen until Atty. Burris’ press conference Dec. 11 lacked audio and what happened minutes earlier. Police riddled Mr. Woods’ body with bullets while his hands were down and his back against a wall. This apparently contradicted Police Chief Greg Suhr’s claim that his officers acted because Mr. Woods approached them with a knife in his raised hand. At least 21 shots were fired into the young Black man who police said was a suspect in a stabbing and carrying a knife. Police also labeled him a gang member.

According to the San Francisco Police Officers Association, officers Winson Seto, Antonio Santos, Charles August, Nicholas Cuevas and Scott Phillips used non-lethal force “numerous times,” including pepper spray and bean bags, to no avail prior to the fatal shooting. “Crisis Intervention Trained (CIT) officers were present attempting to de-escalate the situation,” said Martin Halloran, president of the association.

A protester displays an image of Mario Woods in San Francisco, CA. Photo: www.facebook.com/KRON4

“I’ve never seen an incident caught on camera, that shows six to 10 officers unloading their clips … This was a public execution by firing squad, and to me that is worse than what we’ve ever seen on camera of police abuse,” said Student Minister Christopher Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco. 

“The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said this was not just murder, he said this was a hate crime. And the level of hatred that you have to have in order to shoot that many times, even a hunter, who is hunting wild game, will not shoot that game more than once or twice. But to shoot this young man carrying allegedly a kitchen knife, speaks to how these officers viewed not just brother Mario Woods … but how you view Black men, and the threat that you perceive from Black men as a challenge to your world and your rule,” he said.

The incident was escalated by law enforcement, he added. Mr. Woods, incoherent, had just been fired on and pepper sprayed, said the Muslim minister.

Students in San Francisco who walked out of school to bring awareness to the issues of police brutality and the recent killing of Mario Woods, the knife-wielding suspect who was fatally shot by San Francisco Police, protest at City Hall in San Francisco, Dec. 11. Attorney John Burris, representing the Woods family, recently announced plans to file legal action.

“The murderers of Mario must be charged with murder. If it’s murder, if it was an execution as the attorney Burris said, then we should be advocating for the executors to be charged with execution,” he said. 

Atty. Burris said there are two aspects of justice, one is that the cops are prosecuted for murder and convicted. 

“The other is whether or not (the family) could be financially made whole, and that’s another form of justice. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a jury trial in cases. There may or may not be that,” Atty. Burris told The Final Call.

“I’ve had cases before where lawsuits haven’t been filed and cases have settled because the conduct is so egregious and outrageous that they don’t want it to come to light,” he said.

“These cases happen every day all over the country, and I’m involved in them a lot, and so I understand that what’s the most important thing is to do what you can for the client, and help them get through the process, because it’s foreign to them,” Atty. Burris continued. 

Memorial in San Francisco, CA. Photos: Charlene Muhammad

During a San Francisco Police Commission meeting, pain and anger was at a boiling point as speakers expressed their outrage.

Six demands were reiterated that could not bring Mr. Woods back, but would be steps toward justice.

“Fire Chief Suhr! B---h!” the first demand rang out from the people in the hallway near the meeting chambers. “No Justice! No Peace!” “Black Lives Matter!” “F the Police! F the Sheriff!” and “Let us in!” they shouted.

Protestors demanded the names of officers who shot Mr. Woods, an independent federal investigation of the shooting and the police department, a public apology for killing Mr. Woods, police payment for his funeral, and for the officers involved to be fired and charged with murder. 

Some raised fists in the air and chanted outside San Francisco Police Commission chambers on the fourth floor of City Hall. Their voices carried downstairs and outside the building, where others continued a rally begun 30 minutes before the meeting opened.

Mayor Edwin Lee offered police body shield protection and training, but activists said too little, too late. A man was been slaughtered, they said.

Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson warned actions taken or not taken by the police chief would be responsible for any civil unrest. “That was an execution! Never in this country have we seen on video how your officers conducted themselves according to doing an arrest,” he said.

“What’s happening right here, is getting ready to spread. I suggest to you to resign. Do something good at least, before we run you out of here,” the activist told Chief Suhr. 

To the commission, he said, “You have a responsibility not to give them tasers.” And to the public, he warned, “We cannot be tricked by what he’s trying to do.”

Memorial notes drape a tree in San Francisco, CA.

“I am clear about what’s happening around here! My nephew was murdered! I understand that family’s pain! I’m full of anger! That family is not only hurting, but they’re angry too!  But most importantly we have a community that’s outraged.  Pay attention,” warned Mr. Johnson, whose nephew Oscar Grant was shot to death by a transit cop New Year’s Day 2009 while laying handcuffed on his stomach.

Hallway demonstrators, unconcerned with a line of officers that formed a weak barricade between them and the chambers, continued their thunderous chants. And a line of speakers to address the commissioners grew and grew.

“We need you to wake up,” said a young Black female activist as some commissioners nodded and yawned during public comments.

“Why do you train your officers to fear Black men?” she asked, turning attention toward Chief Suhr. “Because it’s clearly a racial issue. Here, you have a White man, who waves a knife at you guys, stole your police car, and took you on a high speed chase, but he’s not dead,” she said.

“But you see a man named Mario, who is clearly going through a mental moment, and all he needed was help, and you didn’t even give him help. You killed him. You shot him 25 times.  This is a crime,” she told Chief Suhr.

Rather than protect and serve, the young woman shared seeing police throw crack cocaine out of a window, slam her pregnant sister against a wall, and knee her mom in the back when the woman needed crutches.

It’s ridiculous, she said, that so much funding goes to police while homeless women are reduced to giving birth on the street.

Notice directs Black people to a wall to express their sorrow and outrage over the killing of Mario Woods in San Francisco, CA.

“How do you think I’m supposed to have trust in the police if it’s no transparency?” she asked. 

Blacks have been decimated by gentrification and deaths due to environmental racism by Lennar homebuilders, charged another young, Black activist who said she represented the last three percent of San Francisco’s Black population.

“We are here to demand justice for Mario Woods and charge the city of San Francisco with genocide,” she said. “Mario Woods was a human being, and you sit back there, and you check off boxes, and you just file papers away, and you forget that these people are human beings.”

A Caucasian woman shared how her son showed her the video before she went to bed. “It made me puke! And I fear for my son. I fear for my relatives, and I fear for some of the Black men that live in San Francisco, and it was an execution,” she told commissioners. “Trust me. I have been around the block, and you will not go to heaven,” she said, pointing at Chief Suhr.

“Like the murder of Oscar Grant, Mario Woods was murdered by police performing their duty. They killed him with government bullets. Like Oscar Grant the chief of police and the police union came to the immediate defense of the officers. Like Oscar Grant, Mario’s execution was captured by multiple cell phones and police tapes are under wraps and will likely not be seen before trial,” said Student Minister Keith Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 26B in nearby Oakland

“Like Oscar Grant, Mario has been demonized, criminalized and blamed for his own killing. Like Oscar Grant, the victim has been blamed,” said Keith Muhammad.

The community’s thirst for justice then and now is bringing it together, and law enforcement crimes against their humanity have made the Bay Bridge much shorter, activists said. 

Oakland activists and San Francisco activists said they are uniting in a demand for justice. “We are one people, one movement demanding justice in the execution of Mario Woods,” they said.

As in the Grant case, every elected official must answer for the crime, and State Attorney Kamala Harris must respond to the demand for justice, Min. Keith Muhammad said. 

“The chief has spoken. He did not wait for an investigation to absolve his officers. He chose to speak from a YouTube clip, and defend the act of murder with the authority of a chief … . He made no effort to wait for clarity; the blue blood in his veins seemed stronger than the red that Mario bled. He must resign or be fired for justice,” he said.

“To go from non-lethal to lethal is called restraint?” asked Min. Christopher Muhammad. “You don’t go from firing a few bean bags to then firing 40 shots on a man that’s carrying a kitchen knife! You wait him out.” 

Use the same interventions and strategies deployed when White people accused of worse crimes than Mr. Woods are accused, the Nation of Islam student minister said.

“A settlement and a lawsuit is fine, but the thing that will settle the heart of the breast of the mother, whose heart grieves over the loss of her son, over the murder of her son, is getting justice for Mario, and we’ve got to know what justice looks like,” he said.

Quiet settlements that brush away horrific crimes and put families under gag orders are unacceptable, he said.

This killing has wounded a community, a city and a country and cannot be undone by a few dollars, Christopher Muhammad argued. Settlements can be stretched out over years with people unable to admit a gag order even exists, he said.

People are now seeing the full video that was never released, not a new video, Min. Muhammad noted. “We’re learning now, the fullness of not only what happened, but then shortly thereafter, the police are trying to cover their actions, because they knew that this was an incident that needed cover, because there’s no justification for what they did.”

The Woods family, their son Mario, and a pained community must have justice and agreements cannot hold police departments blameless, he added.

Multiple shots fired into Blacks by police have captured national headlines: L.A. County sheriff’s deputies fatally shot a man Dec. 12, firing at least a dozen shots, even as the man crawled away on the ground. Deputies said the man had a gun and fired shots in the air and pointed the weapon at them. Police said a handgun was recovered at the scene. Laquan McDonald a Chicago teen was shot 16 times last fall by a police officer who is now charged with murder. One-hundred thirty-seven shots were fired into a vehicle carrying Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in 2012. An officer accused of manslaughter in that case was acquitted earlier this year.

(Nyese Joshua X contributed to this report.)