New video footage of a police chase last month that ended with a scooter rider’s death has led the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office to dispute police accounts of the pursuit.
Police said 56-year-old Edwin Michael Adams was fleeing officers on Oct. 12 when he crashed into a bus shelter at Eighth and Mission streets and suffered severe injuries. A resident of Contra Costa County, Adams died at a hospital.
The public defender’s office, however, pointed to surveillance footage that apparently shows an officer tackling Adams just before the collision with the bus shelter.
“Police chose to pursue Mr. Adams in multiple unmarked vehicles and then violently tackle him from his scooter,” said Zac Dillon, a senior policy analyst with the Public Defender’s Office Integrity team. “SFPD’s public account of this incident was sparse and misleading, omitting the police actions that immediately preceded the collision, which led to Mr. Adams’s death.”
Officers unlawfully chased Adams, used excessive force in tackling him, and the police department was dishonest in its comments about the incident to the public, the Public Defender said in a news release on Thursday.
San Francisco police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim of excessive force or the public defender’s contention that it had omitted information about an officer tackling Adams.
The public defender’s office filed a complaint with the city’s police watchdog agency, the Department of Police Accountability, requesting a full investigation and to discipline against the officers involved.
Police said that Adams had a warrant out for his arrest. The public defender’s office said it was a Sheriff’s Affidavit Warrant for allegedly not properly charging an ankle monitor, and that Adams was on electronic monitoring while facing nonviolent drug charges.