SAN FRANCISCO
D.A. clears 5 police officers in fatal shooting
Victim fired first, reached again for gun, report says

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, April 22, 2005

Cammerin Boyd was shot to death by San Francisco police a...(http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/04/22/BAG1NCD8RN1.DTL&o=0 larger photo)

The San Francisco district attorney's office has cleared police of criminal wrongdoing in the fatal shooting last year of Cammerin Boyd, saying the 29-year-old fired first at officers and appeared to reach for his gun again before he was killed.

Boyd was shot to death May 5 in the Western Addition after a car chase that began when police tried to pull him over on suspicion of attempted kidnapping. The chase ended on Larch Way outside the Plaza East public housing apartments, where an officer shot him to death as he sat on the running board of his rented Chevrolet Blazer SUV.

Initially, police said only that Boyd had fired twice at them during the chase. However, prosecutors with District Attorney Kamala Harris' office said Thursday that based on witness statements and physical evidence, Boyd had fired at least one shot from his SUV at the five officers who confronted him on Larch Way as the chase ended.

Four officers returned fire, but they all missed, prosecutors said. Boyd got out, walked toward the back of the car and at some point had his arms up, prosecutors said.

He then sat on the Blazer's running board on the driver's side and twice reached back for what one of the officers believed to be a gun, the district attorney's investigation found.

The officer fired three shots, hitting Boyd twice. A gun was found in the pocket of the Blazer's driver's side door.

The five officers who confronted Boyd have been identified as William Elieff, Gregory Kane, James O'Malley, Timothy Paine and Steven Stearns. The district attorney's office did not specify which officer fired the fatal shots.

The shooting caused a furor among critics of the Police Department and some residents of the Western Addition apartment complex, who maintained that Boyd had had his hands up before being shot. Boyd's family and their supporters accused the Police Department of conducting a biased investigation.

While pathologists initially could not rule out the possibility that Boyd had his hands up when he was killed, the district attorney's investigation showed that at least one of his hands was down. The conclusion was based on a re-examination of the physical evidence by prosecutors and police.

"We conducted a thorough, extensive and independent criminal investigation,'' said David Pfeifer, head of special operations for the district attorney's office. "We determined that the officers are not criminally liable.''

Boyd, a former football star at San Francisco's George Washington High School, was a double-amputee who lost his legs below the knee when he crashed his mother's Mercedes-Benz in 1993 in Alameda County while being chased by police. The night he was killed, he was wearing his prosthetic legs.

The autopsy report said Boyd had methamphetamine, the drug MDA and marijuana in his system when he died.

Malaika Parker of the group Police Watch said she still had questions about the events leading up to the shooting.

"There's still holes -- it's important for the Police Commission and the (Office of Citizen Complaints) to be able to look into the gaps that there are in the information,'' she said.

Boyd's family has filed a suit against the city and lodged a complaint with the Office of Citizen Complaints.

Police Commissioner Peter Keane, who faulted the Police Department last year for issuing statements that called the shooting justified, said Thursday that he was looking forward to seeing the complete report of the district attorney's investigation.

"We'll all get a chance to see that, and they will be able to be examined by the public, and we'll be able to make determinations as to what did happen, '' Keane said.

E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken [at] sfchronicle.com.

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