By Megan Cassidy
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — Body-camera footage released by San Francisco Police Tuesday evening shows Officer Terrance Stangel striking a Black man with a baton — including at least once while he was on the ground — in a 2019 incident that has triggered the latest criminal charges against a San Francisco police officer.
The department released the video, along with audio of 911 calls leading up to the incident in which a witness reported a “guy beating up on this girl,” and “dragging her by the neck.” The caller then described a suspect wearing a black and red top, matching the description of Dacari Spiers, whom police confronted in the location of the call a short time later.
During the altercation, Spiers was heard yelling that he didn’t do anything while his girlfriend repeatedly screamed “No!”
The footage was released one day after District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed battery and assault charges against Stangel, a six-year veteran, saying he beat Dacari Spiers and that his actions were violent and unnecessary.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott on Tuesday suggested that Spiers caused an escalation of the incident that resulted in officers using force.
“While I steadfastly believe that officers should be held accountable when they violate the law, I feel just as strongly that there needs to be a balance in holding individuals accountable when they assault, physically attack, or unlawfully obstruct police officers in their duty to respond to public safety emergencies,” Scott said in a statement.
The incident occurred on Oct. 6, 2019 when Stangel and another officer responded to the 911 domestic violence report at Fisherman’s Wharf.
After a bystander pointed the officers in the direction of the couple, prosecutors said, Stangel’s partner, Cuahtemoc Martinez, ordered Spiers to turn around. He attempted to grab him, and ignored Spiers’ and his girlfriend’s questions about what he had done, prosecutors said.
Stangel clubbed Spiers from behind with his baton, and hit him again after Martinez forced Spiers to the ground, the DA’s office said. Martinez, who did not strike Spiers, was not criminally charged.
Boudin’s office stressed that the officers did not witness Spiers committing a crime, and Spiers was never arrested in the incident. Spiers required surgery in his wrist and leg, and was forced to use a wheelchair during his recovery, prosecutors said.
Stangel’s attorney, Nicole Pifari, denied that her client broke the law.
She said Spiers ignored police commands and grabbed Martinez when Martinez touched his arm. Spiers only intervened, she said, when Martinez and Spiers began “violently grappling with each other.”
Stangel is the third current or former SFPD police officer to be criminally prosecuted by Boudin in a use-of-force case. Boudin, a former public defender, ran on a platform of holding officers accountable for bad behavior, and has made police cases one of the most visible marks of his term.
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The wave of cases — all three announced in the last month — is unusual in the U.S., where prosecutors rarely charge police with crimes for actions in the line of duty. Calls for police accountability have grown louder, fueled in part by this year’s police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
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