The San Jose City Council abruptly ended Tuesday’s meeting after an hourlong open forum in which more than 30 people called for “better policing practices” after 20-year-old K’aun Green was shot by San Jose Police earlier last week.
On March 27, San Jose Police shot Green outside La Victoria Taqueria on San Carlos Street near San Jose State, according to an April 1 NBC News article.
Green’s lawyer said he was disarming a gunman during a fight at the restaurant before he was shot, according to the same article.
SJSU students, San Jose community members and Bay Area residents asked for “police accountability.”
“A badge should not shield police officers from accountability,” SJSU alumna Lana Gomez said during public comment. “For the public to truly be able to be safe, we need police accountability.”
Gomez said SJPD should promptly release the full unedited body camera footage in compliance with SB1421, a California law.
SB1421 requires local and state police organizations to release police records publicly that involve incidents of police misconduct, according to the California Legislative Information website.
Currently, SJPD only released one still from the body camera footage in a March 28 Tweet.
Kiana Simmons, president of Human Empowerment, Radical Optimism (HERO) Tent, a local advocacy group, said she believes the still does not show the whole incident.
“[If] the still was released with the full context of the video, the public, the press, everyone who listened to the police chief's message would have seen that, that still was a fraction of a second,” she said in a phone interview. “A fraction of a second is not indicative of the officer deciding to shoot.”
On March 29, Mayor Sam Liccardo released a series of tweets following the incident.
“None of us want to be the person to decide—in a fraction of a second— whether to pull that trigger, but the burden of making that decision falls upon the police officer,” he said in a Tweet.
Community members also expressed discontent with “curated information” regarding the shooting.
“In the press conference, the police did not show the community footage that was there,” Simmons said during the public forum. “But they showed the stills that looked incriminating.”
SJPD Chief Anthony Mata held a media brief on March 29 and showed edited security camera footage from La Victoria Taqueria and one body camera still.
“The officer knew that the individual did not drop it when commands were clearly given to him,” Mata said in the media brief.
Crystal Calhoun, member of the San Jose Unified Equity Coalition, said officers gave Green “only three seconds” to comply and that three seconds is not enough time to make a rational decision.
Following the meeting, Simmons said she was disappointed with the way the council responded to the community forum.
“You can tell via the livestream that they weren't even paying attention,” Simmons said. “They were talking amongst each other, a few city council members got up and walked around.”
Simmons said she felt that once the last speaker finished their comment, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo was “enthusiastic to close the meeting.”
Echoing similar sentiments, Nancy Robles, lead organizer of the Bay Area branch of Party for Socialism and Liberation said she was disappointed with the Tuesday meeting.
Party for Socialism and Liberation is an organization with branches across the country, dedicated to bringing together new generations of revolutionaries alongside veterans with decades of experience, according to their website.
“It was just so bad. No comments were made that kind of like,[validated] how we were feeling. It was just incredibly disrespectful,” she said in a phone call after the meeting.
Robles said she believes councilmembers need to “speak up” and “denounce the shooting as wrong” going forward.
“Liccardo does not hold [police] accountable. And that's why these things keep happening,” she said. “Sam Liccardo, and the rest of the city council, should be calling for the name of the police officer to be released, for them to be fired and for them to be jailed.”
