Protesters march into San Francisco City Hall over police killing
By Curtis Skinner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dozens of people marched into San Francisco's City Hall on Thursday, protesting the police killing of a black man earlier this month and demanding the firing of the city's police chief, according to local media reports.
The demonstration comes amid unrest across the United States over high-profile police killings of black people from cities like Ferguson, Missouri, to Chicago and Baltimore since mid-2014, and a renewed civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.
The San Francisco demonstrators carried signs and chanted phrases like "Fire Chief Suhr" as they took to City Hall to protest the Dec. 2 shooting death of 26-year-old Mario Woods, according to footage of the event recorded by reporters for several local news outlets and uploaded to Twitter.
Protesters have railed against San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr numerous times over the shooting, which was captured on camera by bystanders and described as unnecessary by the city's Public Defender.
Suhr responded to the shooting by saying Woods, who was a suspect in a stabbing, was a threat to officers. He has called for equipping his police force with Tasers to prevent similar shootings in the future.
Protesters disagreed with that assessment on Thursday, however, according to the video footage. One man can be heard saying: "Tasers were not the answer. Tasers are not the answer."
San Francisco police said officers encountered Woods while investigating reports that someone matching his description had stabbed someone in the shoulder.
Police said they first tried using pepper spray and firing bean bag rounds at Woods, who they said was holding a knife and refused orders to drop it.
Video of the shooting showed one of about a dozen officers in a phalanx move directly in front of Woods, who was attempting to walk away. Officers opened fire, killing him in a hail of gunfire.
Police said in a statement that he was a danger to others and that "officers could not allow him room to harm anyone else."
Woods' family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city earlier this month.
Elsewhere in the country on Thursday, several hundred protesters against police violence marched in Chicago, calling for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down and aiming to disrupt Christmas Eve shopping in an upscale commercial area.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler)
