SAN JOSE — They all looked at the same footage. One side saw a lawful police shooting of a man, holding a blade, closing in on an officer. The other saw an execution of a man, holding a tool, just trying to walk away.
In what is believed to be Santa Clara County’s first instance where video from an officer-worn body camera figured prominently in the investigation of a police shooting, the District Attorney’s Office on Friday cleared two San Jose State officers in the Feb. 21, 2014 death of 38-year-old Antonio Guzman Lopez just off the campus’s southern edge.
“The findings speak for themselves,” read a statement from the university released Friday. “A pending civil lawsuit limits our ability to comment further at this time. But we will continue to keep all individuals affected by this incident in our thoughts.”
If this case is any indication, many will have to temper the idea that the cameras — gaining unprecedented traction in the wake of high-profile shootings across the country — will swiftly establish consensus about controversial police encounters.
Lopez’s family, including his partner Laurie Valdez and their daughter and 5-year-old son, voiced disappointment in the lack of charges. They have filed a federal suit against university police, and are calling for more investigation by the state Department of Justice.
“I know how the system works, how it’s supposed to work,” Valdez said. “I am so devastated. They’re still getting away with it.”
The body camera footage will not be released publicly. The District Attorney’s Office said it does not release evidence in uncharged cases, which is exempt from disclosure in California. A handful of still images from the video were published in its report.
But on Thursday, after prosecutors privately informed Lopez’s family about its decision, allowed a limited viewing for a relative, Valdez’s attorney, local NAACP chapter president the Rev. Jethroe “Jeff” Moore, Asian Law Alliance executive director Richard Konda, the latter two serving as family advocates. The District Attorney’s Office said it made this allowance out of “empathy and respect” for the family.
Valdez said she listened to 911 dispatch audio but did not view the video. Moore and Konda did, and both said they saw no acts or gestures of aggression out of Lopez.
“I did not see Antonio make any aggressive move in the video,” Konda said. “I think charges should be filed in this case.”
Valdez has since become a vocal advocate for increased police transparency in the wake of her partner’s death, starting the “Justice for Josiah” campaign named after her son.
“I have a little bit of peace that Antonio died the way I knew him,” she said. “I don’t want people to remember him the way he’s being portrayed.”
Lopez was shot twice during a confrontation with Sgt. Mike Santos and Officer Frits van der Hoek after someone on campus called 911 to report that someone resembling Lopez was walking through campus, acting erratically “with some sort of knife like stabbing the air and doing a bunch of crazy stuff,” according to a report produced by the District Attorney’s Office.
A detail that was not widely known until Friday’s report was an autopsy finding that Lopez had methamphetamine in his system when he died, which aligns with witness accounts that suspected he might have been under the influence of drugs. Valdez said the inclusion of that finding was tantamount to authorities trying retroactively to justify his killing, and contends that Lopez would not confront officers because of a general fear of police, and chalked up his reported noncompliance to a language barrier.
The two officers spotted Lopez as he walked off campus to the block south of Eighth and San Salvador streets, where they caught up to him on foot. Santos, working off the idea that Lopez was armed, approached with his handgun drawn, according to the report. Lopez, who had briefly dropped to his knees on the sidewalk, stood up and began walking away. Van der Hoek walked past Lopez to get in his path, where the officer saw Lopez was carrying a “big long knife” with a “sharp tip” at waist level.
Van der Hoek, who has nine years on the force, ordered Lopez to “drop to the ground” while Santos told him to “put that on the floor,” referring to the blade that would later be identified as a roughly 12-inch blade resembling a drywall saw. Van der Hoek tried to fire his Taser, but the prongs apparently did not penetrate Lopez’s clothing.
Lopez, now reportedly advanced on van der Hoek, who yelled at his partner Santos to “shoot him, shoot.”
Santos, a 15-year department veteran, told investigators, who were from the San Jose Police Department, that “I thought for sure this guy was about to stab him” before he opened fire. Both of his shots hit Lopez in the back, with one bullet eventually ricocheting into the window of a nearby sorority house. Lopez later died at the hospital.
The District Attorney’s report was accompanied by two supplementary documents. One is a letter from the state Attorney General’s office declaring that there was no conflict of interest in the review stemming from van der Hoek’s previous internship with the District Attorney’s Office and that as a recent law-school graduate is applying for a position with the agency.
The second is a letter from the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, which was asked by Santa Clara County prosecutors to conduct an independent review of the shooting, which affirmed that it was lawful.
Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.
