I am angry at myself for believing any of the lie put out by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. I knew that my brother didn’t “attack” or “assault” deputies, but because of his mental illness, I believed it was possible that he might have been in crisis and acting erratically. None of that would have justified him being killed, but there isn’t even a reason, at all, that my brother was stopped. My brother’s medical history has nothing at all to do with why he was stopped and killed.

I am angry at myself for believing that District Attorney Wagstaffe was acting as an impartial defender of the public. He had access to this evidence, yet he released a statement that he knew or should have known to be false. If he had not seen any video, he knew it existed, and he should have seen it before releasing a statement that he claimed was factual. If he made the statement in error, it is an egregious, unconscionable error with material impact on due process, and one that an elected servant of the people with his 40+ years of experience in office should not ever make.

My brother deserves the same consideration and commitment to justice from District Attorney Wagstaffe that any homicide victim would receive. The fact that the perpetrators were sworn to protect and serve means that they should be held to an even higher standard, that they have violated the public trust. District Attorney Wagstaffe and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department should be eager to demonstrate that the actions of Sergeant David Weidner and Deputies John DeMartini, Alyssa Lorenzatti, Joshua Wang and Bryan Watt do not reflect the standards of San Mateo County or of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s force, by disavowing them unequivocally.

Our family and our community demand justice. Citizens, especially those who are unarmed and who have committed no crime, should not be tortured to death with impunity by those sworn to protect and serve.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe to release the videos that we were shown to my family to the public, exactly as they were shown to us-it has been 45 days since my brother was killed, and Assembly Bill 748 requires that they be released to the public within 45 days.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe to release recordings of any calls made to 911 prior to any deputy contact with my brother, per earlier statements that the sheriffs were responding to him walking in and out of traffic. If they do not exist, we call on the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney Wagstaffe to inform the public and to retract the earlier false statements.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe to update the public on the status of the investigation, and justify the wait for a charging decision.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to remove the appearance of collusion and retract the false statement that was made on October 3, claiming that my brother “immediately assaulted” the deputy, as it has been shown to be false by the police’s own evidence.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe to investigate the deputies’ previous records-of the five deputies, four were transfers to San Mateo County, and the other has not been on the force up to a year. Transfers are correlated with a higher percentage of police misconduct.

--We call on District Attorney Wagstaffe to inform the public of any police misconduct records for any of the five deputies, per Senate Bill 1421. The public deserves to know whether Sergeant David Weidner or Deputies John DeMartini, Alyssa Lorenzatti, Joshua Wang or Bryan Watt had any previous incidents that precipitated their transfers, and which should have been taken into consideration before they were given free reign to kill citizens in San Mateo County.

--We call on the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department to inform the public about taser use policies. San Mateo County Sheriff’s taser policies state:
1. Tasers are not to be used if/when officers also utilize restraint techniques that will impair respiration. 
2. Tasers are not to be used on a fleeing subject, when there are no factors justifying deployment other than the subject is fleeing 
3. Tasers may be used to “overcome active resistance from dangerous, violent, or potentially violent subjects who are lawfully arrested or subject to lawful arrest, or who demonstrate intent to cause immediate harm to individuals other than themselves.”

The video demonstrates a violation of every single one of these policies.

--We call for the immediate sanction of Sergeant David Weidner and Deputies John DeMartini, Alyssa Lorenzatti, Joshua Wang and Bryan Watt to demonstrate that San Mateo County will not tolerate the misuse of tasers by law enforcement. This is the third such death in San Mateo County in only ten months, and District Attorney Wagstaffe cannot continue to give law enforcement a license to kill unarmed citizens.

--We call for the immediate release of the taser records, which will allow us to know how many times my brother was electrocuted, by whom, and for how long.

--We call on San Mateo County to issue an immediate moratorium on the use of tasers, given that my brother was the third unarmed person in 10 months that law enforcement has electrocuted to death in San Mateo County.

--We call on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to refuse to approve any budget requests for the purchase of tasers until it conducts a public/expert review process, beginning in December of this year on the impact of tasers, and institutes an independent review body to determine whether tasers should be carried by law enforcement in San Mateo County at all.

--We call for the creation of a permanent independent police review body, as there are in San Francisco and San Jose counties, to investigate officer-involved killings and use of force. Independence builds trust that the process is fair and unbiased, a trust that this investigation has stolen from my family.

No mother should ever have to watch her child get tortured to death, and especially not by people whose duty is to protect and serve. And no District Attorney, elected by the people to uphold the law and seek justice on behalf of the people, should sanction the extra-judicial torture and killing of unarmed citizens who have committed no crime.