Anyone heartened by news that both an 87,000-square-foot Ikea store and food hall are set to open in San Francisco’s mid-market area should probably lower their expectations, as the San Francisco Business Times reports that the project is delayed again. When the store last reported the schedule for the Livat mall and food hall on Market Street, it looked like at least key tenant Ikea would open by spring, but the mega furniture retailer says the schedule has been pushed back became .

Although no new opening date was given, an Ikea spokesman for the store said they “remain committed to opening” and are “pushing forward vigorously with construction”. Other tenants are rumored to be considering leasing the new mall, including coworking company Industrious and an adult mini-golf course owned by pro golfer Rory McIlroy. Last year, developers said they expect the mall to open in late 2023.

Whether you find this news encouraging or not, it comes against a backdrop of troubles in downtown San Francisco, as several major retailers announce they are pulling out of their flagship locations. Stores like Nordstrom, Anthropologie, H&M, Gap and others have all announced plans to leave downtown in recent months, creating a “doom loop” over San Francisco’s business and shopping districts. It’s a storyline Mayor London Breed is fighting against, and on Tuesday, May 16, she announced a $6 million plan to redevelop three blocks of Powell Street around the cable car turnaround and Union Square at.

Oakland Popeyes is closing after allegations of violence and labor violations

Complaints with Cal/OSHA and the California Labor Commissioner’s office led to the sudden closure of a Popeyes at 7007 International Boulevard in Oakland, as the fast-food chain announced it would investigate allegations of child labor violations and violence at the restaurant. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the complaints describe an unsafe work environment where employees were assaulted by customers and undertrained security guards pepper-sprayed both offending customers and employees.

The two 17-year-old employees who filed the complaints say they worked longer hours than the law allowed, while being forced to forgo breaks and being subjected to sexual harassment at work. Meanwhile, another employee as young as 13 was allegedly allowed to work six days a week at that location, including on school days until midnight, in another violation of the state’s labor laws. “We will not condone any violation of labor laws and if any of these allegations are proven true,” Popeyes said in a statement to the newspaper, “we will take action against that franchisee.”

Indulge in a sweet sugar rush with a tasting menu that focuses on desserts

Those with a sweet tooth will be thrilled to hear that pop-up Bellaria Dessert Studio is opening a cafe with a five-course dessert tasting menu as well as a la carte sweets, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Pastry chef and owner Luis Villavelazquez is helming the show and told the paper he wants to create “a new, dynamic and evolving dessert culture in San Francisco.” The new store at 442 Hyde Street will open in the second week of June.

Favorite place for vegan desserts that stays closed on Sunday

Also in the dessert news is that the Berkeley location of Cinnaholic, the chain known for its vegan cinnamon rolls, is closing permanently on Sunday, May 21. With the store’s lease ending this month, owner Nicole Nuss wrote in an Instagram post, “It’s about time I moved on,” having run the business since 2014.

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The post Downtown San Francisco’s New Ikea Retailer, Market Road Mall, and Meals Corridor Is Delayed Once more appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Sometimes delayed gratification is more meaningful — and two years after the last in-person San Francisco Ballet gala both the delay and the gratification were appropriately grand at “La Grande Fête.”

The gala, which returned at the War Memorial Opera House and City Hall on Thursday, March 24, was originally planned for Jan. 27 but was pushed back due to concerns over the omicron variant surge. The night was Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s final gala before his retirement at the end of the season after 37 years, but it also marked Danielle St. Germain-Gordon’s first as the Ballet’s new executive director, a role she had filled as interim for nine months after the abrupt exit of Kelly Tweeddale. In an amazing comeback for the event, St. Germain-Gordon reported “La Grande Fête” was the highest-earning gala in the ballet’s 89-year history, making more than $3.3 million to benefit artistic and educational programs, including helping to cover housing costs for student dancers.

Elizabeth Dye snaps a photo of her and her friends while attending the San Francisco Ballet 2022 Season Gala at War Memorial Opera House on Thursday, March 24. The gala, originally planned for January, was postponed and rescheduled due to COVID-19. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

In what felt like a return to normal, guests partied mostly unmasked (after providing proof of vaccine and a negative COVID test provided by the Ballet, which instructed attendees to take it within 24 hours of the event). But the company also acknowledged that the world is not entirely as it was in January 2020.

Throughout the evening, there were reminders of the ongoing war in Ukraine, ranging from sartorial tributes like blue and yellow Ukrainian flag ribbons to gowns in the country’s colors. dr Kerstin Rosen even brought a flag emblazoned with the words “I stand with Ukraine” that she unfurled on the steps at City Hall during dinner, while fellow attendee Tanum Davis Bohen completed her blue and gold gown with a headpiece reminiscent of traditional Ukrainian floral crowns.

San Francisco Ballet’s ‘La Grande Fete’ gala marks full return of live dance to the city

dr Kerstin Rosen (center) holds a flag she brought to the gala in support of Ukraine with Alex Semshyn during the San Francisco Ballet 2022 Season Gala at City Hall in San Francisco. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

The program itself included three world premieres, with two by choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Possokhov, who both grew up in the country and still have family there. Board co-chair Robert G. Shaw noted that “Helgi is very close to the choreographers, the dancers and our staff that have ties to Ukraine.” In a moving gesture, Tomasson dedicated the night’s performance to the people of Ukraine, before the orchestra played a rousing rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem as the country’s flag was projected onscreen.

To keep guests on their toes — if not en pointe — the gala flipped its usual format. Following a Champagne reception at the Opera House, guests adjourned to the performance followed by dinner at City Hall. (Even with all that’s going on in the world, including in Washington DC, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made an under-the-radar appearance at the evening’s performance, though she skipped the gala dinner.)

Here are a few more of the evening’s highlights:

San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Sasha De Sola (right) rehearses backstage before the performance portion of the San Francisco Ballet 2022 Season Gala at War Memorial Opera House. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

backstage

Before the curtain rose, dancers warmed up on the stage as they awaited the arrival of Tomasson.

Principal dancer Dores André, who debuted choreographer Myles Thatcher’s “Drum Roll, Please!,” remarked that the night “felt special, privileged” following the pandemic delays. After 19 years at the company, André added she will miss Tomasson because as an artistic director “he cares about different things than other people care about.”

Of note: Earlier in the season, André played the title role in the world premiere of “Mrs. Robinson” (based on “The Graduate”) and brought so much heat to her performance I worried she would set her co-star on fire.

Principal dancer Benjamin Freemantle attends the San Francisco Ballet 2022 Season Gala at City Hall in San Francisco. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

Fashion

The gala’s dress code was officially “festive attire,” and guests spanned classic black tie and gowns to creative athleisure like Smuin Ballet dancer Max Forman-Mullin’s sparkling Barabas track suit. Mary Beth Shimmon opted for a vintage, gold Christian Dior turban that felt appropriately Diaghilev for a ballet gala. Another dance world favorite, poofs of tulle and chiffon, made a massive enough comeback that the stairs at City Hall at times resembled Britex with the amount of fabric trailing behind guests.

Dancer Christopher Ouellette, an alumnus of the famous Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo drag dance company, was one of several guests who opted for gender-blending chic in a tuxedo-gown combination with a painted-on beard.

Mixing formal with fetishwear, choreographer Thatcher chose a shorts suit with a yellow cord harness visible under his jacket.

“A couple of people asked me if it was Dior,” said Thatcher of the harness. “It’s DIY-ior — I made it myself.”

Event planner J. Riccardo Benavides designed the decor, which had the theme of “La Grande Fête,” for the evening at San Francisco City Hall. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

Dinner and décor

The park between the Opera House and Veterans’ Building was outfitted with a gold carpet for arrivals. Amid the Parisian-inspired floral displays by J. Riccardo Benavides in the lobby, René Rodman Diamond received guests and joked that she held the distinction of being “the longest-standing gala chair in San Francisco Ballet history” given that she was originally intended to hold the position at the canceled 2021 in-person gala.

“My (gala) committee of 25 stayed by my side for two years,” Diamond said. “At one point in 2021 we were thinking of doing it outside, then when the (omicron) variant came we decided to go back to City Hall in 2022 when things were safe. It feels like everything came to a head.”

Following the performance, Van Ness between Grove and McAllister was closed (don’t worry, it’s not more construction) to allow guests to cross to City Hall for dinner. Watching the formally attired hordes flood the avenue is always its own moment of choreography.

Event planner J. Riccardo Benavides’ decor featured Parisian-inspired floral displays.. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

Inside City Hall, Benavides’ décor was inspired by one of Tommason’s favorite ballets, “Don Quixote,” and included three fabric-rose-covered panels in homage to a costume worn in the production, which made its season debut last month.

“There’s 5,000 roses on each panel and three panels overall, that’s 15,000 roses,” said Benavides. ”I love highlighting these iconic pieces from the ballets and giving them new life.”

The menu by McCalls Catering & Events included salad with smoked trout and apple, truffled duxelles guinea hen roulade, and a chocolate hazelnut dacquoise with Burgundy poached pear cassis.

San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson smiles while speaking with Carl Pascarella during the San Francisco Ballet 2022 Season Gala at City Hall. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

Tomasson’s legacy

The final words of the night belong to Tomasson, who quipped that even though “he barely made the performance” due to traffic, he felt fantastic given the warm responses from audiences all season.

Among the legacies he’s most proud of in his nearly four decades at San Francisco Ballet are the dancers from the company who have gone on to be artistic directors in other cities — among them Ashley Wheater at the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, Mikko Nissinen at the Boston Ballet and Gennady Nedvigin at the Atlanta Ballet.

When contemplating the past two years of the pandemic and the situation in Ukraine, Tomasson said it was a reminder “that we need art more than ever before, not only in this country but in the world. It’s a great healing process.”

San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and his wife, Marlene. Photo: Laura Morton / Special to The Chronicle

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A committee of San Francisco supervisors advanced a proposed homeless shelter for 250 people near the Tenderloin on Wednesday, about one month after delaying the project to get more community input, drawing the ire of Mayor London Breed and others who called them hypocrites.

Supervisors Matt Haney, Ahsha Safaí and Gordon Mar voted unanimously to send a contract for the proposed shelter at 711 Post St. to the full Board of Supervisors, which is set to consider granting final approval next week.

A newly formed neighborhood group organized in opposition to the project late last year, prompting the supervisors’ budget committee to delay it in January.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the area where the shelter would be located, criticized the city’s neighborhood outreach and pushed for the delay last month. On Wednesday, he unsuccessfully pressed for another one-week wait, arguing that the city should finalize more of the details before sending the proposed shelter contract to the full board.

But after city officials made some changes to the project based on neighbors’ feedback, the committee blessed the shelter.

“We as a city have to be doing multiple things to address our homeless crisis,” Safaí told The Chronicle before the committee vote. “We don’t have enough shelter beds. There are too many people slowing dying on the streets. We need to have this as an option for sure.”

Still, some neighbors continued to push back Wednesday. The tension comes as San Francisco struggles to house 8,000 people without permanent shelter, many on its streets. While residents and businesses complain about the situation, some don’t want more homeless services in their neighborhoods.

The initial delay over the proposed Post Street shelter arose soon after the Board of Supervisors approved Breed’s emergency declaration to address drug overdoses in the Tenderloin. While the emergency declaration fast tracked the opening of a new center to link people using drugs on the streets to services and housing, some city leaders questioned why the committee would not open a nearby shelter as quickly as possible.

Breed and Supervisor Hillary Ronen slammed the delay on Twitter last month, with Ronen saying the situation is a crisis and “we need to act accordingly.”

The shelter will be located inside a vacant youth hostel in Lower Nob Hill, north of the Tenderloin and west of Union Square. Its rooms range from singles to quads, along with bathrooms on each floor, a commercial kitchen, a dining area and some lounges.

Under a proposed $18.7 million, two-and-a-half-year contract, the nonprofit Urban Alchemy, which employs community ambassadors and runs several homeless services for the city, would run the shelter.

After Safaí last month urged the city to explore buying the hostel building, San Francisco officials entered into a letter of intent with the owner. Acquiring the building would open the possibility that the shelter could later be transformed into other uses such as permanent supportive housing, though the city still plans to run it as a shelter for now.

“We are very open minded about future uses of the site,” Emily Cohen, a deputy director in the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, told the committee.

A new group, the Lower Nob Hill Neighborhood Alliance, has argued in recent weeks that the area already hosts a disproportionate amount of resources for the homeless population compared to other parts of the city, and neighbors were concerned about security and lack of shelter rules.

“These are all issues that should have been included all along, and they demonstrate all the issues that are going to confront our neighborhood once this facility goes into service,” the group said in its letter. “We need thoughtful, well-constructed planning and implementation, not rushed PR strategies and ineffective Band-Aids.”

Peskin said alliance members had raised “very real and valid concerns about their neighborhood.” He said the group’s concerns had “manifested some real changes” to the project, including 24-hour service by Urban Alchemy in an area around the shelter with yet-to-be-decided boundaries.

Though the city had considered allowing the shelter to expand up to 318 beds, officials now say they will start off by housing 150 people and “ramp up” to no more than 250 over the course of several months.

Susan Walsh, a spokesperson for the alliance, wanted the committee to wait another week — as Peskin suggested — to firm up some of the changes before passing them along to the entire Board of Supervisors. After the committee voted to advance the project, Walsh said her group would speak further to city officials and among its members before taking a position on what the board should do.

Haney and Safaí said the city could move forward simultaneously with purchasing the site, which will take at least 60 days while leasing the building and opening it in the interim as a shelter.

JD Morris and Mallory Moench are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris @mallorymoench

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Plans for a shelter that can quickly accommodate hundreds of people living on the street have stalled, a delay that embodies the challenge the city faces to act urgently to address its deepening homelessness crisis to manage something.

The board’s budget and finance committee on Wednesday voted to withhold approval of the $ 18.7 million needed to keep the shelter going until more outreach is done.

More than 250 adults could have moved to an existing property at 711 Post Street in San Francisco’s Lower Nob Hill neighborhood in a matter of weeks if San Francisco regulators voted for a $ 18 million grant on Wednesday.

The members of the committee recognized the great challenges facing the homeless in San Francisco. Ultimately, however, they cited a lack of publicity and indiscriminate engagement efforts as reasons to wait another month before considering the allocation.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who does not sit on the committee but represents the district where the shelter would be located, said many of his constituents had not received any real notice of the proposal or this hearing. He described his district as a place with a proven track record of using homeless services, but only after a robust public process.

“There was next to no meaningful and genuine commitment to the community,” said Peskin. “It checked the government at its worst.”

It takes time to gain broad community support, time that people who survive on the streets don’t have.

Officials acknowledged the urgency of the situation and the need to act quickly, but asked for more time to work with local actors to win the neighborhood before moving on.

“We are all aware of the urgency of this work,” said Supervisor Gordon Mar. “But I would repeat what my colleagues said that we cannot use this urgency to go through a bad process.”

At the time of the 2019 annual census, the last since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, around 8,035 people were homeless in the city. There has long been a gap between the number of people who need shelter and the number of beds The City can offer. Last year the city had 5,080 emergency shelters and transition beds.

Mayor London Breed’s homelessness restoration plan aims to close that gap. It stipulates that a total of 2,100 beds for adults and transition ages for teenagers will be added by June 30th.

The property on Post Street between Jones Street and Leavenworth Street would help achieve this goal. The residents would have few barriers to entry and there would be no maximum length of stay. However, they would have to be referred to the shelter and anyone staying there would be checked in and out as they left the building.

The existing building, a former youth hostel, offers a unique residential building model, which means that not everyone sleeps in the same room. It has 123 rooms, ranging from single rooms to four-person rooms. Each floor has a bathroom and a shower, and there is ample communal space in the form of a lounge, lobby and reception. It also includes a commercial kitchen, dining area and basement compartment.

Emily Cohen, deputy director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) said this configuration reflects some of the positive qualities of the hotel program as it gives residents more privacy and independence.

“We have to be smart about how we’re adding more beds, and this project gives us the ability to do that and it can be done pretty quickly,” she said.

Under the proposed agreement, HSH would grant Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that employs people with experience of homelessness or incarceration, $ 18.7 million. It already oversees the operation of a number of street cleaning, homelessness and relief programs across the city, including safe sleeping places, on-site accommodation and secure parking.

Urban Alchemy would not only operate and support the shelter itself around the clock, but also lease the building from February 1 to June 30, 2024.

“We are very excited to be working with Urban Alchemy on this project,” added Cohen. “You have a great track record of opening up new and creative program models with us.”

Based on public comments, the community’s reaction seems polarized.

Some people expressed frustration with the city’s contacting process, which took place during the holiday season and failed to reach many neighbors. They also said Lower Nob Hill did “more than its fair share” in helping the homeless – there is a navigation center just around the corner from the proposed accommodation address – and urged other neighborhoods to provide services.

Others said they feared Urban Alchemy was not equipped to be effective case managers.

Cohen said her agency was ready to put together a working group of local stakeholders to provide answers to questions and address concerns, but she stood up in addition to getting the grant approved as the city prepared to open the property.

“I think the most urgent reason to move forward is the 250 people who would sleep outside while we wait for this process,” she said.

Those who supported the shelter repeated their feelings. They stressed the severity of the emergency on the streets of San Francisco as a reason to act now.

“We absolutely believe that keeping people on the streets for another month is a terrible decision,” said Corey Smith of the Housing Action Coalition. “The situation will not improve after the community meetings.”

Supervisor Ahsha Safai asked if the city could own the building instead of paying someone as a tenant, but was told that HSH’s current strategy was in favor of acquiring buildings that could be converted into permanent supporting housing. This property doesn’t fit well as not every bedroom has an en-suite bathroom, Cohen said.

She pointed out that an overemphasis on permanent supportive housing, which she identified as a long-term solution to homelessness, results in people in need of immediate housing facing few barriers to entry without finding a safe place. For example, if they cannot enter accommodation, they may never be able to move to permanent housing.

“The need for protective beds is one of the most pressing needs we see,” said Cohen. “We’re adding a significant amount of sustained supportive housing, which is incredibly important, but we also need to build up our contingency measures to allow people to flow through the system.”

Although HSH asked the Budget and Finance Committee to reconsider the grant as soon as possible, members voted to wait until the next meeting on February 2nd to discuss the issue again.

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

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Just past the Village Theatre and a quaint corner chocolate shop is the intersection where Officer Andrew Hall shot and killed a 33-year-old mentally ill man in 2018.

History repeated itself this spring, when Hall fired his gun and killed another 33-year-old mentally ill man on the streets of this wealthy San Francisco suburb.

The Town of Danville is not accustomed to gun violence. This well-manicured place of multimillion-dollar homes regularly tops lists of the safest and wealthiest places to live in California. The two fatal shootings by the same officer in a 2 1/2-year span have now cast a spotlight on Danville, where criminal justice activists say the wheels of justice turned far too slowly and had deadly consequences.

Many of the questions residents are posing at Danville town council meetings and in emotionally charged neighborhood conversations echo those America is asking of policing nationwide. Was the officer’s use of deadly force justified or excessive?

Was the officer held accountable? Did racism play a role when Hall, who is white, shot nine bullets into Laudemer Arboleda, an unarmed Filipino man, in 2018, or when he fired a single shot to the head of Tyrell Wilson, a Black homeless man?

And then there’s the question that haunts both men’s families: Would Wilson be alive today if the criminal justice system had moved faster?

___

Around lunchtime on March 11, Wilson was holding a bag from Lucky Supermarket and about to cross a busy intersection when Hall shouted to him.

“Hey buddy. Come here for real quick,” the officer yelled. The intersection was empty of cars, and Wilson cut diagonally through it to avoid Hall.

Seconds earlier, Hall had pulled up in his patrol car, responding to three 911 calls the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office said it received about a person throwing rocks off a nearby overpass. The Associated Press reconstructed the encounter, and earlier incidents, through police video footage, interviews and documents including investigation transcripts obtained through public record requests. The Danville police chief, the Contra Costa County sheriff, the county’s district attorney and Hall’s lawyer declined to be interviewed for this story.

It remains unclear if Wilson was the person throwing rocks, but Hall assumed he was.

“You’re jaywalking. You’re throwing rocks,” Hall said.

Wilson was apparently familiar to Danville police and many in the community as one of the few homeless people, and one of very few Black men, in the town of 45,000. He slept on a bus stop bench in a parking lot; that was the direction Wilson headed as he walked away.

As a boy growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in Riverside, Orange County, Wilson had a promising future, his parents said. He was a good student and excelled at sports, especially track and football; he made the varsity football team as a sophomore.

He was handsome and a bit shy, with “big brown puppy eyes,” said his father, Marvin Wilson, a retired correctional officer with the Orange County sheriff’s department. As a child he wanted to be “a fireman and a preacher, because he said he wanted to save lives and save souls,” his mother, Diane, a retired postal worker, recalled.

But everything changed after a tragic car crash in high school. Wilson and a friend headed one winter afternoon to Big Bear Mountain, about an hour’s drive, to go snowboarding, and on the way got hit head-on by a semi truck, his father said. His friend died and Wilson was hospitalized with serious head injuries. After that, he lost his motivation for school, lost his passion for sports. “He lost his joy,” his mother said. As an adult, “he just could never stay on track,” his father said.

In the months before his death, Wilson’s family knew he was homeless and had been prescribed medication for depression or paranoia, they think, which he didn’t like taking.

Several Danville residents who would see Wilson at the bus stop described him in interviews as a friendly, peaceful and polite person who usually kept to himself and listened to music. Others objected to his presence, and had urged police on Nextdoor, the social media platform, to remove him from Danville. One resident sympathized with police in a Feb. 10 post, saying the homeless weren’t easy to evict: “We can’t get rid of homeless people like we exterminate rats.”

The next day, on Feb. 11, Danville Police Chief Allan Shields addressed the complaints in a weekly online video chat, where residents asked about “the person at the bus stop.” Shields said police had spoken “many, many times” with him, and offered food, shelter and medical help.

Police could not just “move him along” if he hasn’t committed a crime, Shields said. “If there was a need to act on that we would, but there is not.” Shields did not respond to numerous requests for an interview.

Exactly one month later, Hall confronted Wilson.

The officer radioed for backup as Wilson evaded him. Hall quickened his pace, narrowing the distance between them to several feet. “We’re not playing this game, dude,” he told Wilson, who turned to face Hall and is seen on video holding a knife.

Wilson kept the knife at his side and verbally challenged Hall but never lunged at him.

“Touch me and see what’s up,” Wilson said. Hall ordered him to drop the knife and pointed his gun.

“Kill me,” Wilson responded, tapping his chest and taking a small step forward.

“Drop the knife,” Hall yelled for a second, then third time. Then he fired, a single shot to the face. Wilson fell to the ground and lay motionless as blood pooled around him. His grocery bag fell to the side.

A clerk at Lucky’s said earlier that day Wilson bought a cherry pie, a knife and Cheetos, attorneys representing his family said.

Just 32 seconds elapsed from the moment Hall first spoke to Wilson to the moment he fired.

Six weeks later, on April 21, Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton announced charges against Hall for manslaughter and assault with a semi-automatic firearm — for the death of Laudemer Arboleda in 2018.

The indictment, a day after a jury convicted Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd, came two years and five months after Arboleda’s shooting.

And six weeks too late for Wilson, his mother said.

“Why was he still on the street?” Diane Wilson said of Hall. “If they had pulled him off the street until this was settled with the DA, Tyrell would still be here with us now.”

___

Why did it take so long?

That’s the question being asked by the families of Arboleda and Wilson, who have never met but are now united by trauma and a desire to see Hall behind bars.

“He struck again. He killed another person,” said Arboleda’s mother, Jeannie Atienza, seated in the office of civil rights attorney John Burris. “All this time, there is no justice for my son. And now this.”

Burris, whose roster of high-profile police violence cases includes Rodney King and Oscar Grant, is also representing Wilson’s family. A year after Arboleda was shot and killed, Burris sent letters in December 2019 to District Attorney Becton, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco and urged them to prosecute Hall.

“I said, ‘This looks like murder.’ I never heard back from them,” Burris said.

Floyd’s murder last May sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice and prompted more intense scrutiny of police misconduct. Now Burris asks: “Did the wheels move faster because of George Floyd?”

Burris is lobbying the U.S. Department of Justice to examine the two shootings to see if they show a pattern of misconduct and racism by Hall.

“All I know is a Black man and a Filipino man were both killed in a town that is predominantly white,” said Burris. The two are the only police shootings in Danville in at least a decade. “This man should be prosecuted, and like Chauvin, he should be in handcuffs for what he did.”

___

The shootings of Laudemer Arboleda and Tyrell Wilson bear similarities.

In both cases, police were responding to routine calls that escalated quickly when Hall arrived, said Burris. For Wilson, it was not established he had thrown rocks from the overpass, and there were no reports of injuries or accidents from the rock throwing.

“How do you go from reasonable suspicion to murder?” asked Burris. “It’s an outrageous shooting, he did not have to kill this man.”

In Arboleda’s case, police responded on Nov. 3, 2018, to a call about a “suspicious” person knocking on doors in a Danville cul-de-sac. The slim, 5-foot-5 Arboleda, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and black pants, was ringing doorbells and “lingering in the area,” the district attorney said in a news release.

Arboleda was driving away when officers tried to initiate a traffic stop. Like Wilson, he tried to avoid police.

Arboleda led officers on a nine-minute, slow-speed chase through tree-lined residential streets. Hall was not involved in the initial pursuit but stopped his vehicle at an intersection to block Arboleda’s car, then jumped out and opened fire.

Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston, who declined to be interviewed, publicly defended Hall, saying Arboleda was “trying to run down and murder” the officer. A nine-month investigation by the sheriff’s office, which contracts police services to Danville, cleared Hall in the shooting with no discipline, finding that Hall used “deadly force to protect his life” and followed department policies.

It was not the first time Hall was investigated and exonerated by the sheriff’s office. In 2014, Hall was accused of “brutally attacking” an inmate when he worked at a county jail in the city of Martinez. The inmate, identified as a 6-foot-3 Black man in his booking sheet, said Hall rammed him face-first into a door while he was handcuffed and repeatedly punched him in the face and side. The inmate was treated for a fractured eye socket and needed stitches in his lip. An internal probe by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office found no evidence of unreasonable force.

In contrast to the account by Hall and the sheriff’s office, police video shows that Hall stepped into the path of Arboleda’s moving car at the last moment, as he was slowly maneuvering around Hall’s vehicle. Hall fired 10 shots into Arboleda’s windshield and passenger window. Nine bullets hit Arboleda; the fatal shot pierced his heart, the coroner’s report said.

Hall noted that Arboleda appeared “very dazed” as if he was “mentally not understanding what was going on,” he told investigators, according to an interview transcript. He said he feared Arboleda was “going to ram into me and kill me.”

District Attorney Becton, who declined to be interviewed, said in a statement accompanying the April 21 indictment that Hall’s actions underscore the need to improve de-escalation training and response to people suffering from mental illness.

“Officer Hall used unreasonable and unnecessary force when he responded to the in-progress traffic pursuit involving Laudemer Arboleda, endangering not only Mr. Arboleda’s life but the lives of his fellow officers and citizens in the immediate area,” the statement said.

Two experts on police use of force, who analyzed the video of both shootings, told the AP that Hall made a series of poor tactical decisions.

“In my opinion, in both cases the use of force was not necessary,” said Timothy T. Williams Jr., who spent nearly 30 years with the Los Angeles Police Department.

In Wilson’s case, “There was a threat, he had the knife in his hand, but it wasn’t an imminent threat that justified lethal force,” Williams said.

A 2019 California law restricts officers from using deadly force unless it’s necessary to prevent an immediate threat to someone’s life or to catch a person fleeing after committing a violent felony.

In Arboleda’s case, Hall placed himself in harm’s way then used lethal force, Williams said.

Brian Higgins, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former police chief in Bergen County, New Jersey, agreed.

“The general rule is you don’t shoot at moving vehicles,” Higgins said, adding that in this case Hall appeared to have put his fellow officers in the line of fire. Contra Costa County bans shooting at moving vehicles except to save an officer’s life or that of another person.

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Nobody knows exactly why Arboleda or Wilson ended up in Danville. In both cases, their families say, mental illness played a role.

Arboleda was working long hours as an Amazon courier and taking online coding classes that he hoped would help him get a job at Kaiser Permanente, where his mother worked for years as a medical secretary. The schedule was wearing him down, physically and mentally, said his sister, Jennifer Leong.

“He was overwhelmed and tired, he was working so hard,” Leong said.

At the same time, Arboleda wanted more independence. He was living with his mother in Newark, California, and wanted his own apartment. His family believes that’s why he went to Danville, about an hour’s drive away, ringing doorbells and searching for the property manager of his mother’s condominium, who lived there.

Arboleda had periodically shown signs of depression, but only began displaying concerning behavior in the months before his death. At times he would wrap himself in plastic bags, put duct tape on his forehead if he had a headache; he told his family he was hearing voices and once, in April 2018, he uncharacteristically threatened to hurt his mother.

His mother called police, who took Arboleda to a psychiatric hospital where he was involuntarily committed for three weeks and prescribed medication for psychosis and schizophrenia.

“When he came out, he was different,” his sister said. Arboleda disliked how the medication made him feel and refused to take it.

Troubling behavior continued, along with more calls to police. When officers would arrive, Arboleda would run away, his mother said. He feared they would force him to return to the hospital.

His family is not surprised that Arboleda fled the police in Danville. “He was afraid of police. I know that he was just trying to get away,” said his mother. “He is like a child, he just wanted to get away from the situation.”

Wilson’s parents believe he chose Danville because it reminded him of home.

“He grew up in a really quiet neighborhood, where you see kids playing in the middle of the street, the type where you see people after the sun goes down walking their dogs at 11 at night,” his mother said.

“The environment where Tyrell was killed was the environment he grew up in. He felt comfortable there.”

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