reported<\/a> that the cop duo, who were beat partners for five months before that night\u2019s chase and had attended a police academy together, may have committed several violations during the incident. Among these were the failure to obtain permission from their superiors to initiate the pursuit, as required under OPD policy; illegally turning off their lights during the high-speed pursuit; attempting to turn off their body-worn cameras to conceal their actions; and then lying about much of it.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe newly public documents go into greater detail on the timeline of what happened that night and how it all went wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New details come to light<\/p>\n
According to the defendants\u2019 depositions and the video footage obtained in discovery, the two officers were inside their police Ford Explorer a little after 1:30 a.m. when they saw and heard the familiar sound of a car burning rubber as it made high-speed turns. They had just responded to a Shotspotter alert in the vicinity and were looking for possible suspects who may have fired a weapon, ultimately finding some people who had set off fireworks.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As they made their way south on International toward 42nd Street, where Linaldi was spinning in the intersection in a dark-colored Nissan Z, the officers briefly turned on their vehicle\u2019s emergency lights. That action, the plaintiffs\u2019 motion claims, also automatically activated the body-worn video cameras of both officers. Marin-Coronel said in his deposition that he then deactivated his camera. In the video, Abdelaziz appears to try to deactivate his camera, but failed to do so, leaving his recording as evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion, Abdelaziz \u201cimmediately turned off his Code 3 lights when he reached the intersection.\u201d Then the Nissan Z drove past the officers, which they appear to have read as an attempt to flee. With Abdelaziz driving and Marin-Coronel in the passenger seat, the latter said, \u201cGo for it,\u201d suggesting a pursuit. Over the next few seconds, and for the rest of the event, according to the Soakais\u2019 lawyers, the officers did not call superiors to seek approval or to report a chase.<\/p>\n
When the officers reached International and 42nd Avenue around 1:38 a.m., Linaldi, the driver of the Nissan, briefly drove northbound on International, passing the officers. Linaldi then turned left and drove into a Smart & Final parking lot, then turned right onto East 12th Street, heading northbound, and right onto 41st Avenue before returning to International, leading the cops in a circle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The officers followed \u201cclose behind the entire time without lights, sirens, or alerting dispatch to their chase,\u201d according to the plaintiff\u2019s motion opposing the defendants\u2019 motion for summary judgment in the case.<\/p>\n
Once Linaldi turns onto International, going southbound, he takes off. Abdelaziz, the officer behind the wheel, swerved around a random pedestrian, \u201cnarrowly missing him,\u201d according to the same filing. He can be heard saying, \u201cI\u2019ll run your stupid ass over,\u201d around the second minute of the compilation video filed with the court.<\/p>\n
For the next few seconds, Linaldi and Abdelaziz drove at high speeds, running red lights and speeding through green lights. Then Linaldi lost control around 54th Street and crashed into a car in front of a grocery store along International Boulevard.<\/p>\n
As seen in the video, at the moment of the collision, the cops were about a block and a half behind and wondered aloud whether the suspect had crashed. Abdelaziz can be heard around the 2:45 mark of the video first saying he can\u2019t tell whether there was a crash, then saying, \u201cHe smacked the fuck out of that truck.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, listen,\u201d Marin-Coronel replies. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind going over there. Hopefully he\u2019s fucking dead.\u201d They both laugh.<\/p>\n
Abdelaziz can be heard in the video seeming to mock the situation by making what sounds like a happy, nonchalant sound that the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyer later described as \u201cDee-dee-dee.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As chaos ensues at 54th Street, with people gathering around the collision, the video shows the cops turning their car around and heading away from the scene. According to the same plaintiff\u2019s opposition filing, a car behind them then honks at the cops.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Defendant Abdelaziz simply stated, \u2018Bitch, I know you\u2019re behind me. Shut the fucking hell up,\u2019\u201d the document states.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion, the police officers drove back to the High Street police substation. They then answered a dispatch call and drove back to International and 54th Street, this time with lights on \u2014 again apparently triggering their body cameras \u2014 as if they had not just left the scene of the crime, according to the deposition of Sergeant Domertrius Fowler of OPD\u2019s internal affairs unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As seen in the video, Abdelaziz and Marin-Coronel end up arresting Linaldi, who they found looking dazed but alive in the driver\u2019s seat, in his destroyed car, which had ricocheted after the collision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion, around 2:06 a.m., someone approached the officers and told them they had seen a cop car chase the suspect\u2019s car without its lights or alarms on. Abdelaziz and Marin-Coronel, according to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion, \u201cdefendants looked at each other, told the witness to leave, then walked next to one another and turned off their cameras.\u201d<\/p>\n
The motion claims the pair of officers turned their body cameras back on once the witness had left and they had talked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never reported their involvement or the witness\u2019s report to anyone, including their sergeant, which was required,\u201d according to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The cops\u2019 immediate supervisor at the time was Sergeant Gabriel Urquiza, who also helped manage traffic during the protest and vigil organized by the advocacy group Traffic Violence Rapid Response with the help of the Soakai family two days after his death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marin-Coronel and Abdelaziz followed Linaldi to a hospital, where \u201cthey accessed and watched their body camera footage of their chase\u201d, according to the plaintiffs\u2019 motion. According to the same filing, the pair then \u201ccategorized\u201d the footage as accidental \u201cso that it would automatically delete.\u201d <\/p>\n
Buelna, one of the attorneys for the Soakai family, told us that body-cam footage usually has a buffer of at least 24 hours before it is actually deleted, in case cops make a mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say you accidentally were trying to scroll down menu of the camera and imagine you clicked the wrong one and then you deleted some murder footage on accident? It doesn\u2019t instantaneously delete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Later that night, at the end of the shift, when patrol sergeant Anthony Martinelli held a report and review meeting, another officer, Long Tran, approached Martinelli and told him he\u2019d seen a police vehicle chasing Linaldi. That spurred the department to open a Level 1 Investigation, a high-level inquiry that could lead to termination and requires all involved officers to turn in their phones and cameras and avoid talking to each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Marin-Coronel, in his deposition, claims that Abdelaziz subsequently reached out to him to try to persuade him not to provide a statement to police investigators. Marin-Coronel also said that earlier, in the hours after the chase, his partner had tried to convince him to agree on an invented reason for why they began the chase in the first place \u2014 that Linaldl\u2019s car had matched the appearance of a car they were on the lookout for.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, Defendant Marin was scared for himself, for his family, his children, and decided to confess what they had done was unauthorized and wrong,\u201d the plaintiffs\u2019 motion reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the plaintiffs\u2019 deposition of Marin-Coronel, the officer says that he was in shock.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCause I\u2019d never had been in this type of situation,\u201d he said to Buelna, of Lawyers for the People. \u201cI\u2019ve never been in trouble or anything in my two careers that I had. And at that time, it was like I was there but I wasn\u2019t there. I was thinking about my family. I was thinking about my kids. I was thinking about what was going to happen. It seems like Abdelaziz\u2019s words were coming from one ear and getting out of the other. All I remember \u2014 all I remember doing is just nodding my head and just keep walking upstairs. And then once I went to the officers, where all the officers were gathered, all I did is just sit by myself and put my head down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, footage from eight different cameras on the street from businesses or public utilities on International Boulevard was accessed by the plaintiffs, including some from AC Transit\u2019s bus rapid-transit stops, as well as body-worn cameras by the police officers. That\u2019s according to\u00a0 Nick Barreiro, a forensic analyst contracted by the Soakai family\u2019s lawyers to compile all the videos into one, matching their time stamps.<\/p>\n
The next important dates<\/p>\n
Arguments on both sides about the defendants\u2019 request for summary judgment will be made on April 6, in San Francisco\u2019s Northern District federal courthouse. The presiding judge is U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim.<\/p>\n
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