Oakland Pays Family of Unarmed Black barbershop owner shot to death by OPD officers

From [HERE] Oakland has agreed to pay $225,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the parents and daughter of an East Oakland Black barbershop owner killed by police officers who said they mistook a scale he was carrying for a gun.

Derrick Jones, 37, was killed Nov. 8, 2010, on Trask Street, a block from his store, by Officers Eriberto Perez-Angeles and Omar Daza-Quiroz. The officers used excessive force against an unarmed Black man, said a suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by Jones' parents, Nellie and Frank Jones, and his young daughter. The City Council voted in closed session last week to approve the payout. A lawsuit filed by the slain man's widow, Lanell Monique Jones, is still pending.

The officers were dispatched to a 911 call from a woman who said Derrick Jones, a parolee, had choked and beaten her near his Bancroft Avenue barnbershop. Jones' relatives said the woman had harassed him after he spurned her romantically and had armed herself with a knife during the encounter. Jones ran when the officers arrived and he reached for his waistband when they caught up to him, police said. Perez-Angeles fired two shots, and Daza-Quiroz fired seven, authorities said.

The officers said they thought Jones had been reaching for a gun, but he actually had a small silver-colored scale, officers said. Police also said he had marijuana in a jar in his pocket and was legally drunk. None of said information was revealed after the shooting. [MORE] The officers, who were involved in a previous fatal shooting, were cleared of criminal liability by Alameda County prosecutors.

Also last week, the council agreed to pay $146,759 to the law offices of Michael Haddad and Julia Sherwin and $33,210 to the law offices of John Burris for attorneys' fees related to civil suits alleging that officers illegally strip-searched people in public.