Oakland chief asks FBI to probe fatal shooting

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(12-15) 09:12 PST OAKLAND --

The Oakland Police Department has asked the FBI to open a federal civil-rights investigation into the actions of two officers who say they mistook an electronic scale commonly used to weigh drugs for a handgun when they opened fire and killed the owner of a hair salon, the police chief said.

The federal agency and the U.S. attorney's office will look into whether the two officers violated the civil rights of Derrick Jones, 37, who was shot and killed Nov. 8 on Trask Street a block from his store in East Oakland, Police Chief Anthony Batts said Tuesday night at a meeting of the City Council's Public Safety Committee.

Batts said he had asked the FBI to conduct a parallel investigation with the department so the probe will be "transparent." He acknowledged the outcry that has erupted over the shooting and offered his condolences to the family of Jones, who was black.

"I say that with all sincerity, not just as a chief of police, but as an African American man and as a father, I understand your pain," the chief told Jones' family, who attended the meeting.

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The two officers were dispatched to the East Oakland neighborhood in response to a 911 call from a woman who said Jones had choked and beaten her near the hair salon he owned on Bancroft Avenue. Jones' relatives say the woman was not a victim, but had harassed Jones after he spurned her romantically and had armed herself with a knife during the encounter.

When the officers arrived, Jones ran from police. He was on parole after serving nearly five months in state prison last year for gun possession, and his family believes Jones feared his parole would be revoked unfairly because of the incident.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/15/BA751GR38S.DTL