No Charges Filed Against Officers In Fatal Peninsula Shooting

DALY CITY, CA — No charges will be filed against a Daly City police officer who killed Roger Allen, a San Francisco resident, on April 7 in a shooting after a struggle in a truck over what turned out to be Allen’s replica firearm, San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe announced Friday.

Wagstaffe called the killing of the 44-year-old Allen, who is Black, a “tragic incident,” but said in a news release that an investigation determined that use of force was legally justified and there was no basis for filing criminal charges against the officer, Cameron Newton. Two other members of the police department, Lieutenant Michael Brennan and Officer Nicholas McCarthy, were also cleared by the district attorney.

Dozens marched in Daly City in the days following to demand transparency over the shooting, of which there was no video. The officers were not wearing body cameras, nor were their police vehicles equipped with cameras.

Allen’s death sparked a backlash that resulted in Daly City approving the purchase of body cameras for police in May. The Daly City Police Department was one of the last in San Mateo County to roll out the cameras despite a civil grand jury report calling for police agencies in the county to equip officers with cameras by 2017, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

On Friday, Wagstaffe released an 18-page letter addressed to Daly City Acting Police Chief John Gomez summarizing the incident after interviews with the officers involved and two others in the truck with Allen.

Wagstaffe determined that Allen “escalated what had been low-key contact by Officer McCarthy into a deadly confrontation” when he pointed his replica firearm at the officers, who had arrived at the truck for a welfare check on the driver in front of 750 Niantic Avenue. Allen was also a parolee-at-large with an active warrant and had a “possible motive of not wanting to return to custody,” according to Wagstaffe.

Newton, who has been a police officer for nine years and has been in Daly City for seven, shot Allen after he saw him in a struggle with the other two officers over the replica firearm, he told investigators in the report.

“There was a feeling of being terrified that the subject was going to kill the Lieutenant right in front of me, kill me, whoever else was in that vehicle,” Newton said to investigators.

Wagstaffe also determined that Newton discerned that use of less lethal force, like pepper spray, tasers or batons, would have been ineffective due to the perceived threat.

Allen’s gun was later determined to have been a Glock replica BB pistol, which the district attorney’s office said was “similar in color, type, shape, size and design as a 9mm Luger caliber Glock mode 19 pistol.”

In the report, Brennan said that the weapon that he removed from Allen’s hands looked and felt like a Glock, and that he was 100 percent sure it was a real firearm during the struggle.