Frisco Five

The Frisco Five, also known as #Frisco5, are a group of protesters who went on hunger strike on April 21, 2016 in San Francisco, California in front of the San Francisco Police Department Mission Station to demonstrate against episodes of police brutality, use-of-force violations, and racial bias. specifically the deaths of Alex Nieto on March 21, 2014,Mario Woods on December 2, 2015, Amilcar Perez Lopez on February 26, 2015, and Luis Gongora on April 7, 2016.

The five protesters – Ike Pinkston, 42, Sellassie Blackwell, 39, Edwin Lindo, 29, Maria Gutierrez, 66, and her son Ilyich "Equipto" Sato, 42 – called for the resignation of SFPD chief Greg Suhr over a series of recent shootings of men of color. The protesters were a mix of musicians, educators, and a politician: Pinkston, Sellassie, and Equito are hip hop artists, Gutierrez is director of Los Compañeros del Barrio Preschool, and Lindo is a candidate for Supervisor in District 9.

In February 2016, the San Francisco Police Department had voluntarily requested a United States Department of Justice begin a Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) review in an effort to reform the department, but it was not a civil rights review like that being undertaken in Ferguson, Missouri. Mayor Lee and the San Francisco Police Commission proposed changes in use of force policies on February 22, 2016. The San Francisco Police Officers Association, SFPD’s union, refused to comply with the proposed policy and issued its own proposed use of force policy on April 6, 2016. The San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi sent California Attorney General Kamala Harris a request that supported the protestor's claims of racism by the San Francisco Police Department, and requested a civil rights investigation that would be enforceable. After Gongora's death, Adachi was joined by District Attorney George Gascon, Mission District Supervisor David Campos, and other stakeholders to protest the lack of transparency and need for police reform.

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