From [HERE] A federal judge Tuesday lifted an almost two-year stay in a lawsuit against two officers who shot a 20-year-old non-white immigrant in the back, citing unreasonably long delay in a criminal investigation of the officers.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam found delaying the case further would impede the immigrant’s family’s right to speedy trial and unjustifiably postpone the resolution of a case “in which the public has a strong interest.”

San Francisco police Officers Craig Tiffe and Eric Reboli shot and killed 20-year-old Guatemalan native Amilcar Perez Lopez in the Mission District on the night of Feb. 26, 2015.

At a town hall meeting four days after the shooting, then-Police Chief Greg  said two officers responding to a 911 call about a  man with a knife came upon Perez Lopez and another man he was allegedly chasing on Folsom Street, between 24th and 25th streets. Perez Lopez charged the officers from 5 feet away with the knife “raised overhead,” Suhr said. Also at that meeting, Mission Station Capt. Daniel Perea said the other man, later identified as Abraham Perez, told him the officers had saved his life. [MORE]

After an independent autopsy showed Perez Lopez was shot six times from behind, Suhr qualified his previous statements. During an appearance on KQED’s Forum last July, the chief said Perez Lopez “came at the officers with the knife, and then the officers fired and he turned away, which would explain not all of the rounds going in the front.”

The city now claims Perez was lunging at another victim with the knife when he was shot.

Perez’s parents sued the city in April 2015, claiming two eyewitnesses saw the officers shoot their son in the back as he ran away, and that the autopsy provides “unequivocal physical evidence” to support that.

In April 2016, Gilliam granted a request to separate the trial into two phases — first to decide whether the officers violated Perez’s civil rights and then to determine whether the city is liable.

In that same April 2016 ruling, Gilliam authorized the Perez family to obtain investigative files from the police and interview witnesses, but he barred the family from seeking direct testimony from the two accused officers.

Gilliam found the officers would likely be compelled to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent due to the criminal investigation, which could prejudice them at trial.

But on Tuesday, nearly a year later, Gilliam found further delay in seeking testimony from the officers no longer justified because “the court cannot predict with any certainty when the district attorney will make a charging decision in the criminal investigation.”

A civil grand jury report issued last year faulted the city for lack of timeliness and transparency in its process of deciding whether to prosecute officers who shoot civilians.