The footage, shared with multiple news outlets, shows 56-year-old Edwin Adams riding southwest in the middle of Mission Street toward the intersection of Eighth Street. An unmarked police vehicle stops diagonally in his path, its passenger door opening, while a second unmarked vehicle approaches from behind and follows Adams into oncoming traffic. An officer can be seen exiting the first vehicle and lunging toward the bus shelter. The second vehicle partially obscures the encounter, but the video appears to confirm what witnesses described the day of the crash: that an officer tried to tackle Adams off his scooter. Adams then struck a metal pole and died of his injuries.

At the time, SFPD said only that a fleeing suspect had a fatal collision with a "street fixture" and made no mention of any officer's role in the crash.

"Police chose to pursue Mr. Adams in multiple unmarked vehicles and then violently tackle him from his scooter," Zac Dillon, a senior policy analyst with the Public Defender's Integrity Unit, said in a statement. "SFPD's public account of this incident was sparse and misleading, omitting the police actions that immediately preceded the collision, which led to Mr. Adams's death."

Dillon and Brian Cox, another member of the Integrity Unit, filed a formal complaint with the city's Department of Police Accountability last week. The Public Defender's Office argues the pursuit and attempted arrest violated SFPD policy, particularly because Adams's underlying offense was nonviolent and the warrant was the only one out for his arrest.

The warrant stemmed from Adams failing to charge an ankle monitor issued as a condition of his release from jail in a drug case. His brother, Curtis Adams, who lived with him in the East Bay, told the Chronicle last month that Adams was a "down-to-earth dude" who had described being "messed with" by undercover officers in San Francisco. Adams had reportedly been arrested several times on drug charges and released with an ankle monitor each time.

"Mr. Adams was a father and a brother, and his family is grieving his untimely death," Deputy Public Defender Meenha Lee said in a statement. "Police pursuits are inherently dangerous. They are supposed to be reserved for situations where the need to intervene outweighs the very real risks, because they can so easily lead to tragedies like this one."

The District Attorney's Office's Independent Investigations Bureau is conducting its own investigation into the pursuit and crash. SFPD has not commented further beyond its brief statement on the day of the incident.

The release of the video adds pressure on the department to explain its conduct in a case that has renewed scrutiny of how San Francisco police handle low-level warrants and whether pursuit tactics put the public and suspects at unnecessary risk. For residents of SoMa and beyond, the questions raised by Adams's death — about transparency, the use of unmarked vehicles in busy corridors, and the department's willingness to account for its own actions — remain unresolved.