Two San Francisco police officers who killed a homeless man they say charged at them with a knife in the Mission District advanced on the man quickly, firing four beanbags and then seven bullets at him within 30 seconds of stepping out of their patrol vehicles, video footage of the incident shows.

The surveillance video, provided anonymously to The Chronicle, provides a clear picture of some aspects of the encounter that unfolded just after 10 a.m. Thursday on the 400 block of Shotwell Street, but does not show what the man — identified Friday by the city medical examiner as 45-year-old Luis Gongora — was doing at the moment police opened fire. Gongora was just outside the camera’s frame.

Still, some community leaders who viewed the video were dismayed by what it showed, saying it appeared the officers made little to no effort to use the de-escalation and crisis-intervention tactics that have been hotly discussed in the months after the department’s last officer-involved shooting in December.

“From the video, it appears that the officer came at the situation guns blazing,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the city’s Coalition on Homelessness. “Basic principles of de-escalation were not followed. The officer did not create ‘time and distance.’ No verbal de-escalation was conducted at all.”

While the video does not show the shooting itself, police officials said at a news conference Friday that witnesses to the killing have described Gongora lunging at the officers before they fired, contradicting three witnesses who provided accounts to The Chronicle and said Gongora had not directly threatened the officers.

Contradictory accounts

Cmdr. Greg McEachern, flanked by a photo of a 13-inch knife allegedly found next to Gongora, said one witness told investigators that “he saw the suspect sitting prior to the shooting, (then) saw the suspect stand up and lunge at the officers.” A second witness said Gongora “rose up with a knife in hand and ran toward the officers,” McEachern said, adding that a third witness echoed that statement.

McEachern said a witness who told reporters Gongora spoke only Spanish had, in fact, told police the two had a conversation in English. The commander did not discuss the video, other than to say the department has a copy.

The officers involved in the shooting, whose names have not been released, were being interviewed Friday as police searched for additional witnesses and video, he said.

More for you News SF police fatally shoot homeless man they say wielded knife

The incident began when city homeless outreach workers — who had responded to a report of a disturbance in a homeless encampment — called 911 to say a man was waving a large kitchen knife. Officers arrived minutes later.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said officers, under a department strategy for trying to subdue subjects with knives, first fired beanbag rounds, but that they were not immediately effective. Gongora challenged police with the knife, the chief said, prompting two officers to fire seven bullets. The wounded man was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died after going into surgery.

Some witnesses at the scene, however, contradicted the police account. They said Gongora spoke only Spanish, never challenged officers and probably didn’t understand what they were saying before he was shot. The witnesses said there was no one else near Gongora when the officers approached him.

“He didn’t charge the officers,” said John Visor, 33, who was living in a tent on Shotwell Street and said he was roughly 10 feet from Gongora when police arrived. “He was going in circles. He didn’t understand what they were saying. They just shot him. They just shot him.”

‘Get on the ground!’

Visor said Gongora carried a knife for safety, but that he didn’t have it out when police arrived. He said Gongora was friendly and often collected cans and kicked a soccer ball around the area. Neighbors told police the man had been living on the streets in the area for several months.

The footage obtained by The Chronicle, taken by a camera on the side of a building, shows three marked patrol cars pulling slowly up to the 400 block of Shotwell Street between 18th and 19th streets and parking in the middle of the roadway. Three officers, all of them men, emerge from the police cruisers. The driver of the car in front gets out with a beanbag shotgun and walks to his left to the sidewalk.

Within 10 seconds of getting out of his car, the officer points the gun at someone out of the frame and shouts, “Get on the ground! Stay on the ground!” The officer is moving forward, and a second officer joins him at his side. A few seconds later the officer with the beanbag gun again shouts, “Get on the ground.”

Moments later, both officers appear to shout at the man, commanding, “Put that down” and “Put it down.” The officers continue to advance and move out of the frame. Two more seconds pass before the first beanbag blast, which is followed by three more in short succession. The officer with the weapon can be heard pumping it to ready it for the next shot. The officers can be heard shouting more orders at the man.

Moments later — within 30 seconds after the first officer got out of his car — a burst of seven gunshots is heard. The two officers are still out of frame when the gunshots begin, but then can be seen retreating back into the frame as they fire the final shots.

A third officer is then heard reporting “Shots fired” over his radio as witnesses on the street cry out in shock and a woman on the opposite sidewalk bursts into a sprint away from the scene.

December killing

It was the first deadly police shooting in San Francisco since the Dec. 2 killing of Mario Woods, a 26-year-old stabbing suspect who police say had a knife in his hands when several officers opened fire, hitting him with as many as 15 rounds in the Bayview neighborhood.

Woods was also struck with beanbag rounds before officers resorted to their pistols. In that case, officers said they fired in self-defense, but video footage showed Woods was shot as he shuffled slowly along a wall, without appearing to directly threaten officers. The killing is under investigation.

After Woods’ death, the city Police Commission began working on revisions to the department’s use-of-force policy, with Suhr submitting a draft proposal putting more of an emphasis on communication, de-escalation, proportionality of response and the “sanctity and preservation of all human life.” Thursday’s shooting was disappointing to many who have been following the reform talks.

“All this conversation we’ve had since Mario Woods, has that all been for naught?” said Micaela Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Have there been any meaningful changes made in the department? It appears not.”

Davis voiced a similar concern as Friedenbach, saying, “The speed of which the officers arrived on scene and the short amount of time that lapsed from the time they got out of the car, approached the man and fired those shots shows that they did not leave any time for de-escalation tactics.”

But Ed Obayashi, a sheriff’s deputy in Inyo County and use-of-force expert, noted that the video does not show what the officers saw. There may have not been time for de-escalation, he said, if Gongora posed a serious threat to the officers.

“These situations can escalate in a nanosecond,” Obayashi said. “There’s no time to deliberate and the officers react based on their training and experience.”

Independent inquiry

Mayor Ed Lee called for an independent investigation into the shooting by the civilian Office of Citizen Complaints, while police and the district attorney’s office conduct their own probes. The officers have been placed on paid leave, in keeping with department protocol.

“We are all striving to make sure officer-involved shootings are rare and only occur as a last resort,” Lee said in a statement.

Kale Williams and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com, vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale, @VivianHo

Shooting video: To view footage of the fatal police shooting, go to: http://bit.ly/1SVx1bp. (Note: The video does not show the shooting itself, but may be disturbing to watch.)