Just after midnight on July 3, Hin Hoang, 43, was arrested by San Francisco police officers for allegedly murdering Dacari Spiers, 36, the subject of a high-profile 2022 police brutality case, the police department announced today.
Mission Local reported that around 4 a.m. on June 15, a witness said they heard people arguing in Wiese Alley between 15th and 16th streets. Then, two gunshots were fired. The police arrived shortly after and found Spiers suffering from apparent gunshot wounds near 15th and Wiese. He died soon after in the hospital.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a police investigation into the shooting found that Spiers was at an illegal gambling house that night.
Two and a half weeks later, Hoang was arrested in San Francisco at a residence on Harold Street between Holloway and Grafton streets. The arrest took place with the help of the SWAT team, and the police also seized evidence from Hoang to help with the murder investigation. Hoang was booked at 5:22 a.m., according to jail records, and is now in San Francisco County Jail #2, pending homicide charges.
In 2006, the East Bay Times reported that a man with the same name and age as Hoang was arrested alongside his parents for growing and distributing marijuana. The operation was spread across three houses, and at the time of arrest they possessed over $1 million worth of marijuana.
In 2006, Hoang was also on probation for a gun conviction, and wanted in San Francisco for concealed-weapon and marijuana charges, for which he had failed to appear in court.
Spiers, 36, got $700,000 from the city in a settlement — the largest for excessive force in the city since at least 2010 — after San Francisco police Officer Terrance Stangel beat him with a metal baton near Fisherman’s Wharf in October 2019, breaking his wrist and leg. Police were responding to a 911 caller who said that a domestic violence incident was taking place, though no domestic violence incident was ever confirmed.
Spiers’ incident also formed the basis of one of the first criminal prosecutions against a police officer in San Francisco history, filed by then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin against Stangel. A jury acquitted the officer on three of the four charges, and was deadlocked on the fourth.
The beating “was not something [Spiers] could just shrug off … he was broken by it,” Rebecca Young, a prosecutor for the city’s case against the officer, previously told Mission Local.
Spiers rapped under the name Mr. FYB. “I love to rap, song write in most of all I love being a father to my two boys,” his artist bio on ReverbNation reads. “I do this for them they are my motivation in my drive to keep working hard in to be my best artist I can be.”
Spier’s killing was the 15th homicide in San Francisco in 2024. As of July 5, the city has logged 17 homicides, eight fewer than the 25 homicides registered at this point last year, according to the SFPD crime dashboard.
The company one keeps.
“Murder victim ” may be more appropriate now.
So . . . the SFPD has specialists, a tactical team, AND a SWAT team? Wow, that’s a lot.