COP HURT BREAKING UP FIGHT

Struck by car while interrupting possible drug deal

A police officer who was attempting to break up a fight possibly over a
narcotics transaction was injured slightly early Tuesday when a car ran
into him, police said.

The incident at the corner of Sixth and Mission streets began shortly
before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday when the officer and his partner saw two men in a
rented 1998 Pontiac Grand Am arguing with a man holding a bottle.

The officers pulled over and intervened. After managing to handcuff one of
the men from the car on the street, the driver backed up the vehicle and
hit one officer in the legs, knocking him onto the trunk, said Lt. Rich
Reyes of Southern station.

When the driver, identified as Jessie McBroom, 21, began pulling the car
forward toward the other officer, both cops each fired three shots at the
car, shattering the driver's side window, Reyes said.

McBroom was treated at San Francisco General Hospital for a grazing head
wound, according to Lt. Dave Robinson, head of the homicide detail which
investigates all shootings involving officers.

The injured officer, whose name was not released, was treated at the
hospital for bruises and contusions of the right thigh and released.

Robinson said McBroom and his brother, Jimmy, 22, were the two men in the
car and that they had apparently just arrived from Astoria, N.Y. The man
with the bottle, with whom they were arguing, fled when police stopped.

A "saleable quantity" of suspected crack cocaine was found on one of the
McBrooms, Robinson said.

Robinson said the names of the officers involved and further details would
be available after investigators had talked to all the parties involved.

The McBrooms were being held, but specific charges are pending, he said.
Malcolm Glover of The Examiner staff contributed to this report.

)1998 San Francisco Examiner