A federal judge Tuesday morning seemed likely to advance several civil rights claims made against the San Francisco Police Department for the mass arrest of youths during the July 2023 Dolores Park hill bomb. She will likely issue a written decision in the coming month.
At the hearing, the city attempted to toss out the lawsuits from four teenagers who said the police action was unconstitutional and violated state law.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros, who is considering two separate cases from the four teenagers, summed up her beliefs at the outset of the hearing, saying she was disposed to allow most of the claims to proceed.
“I think that the Fourth Amendment claims are likely to go forward; First Amendment claims seem somewhat unlikely,” she said, weighing the motions by the San Francisco city attorney’s office to toss out the claims entirely. Cisneros did say she had “a number of questions” about the Fourteenth Amendment claims, but seemed likely to allow California civil rights claims to advance.
Rachel Lederman, the lead counsel for three of the teenagers suing the city, saw the hearing as a victory, saying her clients’ main claims would likely advance.
The July 8, 2023 police operation was the largest mass arrest of teenagers in San Francisco in years. After the hill bomb event, some 113 young people were held outside for hours at 17th and Guerrero streets. Many of them were detained late into the night and early morning without access to food, water, or bathrooms.
Dozens of parents arrived throughout the night, but were kept separate from their children until the police photographed, fingerprinted, and processed them. The last child was released to his parents at 4:15 a.m.
The four teenagers’ allegations, which could become the basis of a class action lawsuit covering all 113 of those arrested, rest on several claims, namely violations of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, plus California civil rights violations.
“I think it went well, and that the judge sees through the obfuscation of the city,” said Lederman following the 90-minute hearing, held at the Phillip Burton Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Ave.
The city attorney’s office, for its part, said the judge “seemed receptive to a number of the points we raised in court today, and we look forward to the Court’s decision on this preliminary stage of the case.”
The decision before the judge is only whether to allow the allegations to advance, not yet to adjudicate their truth.
Cisneros will likely issue a written order within a month, said Lederman. Each party will have 21 days to amend orders, if told to do so. Following that, the case will move into discovery to uncover evidence for a possible trial.
The teenagers say that police officers violated their First Amendment rights by targeting skateboarding, a constitutionally protected activity, a novel argument that the teenagers’ attorney acknowledged does not rely on existing case law.
The teenagers’ Fourth Amendment rights were violated, they allege, because the mass arrest was made without probable cause, and the police did not make any determinations about the individual guilt of any of the youths.
The Fourteenth Amendment claims allege racial discrimination behind the police department’s decision to target the teens and allegedly mistreat them; the majority of those arrested were Black or Latinx.
But the city on Tuesday attempted to quash the claims altogether, saying the allegations of the teenagers beggar belief and that the judge should toss out the case.
“They knew that the [hill bomb] party was an illegal, unpermitted party. They admit they heard the police orders to disperse,” said Zuzana Ikels, the deputy city attorney arguing the case for the city. “What they were arrested for was being on the streets and disobeying an order of dispersal.”
Ikels later said that there was “absolutely nothing unconstitutional” about the hill bomb arrests, and that the treatment of the youth was within policy. “That’s just the protocol for the safety of everyone,” she said.
Lederman countered, arguing in court that “the police simply boxed in everybody on the street in a certain area, after herding a certain number of people into their trap,” and that the circumstances of the detention were “unreasonable conditions of confinement.”
And, Lederman added later in the hearing, racial animus was likely.
“We all know that if this had been a group of mostly white lacrosse players rampaging in the park, they would not have been treated this way, and their parents would not have been treated this way,” she said.
The group of 113 were encircled by police officers on the night of July 8, 2023, part of the department’s crackdown against the annual Dolores Park hill bomb, an unsanctioned skateboarding event that takes place every summer on the streets around the park.
Police officers moved to stop skateboarders that afternoon and gave multiple dispersal orders in the area around the park, moving corner to corner to sweep crowds away. Those crowds became disorderly: Several people threw bottles at police officers, vandalized buses and trams, and lit small fires in the park; one officer was cut on the forehead by a girl’s fingernail.
Officers then moved to make mass arrests. On 17th Street, lines of officers moved in from both directions and began to kettle the crowd. Those trapped by the officers were zip-tied and transported to either the Hall of Justice or Mission Station, the latter a block away.
Three of the teenagers have filed a potential class action suit with Lederman as their counsel; a fourth has filed a separate suit after hiring the law firm of Adanté Pointer, whose representative was in the courtroom Tuesday. The cases were being considered together by the judge.
Interesting but unsurprising that SFPD initially described the cut as being the result of a “nail” instead of a “fingernail.”
Also unsurprising, ML commenter @SFAtty was wrong that there were no grounds for a lawsuit based in a violation of Constitutional Rights.
By allowing this lawsuit, this judge is telling these kids that not only are there no consequences for breaking the law, there may well be money in it for them. So the city will agree to settle the claims, and the supervisors can add the payout to the long list of monies they disperse each Tuesday to aggrieved people.
Joe,
What a great story.
Thank you for your hard work.
h.
Joe,
If the cops had waited a year for Prop E to pass they could have Legally used Facial Recognition Software to identity participants, bystanders and cops.
h.
Joe Barros,
The cops planned this in advance without informing the Chief.
Their plan in the words of a Captain watching from the sidelines BEFORE the event began was to:
“We’re going to make a lot of arrests tonight.”
Their Plan was to get as many photos and fingerprints into NCIC before any Legal actions by the Teens prevented them from doing so.
If they’d have waited a year for Prop E to pass they could have legally used Facial Recognition Software to ID everyone from participants to the crowd to the cops.
h.