Members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors called for action and accountability on Friday after Mission Local reported that women held in a San Francisco jail were allegedly forced to undress in front of each other while sheriff’s deputies watched and filmed them with their body-worn cameras.
Late Thursday afternoon, 17 women filed a claim with the city, saying that deputies violated multiple laws and policies in May when they strip-searched them en masse while male deputies were present.
“It’s gender-based violence, and an abuse of human rights,” said District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder. “It should be condemned by every elected official.”
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said they could not comment, given the pending litigation against the city.
Supervisor Shamann Walton said his colleagues would hold a hearing on this and other incidents of deputy misconduct, but he was not yet sure when.
Last month, Mission Local reported that a deputy allegedly started a physical fight with a 27-year-old who was incarcerated at the county jail in San Bruno, and that another deputy allegedly engaged in “sexual misconduct” with a transgender woman in a jail bathroom.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar called for a “written formal resolution to ensure that this never happens again.” The sheriff, she said, could give the Board of Supervisors a plan, with deadlines, to create culture change in the department. She suggested professional development and more robust training of deputies.
“There needs to be accountability, both of the leadership and the people who participated in this,” Melgar said.
Melgar pointed out that San Francisco taxpayers would bear the consequences of the women’s brewing lawsuit is successful.
“These women are gonna sue,” she said. “They’re going to win. We’re going to end up paying for it.”
“We are in a budget deficit,” she added. “And we’re going to pay, because these jerks think that this kind of behavior is okay.”
In a social media post shortly after Mission Local’s story was published, Walton called for more funding for independent oversight of the sheriff’s department to prevent incidents like the alleged May search.
“These are not isolated incidents,” he wrote. “This is a system that allows abuse to go unchecked because the offices responsible for accountability do not have the staff or resources they need to do their job.”
In 2020, San Francisco voted to create an independent oversight board that could investigate reports of deputy misconduct and poor conditions in the city’s jails. Walton has been a staunch advocate.
“We have never gotten the money needed from the mayor’s office to fully staff the sheriff’s department oversight board,” Walton said in an interview. “This is why we continue to see instances of misconduct like this in our jails — because the last two mayors have not wanted to fund the voters’ will.”
The Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August, a task force designed to cull city commissions recommended that the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board be eliminated.
The task force initially suggested that the Department of Police Accountability, another law enforcement watchdog, absorb its responsibilities. The task force later voted to recommend keeping the oversight board.
In a statement, the Department of Police Accountability wrote that it did not initiate an investigation into the alleged May search because a complaint from the public defender’s office about the incident “raised matters outside” the Department of Police Accountability’s agreement with the sheriff’s department.
The department did not elaborate further on the specifics of the agreement.
“As a woman and a mother of three girls,” Melgar said, she was “nauseated” when she read the allegations in Mission Local’s article.
While she had ideas for specific actions the sheriff’s department could take, she said that, “on a human level,” the reported May search was indicative of an “anti-female culture” within the sheriff’s department that could not be easily eliminated with more supervision.
“Imagine a workplace where people would think that it was okay to do strip searches of women naked in front of a bunch of guys who are making fun of them and threatening them with putting it on social media while they’re filming,” she said. “It is not okay in any way.”
Organizers rallying
In response to news of the alleged mass strip search, organizations including the Young Women’s Freedom Center and Sister Warriors Freedom coalition are planning a rally Monday at 10 a.m. outside the county jail at 425 Seventh St.
They will “demand that all deputies involved be suspended and removed from the jail until a full, independent investigation is completed,” according to a text message shared by organizers.
They want an “acknowledgement of the abuse,” and for offending deputies to step down, said Julia Arroyo, the executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center. Arroyo pointed out that many of the women inside the jail awaiting trial had not been convicted of crimes.
Deputies, she said, are tasked with ensuring their safety. Searches, she said, are supposed to follow “really strict guidelines.”
Arroyo, who was formerly incarcerated, said that the May incident was part of a decades-long pattern of abuse in the jail. She said other formerly incarcerated women will also speak about their experiences at the Monday rally.
Another goal of the demonstration, she added, was to ensure that women and transgender people in custody “know that we hear them and are working to ensure their protection on the inside.”
As SF politicos pander to residents, and promise to take all drug users off the streets, it really means let them be the Sheriff’s problem. So the D.A. and the Mayor “get tough” and the Sheriff’s department gets overwhelmed with lockdowns, riots, mandatory overtime for deputies. Maybe this scandal suggests the Sheriff’s Dept is not in shape to solve all our social problems?
Q: What does that have to do with deputies abusing folks?
Or are you saying it couldn’t be helped ‘because too much OT’?
Campers,
Problem is that after 32 years of building the best Sheriff’s department in the country (google 60 Minutes), Michael Hennessey retired and things have gone downhill since.
I personally vetted Miyamoto for Gonzalez and thought we had a winner.
I was wrong.
Last year with his jails clogged with addicts whose only crime was being addicts, Sheriff Miyamoto not only did not complain … he appeared with Breed at her rallies which is a bad sign, Charlie Brown.
Sheriff Hennessey’s surviving great idea for Justice agencies here was that we should have an elected Police Chief.
Thank God this is a Simulation.
lol
h.
Mayor Lurie, the fox is in the chicken coop. Miyamoto is a corrupt sheriff who hales from running a corrupt Sheriff’s Internal Affairs Dpt. He looks the other way, blesses nepotism and the old merry-go-round of city politics. Voters know little about the workings of the Sheriff’s Dpt. Moreover, they may care very little of the goings on in our jails due to scandal fatigue and a “lock ’em up” attitude. So, County Jail is a playpen for felons in uniform. Working there requires respect for the rule of law and it takes the same to root out this corruption. We finally have an Inspector General. The Department of Police Accountability has minimal staffing where it belongs, with a failed director who won’t place staffing except to adorn his ambition. Your Honor, these issues go beyond “fixing” the economy and cleaning the streets. Consulting with Paul Yep isn’t going to do the trick. You’re going to have to dig a little deeper.
The whole jail needs oversight. These poor woman, especially when there was complaint about this over two years ago. My son was abused at the hands of these “helpful” officers. Disgusting. Someone needs to be held accountable.
The jail has oversight. It is overseen by an elected official, scads of civil servants, and it’s very own oversight board. Seen any course-correcting accountability yet?
The sheriff’s Dept. Oversight is a joke. Their commission does nothing and I don’t think they even have a director for this agency as the first hired director resigned. Currently the Dept. of Police Accountability does investigate some SFSD complaints. I believe this is illegal as the city charter states DPA shall investigate the S.F. police dept. not the sheriff. This “agreement” takes DPA personnel away from their charter duties and into an area they have no training for. DPA is short handed so any investigator or staff assigned to the Sheriff’s oversight weakens the overall core mission of the DPA to investigate SFPD and stresses the DPA investigators. Either fund the Sheriff’s oversight board properly or decommission it, rewrite the city charter to give DPA the authority to investigate the Sheriff’s office with funding for those positions and proper training. Miyamoto has had quite a few scandals in the past few months but he is elected so I don’t know if he can be fired.
The term is ‘regulatory capture’ in business.
In government it’s called good ol’ corruption.
Yet another lawsuit against the SF Sheriff’s Dept for violating in-custody person’s civil rights, human rights and overall decency. What is going on with the training and leadership in that department?
Buck stops at the Sheriff.
How about during budget negotiations, the Sheriffs’ budget gets reduced by exactly the amount of the lawsuit payout?
My experience with impunity in the Sheriff’s office is instructive.
In early 2011, I went to an art party at John Avalos’ office when he was D11 supervisor. I had a bag of weed in my pack as usual. At the security check, a Deputy Sheriff McDaniels told me that I could not come into City Hall with weed. I’d explained that people do this all of the time. He then called backup and had me escorted out.
I then head over to Chris Daly’s bar on Market. Who was sitting on the first bar stool but Sheriff Mike Hennessey. He said, “Hey Marcos, what’s up?” I said, funny you should ask. A phone call later, he told said that if I wanted, I could go back to City Hall and attend the party, which I did.
Deputy McDaniels was not amused.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m wanting to testify on some land use item being heard in room 263. The place was packed, so I did what I usually do, enter the hearing room through the door closest to the dais and fill out a comment card to hand to the clerk.
At that point, four deputies, all four were Black as was McDaniels, manhandled me as the hearing was in session. Eric Mar, at that point unable to fog a mirror, was chairing the hearing and he just sat there like a lump.
They usher me out into the hallway, press my face against the marble by Ross MIrkarimi’s D5 office while he’s running for Sheriff. Ross’ legislative assistant, Rob Selna, pops his head out of the door at the commotion and we’re face to face. He asks me what’s going on. I responded that he should figure that out and tell me.
They zip tie me and take me down to a Sheriff’s van on the Grove Street side. After about 10 min, an older white deputy who I’d seen uneventfully for years at City Hall pops his head into the van and asks me why I’m here. Again, you tell me.
Within 5 minutes I was freed with no charges. This did not rise to the level of actionable civil rights violation. But it sure as hell discouraged me from going to City Hall.
My read is that McDaniel had to work hard to achieve his position in a racist society and like so many who have, they look down on white people who skated into the upper middle class. His thinking was probably that I was only challenging him because he was Black, when in truth I’m an equal opportunity pusher back on authoritarian tendencies.
That’s my experience with the culture of impunity in City Hall–piss off the wrong cop and they’ll use filing a speaker card for a hearing as a toehold for retaliation by incarceration–summary punishment.
excellent reporting. thank you
These perverts should be fired, and the women have a great class action suit, due to the fact that the perverts, were stupid enough to film the incident.
These perverts should pay and be thrown in jail. Let the inmates “guard” them
“These women are going to sue and we’re going to pay” Absolutely no proof of wrongdoing and our illustrious supervisor is calling for payouts. Any wonder why they’re suing?
Their claims are credible and under investigation. If substantiated, and they’re likely to do that, they will win lawsuits against the City because of this.
I don’t see why you don’t see that as a real problem and instead bend over backwards to defend those accused of perverting justice under color of duty.