On Aug. 12, 2024, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins filed charges against 26 people who, months prior, had blocked the Golden Gate Bridge in a pro-Palestine protest for four hours.
She charged eight of them with felony conspiracy and other misdemeanors, including 38 counts of false imprisonment.
They faced years in prison — more than a decade for those with felony charges — in a prosecution that ran two years, until a lengthy jury trial in the spring.
The outcome? Most cases were diverted or dismissed, and the seven who went to trial saw a handful of misdemeanor convictions against them, deadlocked felony charges, and 30-day jail sentences. Those seven plan to appeal their jail sentences, and will see weeks at most.
How much did it cost to get here?
The defendants say around $600,000 in tax dollars, and possibly more. That’s according to an analysis led by Nicky Gott, a software engineer who was among the 26 arrested on the bridge.
Gott assembled a 15-page spreadsheet estimating some of the costs involved in arresting, trying and prosecuting all 26 bridge protesters. For most figures, Gott used “conservative” and “best guess” estimates of government salaries and other public funds.
Gott’s analysis estimates that the costs of the recent trial, including the prosecutors, judge, jury, sheriff’s deputies and courthouse staff, amounted to somewhere between $218,000 and $255,000.
The defense lawyers — two of whom were public defenders, five court-appointed, and all paid by the public — accounted for some $282,000, based on dollar figures obtained directly from the defense team, Gott said.
All told, somewhere between $575,981 and $652,737 went into arresting, charging, prosecuting, and defending the protestors since the April 15, 2024 protest, according to the analysis summary.
The summary notes that it does not account for certain costs, like DA and defense investigators’ pay, and pre-trial lawyers. It also does not include what it would cost if any of the protesters are incarcerated in the future — currently around $127,788 per year, per inmate.
Legal experts contacted by Mission Local to check Gott’s work described the analysis as plausible, if lacking context.
“It doesn’t surprise me to see numbers of this magnitude,” said John Donohue, Stanford Law professor and empirical researcher.
Robert Weisberg, another Stanford Law professor who teaches criminal law and founded the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, described Gott’s analysis as “intellectually honest,” but said the dollar figure alone is “not a big shock.”
“The real issue here is what cases they didn’t prosecute, or which cases they prosecuted much more cheaply because they were doing this.”
Robert weisberg, Stanford criminal justice center
“Everything in criminal justice costs something,” Weisberg added. “All these people are going to be working and making money every day anyway.”
A proper academic analysis, said George Fisher, also a professor at Stanford Law, and leader of its criminal prosecution clinic, would likely draw a distinction between which costs represented an extra use of taxpayer funds versus fixed costs like staffing a courthouse. Gott’s does not.
Plus, an analysis would need to go beyond this case in order to make a more noteworthy comparative argument about the DA’s priorities.
“The real issue here,” said Weisberg, “is what cases they didn’t prosecute, or which cases they prosecuted much more cheaply because they were doing this.”
Jenkins did not comment on Gott’s numbers, but said that she stood by her decision to prosecute.
“I believe that we have sent the appropriate message to them that this type of behavior is not something that can happen,” the DA said.
Seen one way, the resources that went into this case tower over the misdemeanor convictions and light sentences that followed. But the hope of deterring future behavior plays a significant role in the resources prosecutors devote to a given case, the Stanford law professors said.
“When framing whether this prosecution was worth the costs, the ultimate sentence is relevant, but it’s not the only relevant thing,” said Fisher, who also worked as a prosecutor.
Donohue, the empirical researcher, put it another way: “I do think it’s valuable information to know how much criminal cases cost and think about whether it’s worth it,” he said.
“But,” he added, “the major function of criminal law is to deter socially harmful behavior.”
Jenkins believes she has done just that.
“This isn’t about incarcerating people for some excessive period of time,” she said. “It’s about making sure that we found the right form of accountability for what took place on that bridge.”
That day, more than two dozen protesters took the Golden Gate Bridge for about four hours to protest Israel’s assault on Gaza. They chained their arms together through metal tubes, and brought traffic to a standstill. The protest came several months after a separate pro-Palestine action blocked the Bay Bridge for several hours.
Jenkins added that the protest itself incurred “a number of other costs,” including the loss of potential bridge tolls and potential income for wage workers.
“To leave that out is dishonest,” Jenkins said.
In 2025, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District sought $163,000 in restitution from the protesters; the agency withdrew that claim a month later. The protesters later paid $5,300 to nine commuters for lost wages, KQED reported.
Last month, each defendant was charged with more than $1,000 in fines as part of their sentencing.
Meanwhile, many of the estimated costs in the analysis can be attributed to the lengthy jury trial last spring, which could have been avoided if the defendants accepted a plea deal. “We made what we believed was a fair offer, in this case, to each of them,” said Jenkins, but declined to share further details.
According to defense attorney John Viola, Jenkins offered two plea deals, one of which would have required pleading guilty to a felony and working for 60 days of labor under the sheriff’s work program, and another requiring a guilty plea to misdemeanor charges and working for 90 days.
Viola also said he was told that the DA’s office would not hinder efforts to expunge those felonies from the protestors’ criminal records.
When asked, Jenkins said she does not consider taxpayer cost when prosecuting.
“My job is to prosecute crime,” she said. “It is not to try to minimize cost for the courthouse.”
Jenkins did this while SFPD left rape kits untouched.
Jenkins and Lurie ignore rape so they can do what AIPAC demands.
Sigh, the comments on this thing are killing me. He who doesn’t know history is doomed to repeat it.
““Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” — Howard Zinn
So yes, civil disobedience is, by design, inconvenient. That’s kind of the point–getting attention for a cause that the majority of Americans now support: not funding a genocide!!
The Israeli government is now open about its intentions, which are in fact, a war crime: mass migration. Kicking Palestinians out of Gaza.
In 20 years, everyone will have been in favor of doing something to stop the genocide. These people did something when it was not easy, or convenient.
Should Martin Luther King Jr. not have walked the Edmond Pettus bridge in protest of segregation and white supremacy? That was illegal too.
Should Black students not have done the sit-ins at those segregated lunch counters? That’s trespassing.
We have a proud tradition of civil disobedience in this country.
If you think Israel is committing genocide, then you should cheer for the protesters. Were some people inconvenienced? Yep. Was it reasonable after 4 hours to force the protestors to leave by arresting them to allow the bridge to fully reopen. Sure, I guess.
Is spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to “teach them a lesson” a worthy way to spend our tax dollars.
Absolutely fucking not.
Do I feel “safer” thanks to Crooked Jenkins decisions? Fuck no.
Where are the Palestinians who are being “kicked out” going to? Into Israel? Into Egypt? Have you seen the massive efforts of the Egyptian government to construct multiple layers of security barriers and to flood smuggling tunnels along their shared border with Gaza? At the end of the day, the population of Gaza has also increased in the last 3 years. Where does that leave the rhetoric? I’m not justifying suffering here but rather bringing the discussion back down to earth and back to reality…
This case absolutely needed to be prosecuted!!
I totally support pro-Palestinian protestors, and I have frequently participated in many such protests.
What Israeli terrorists directed by Netanyahu’s government are doing is a violation of international law, genocide among other things.
HOWEVER, blocking the Golden Gate Bridge was a HUGE mistake, a media event that erodes public support for the pro-Palestinian protestors.
I didn’t support it then and I don’t support it now.
Without comparisons to other trial costs and lost productivity/toll collections, this is just fodder for trolls. Including this one….
Not included in the calculus – the disincentive for potential future protestors who aren’t willing to bear the risk of prosecution, and therefore the decreased likelihood of an incident like this repeating.
Whether that’s good or bad is your call.
What’s the point of this article?
Are you suggesting that we should apply the law based on the estimated cost of the process and result?
Are you saying that’s not happening already, all the time?
No, I’m asking what the point of the article is. There’s no info about what other cases cost. If you have the info that says prosecutions are only brought only after looking at the cost then you can clear up the what that I’m asking about.
I didn’t write the article but I see it as colorful play by play commentary on the foibles of our buffoonish DA. “Swing and a miss! Strike three!” I doubt that her fan base is impressed by this performance.
The important thing is that by halting commuter traffic two years ago for several hours on the Golden Gate Bridge between San Francisco and Marin, the protesters resolved the problems experienced by the Palestinians in Gaza 7400 miles away. Time and money well spent and those stuck in the delays deserved it.
I agree with the DA. It would be worth almost any amount to try to create a deterrent to these radicals who think it’s OK for them to shut down a Bay Area bridge any time they are unhappy with something that happens anywhere in the world.
Thank you DA Jenkins.
So are we trying to micromanage the judiciary now. Oh wait, MAGA’s been pursuing this for a while now, we can’t be left behind!
Democracy is not a spectator sport. To fight fascism, genocide and massive ecocide successfully, more and more Americans would be required to sacrifice some of their liberties, incurring jail time and even risking death at times. Some of us must be willing to pay far more than we ordinarily might feel comfortable with, if not this great price, for the rehabilitation of our world, and the continuance of our humanity. Will we?
“There will be no peace without justice, and no justice without sharing.” Maitreya, London
Ariana, join peace corps or JVC and help save the world. They need people like you.
Photo says it all. PhD 🤣