San Francisco officials have dropped the vast majority of cases stemming from the Dolores hill bomb, in which police arrested 117 people, 83 of them minors, during an operation targeting the annual skateboarding event.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced today that she is discharging most of the cases against adults swept up in the mass arrests during the Dolores Park hill bomb, with the possibility of filing charges at a later date.
“Misdemeanor citations presented to our office for failure to disperse and inciting a riot will be discharged at this time,” the DA’s office wrote in a statement. “The misdemeanor citations presented to my office for inciting a riot and failure to disperse are being discharged because we can not prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury the guilt of any specific individuals cited.”
Late Friday, Katherine Miller, the Chief Juvenile Probation Officer for San Francisco, said that the cases against juveniles were largely being dismissed, too, confirming earlier reporting by Mission Local.
“The Juvenile Probation Department has reached out to all parents/guardians of the 81 youth cited for refusing to disperse, inciting a riot and conspiracy charges related to the hill bomb event, to inform them that we are closing out their citations with no additional action,” Miller said. The Juvenile Probation Department handles misdemeanors against juveniles.
Of the 117 people arrested that day, 113 were encircled in a kettling action by police officers; those adults and teenagers will see their cases discharged, pending further investigation. Two additional teenagers face charges of assault against an officer and resisting arrest from earlier in the day, and the charging status of the other two adults — also arrested earlier that day — was not clear.
One of the adults who had their case discharged may still face a felony gun charge, which is awaiting further DNA analysis.
The investigation into “vandalism, property crime, and other crimes” from that day is ongoing, the DA’s office said, meaning that individuals could be re-charged at a later date, if evidence shows they took part in other alleged crimes that day, like graffiti or assaults against officers.
And the Juvenile Probation Department may also bring allegations at a later date, if they receive evidence of other wrongdoing. “At this time, the police are continuing their investigation to identify individuals who participated in other related incidents that day (such as vandalism and battery),” Miller wrote in an email. “We are awaiting further information from the police.”
Class action lawsuit in the works
The announcement is not impacting a class-action civil rights lawsuit against the city, according to Rachel Lederman, a protest attorney who has met with dozens of parents, teenagers, and arrested adults. Lederman said today that a lawsuit would be filed in federal court, alleging civil rights violations and unlawful arrest.
“We are definitely proceeding with a lawsuit for civil rights violations, which we are planning to file as a class action, so that it potentially includes everyone that was arrested on 17th Street,” said Lederman. “The police department created the class by sealing everyone into that block, so that they were all treated as a mass, without any individual basis for each arrest, as the constitution requires.”
The police response led to allegations of misconduct, pledges to investigate departmental policy, and promises to sue the city: Parents arriving that night to pick up their children were met with stone-faced walls of police officers. They saw their teenagers held on the street for hours in the dark, zip-tied one by one, and transported to Mission Station nearby, where they were released well into the night.
The last child was released at 4:15 a.m. Several teenagers urinated on themselves and had panic attacks, according to those arrested, and others had circulation to their hands cut off from the tight restraints.
The class action lawsuit, Lederman added, could be dropped altogether — if the city were to “acknowledge the police’s wrongful conduct,” compensate the arrested, drop all charges, and destroy arrest records.
“Then, maybe we could work all this out,” she said.
DA can file charges later, but evidence may be tainted
Lederman, for her part, said any attempt to use fingerprints and mugshots obtained during the mass arrest to match the teenagers and young adults to crimes that day might, itself, be illegal — and thus could be challenged in court.
“That identifying information was seized unlawfully, because the whole mass arrest was illegal,” she said. “The kids, in particular, were detained for this long period of time in order for them to take their thumbprints at the station — that’s the only reason they didn’t write them a ticket and release them to their parents on the street.”
The San Francisco Police Department has voluminous body camera footage from the dozens of officers patrolling the park that day, a small portion of which it showed at a Police Commission meeting last month. At that meeting, the police showed video of people throwing a metal can, a glass bottle, and two fireworks at officers.
Social media footage also shows hill bomb participants tagging a Muni tram, and graffiti was seen on Mission High School and several buses nearby. A Muni spokesperson estimated the damage to vehicles at $70,000.
It was the largest mass arrest of teenagers in at least six years, according to Police Chief Bill Scott, coming after years of serious injuries and one death at the skateboarding event, which sees skaters from across the Bay Area “bomb” the hill by going as fast as possible down a two-block stretch of Dolores Street.
The DA has a year to file misdemeanor charges. Jenkins, in her statement, said that while she believed police had “probable cause to act to disperse the group,” the mass arrests were likely too indiscriminate to hold up in court.
“The evidence does not clearly show which specific individuals were inciting a riot, heard the dispersal orders, and refused to comply with dispersal orders,” her statement read.
That is in line with the accounts of teenagers themselves, many of whom said that they were walking home or passing through the Mission when police corralled them, ordering them one way and then the other before eventually trapping them between lines of officers and arresting them.
The DA’s statement noted that prosecutors would be hard-pressed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any one individual caught up in the mass arrest had heard dispersal orders and willfully remained on-site.
Now, can we get the dots on Dolores Street removed? They’re murder going over them on a bike.
And the police commission is taking the month of August off just after its two most lively sessions post Dolores Street and an officer involved shooting. See you in September.
So the lesson here is: “vandalize, foment a riot, throw firecrackers and bottles at the police and nothing will happen to you, because after all, this is “progressive SF”, where no good deed goes unpunished. Wonder what will happen next year with Hillbomb??? Will the hooligans come back, now emboldened knowing that SFPD’s hands will be tied behind their back?
No, the lesson here is
“If officers want to arrest someone for vandalizing, fomenting a riot, throwing firecrackers and bottles at the police, they should gather the evidence against the individuals guilty of said crimes and arrest those individuals.” That’s actually kinda how the American justice system is fundamentally built to work. That process should not be confused with – as a random example, kettling a whole block of underage individuals (many of whom would unquestionably be curious onlookers), ignoring law and department procedures as you perform mass arrests, ignore or willfully violate your own policies regarding arrest, parental contact, and representation of minors, and then acting all surprised and indignant and blaming “woke” when you end up costing your city absurd amounts of money settling the lawsuits you’re generating.
“Progressive San Francisco”? Brooke Jenkins? Isn’t that something of an oxymoron? Be careful. DA Jenkins may sue you for slander and defamation.