Allegations of abuse by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office will cost the taxpayers almost $3 million, new settlement proposals suggest.
The Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider Thursday/20 two lawsuits alleging mistreatment and in one case a death at the county jail.
Vincent Keith Bell, who has one leg and uses a wheelchair, won a $500,000 award in a jury trial two years ago after alleging he weas forced to stand and hop on one foot, among other abuse. This suit is over an earlier incident.
If, as expected, the supes approved the settlement, Bell, who is still in jail awaiting trial on murder charges, will pick up another $825,000.
The parents of Markwhan Kitcher-Tucker, meanwhile, are due to receive $2.8 million in a case alleging wrongful death in custody.
According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court, Kitcher-Tucker was severely mentally ill, had been hospitalized and “diagnosed with schizophrenia during a previous jail incarceration and had two Welfare and Institutions Code § 5150 psychiatric holds at San Francisco General Hospital for being a danger to himself, to others, or gravely disabled due to a mental disorder.”
But despite numerous incidents suggesting mental breakdowns in custody, he “continued to be housed in a cell with a bunk bed and items that could be used to harm oneself, rather than a safety cell, and he was provided no closer monitoring or suicide precautions,” the suit alleges.
“On January 10, 2021, after having gone nearly two weeks without any mental health treatment or assessments whatsoever, Mr. Kitcher-Tucker was found hanging by a sheet from the top bunk of his segregated cell.”
The City Attorney’s Office is recommending that that the supes approve the settlements—which typically means there’s enough of a case that the city wants to avoid going to trial.
That meeting starts at 10am. Perhaps some of the supes can ask what the Sheriff’s Office has done to change its procedures on handling mentally ill people in an era what City Hall seems to wants to make the county jail the first stop for people having crises on the streets.
I have been re-reading Timothy Snyder’s 2017 book, “On Tyranny,” which includes 20 lessons for avoiding authoritarianism in the US. Snyder is a historian and a Holocaust scholar, and he compares some of what happened in Germany in the 1930s to what’s happening in the US under Trump (his book came out during the first Trump term).
I just read former Sup. Dean Preston’s local piece, 10 Ways to Fight Fascism in San Francisco, which includes information on ICE raids, on standing with trans people, supporting non-corporate media, and “demand[ing] SF Act Like a Rebel City.”
Also:
Many city leaders are parroting the same reactionary, conservative talking points and tactics that have guided the Republican agenda for decades and, more recently, Trump’s MAGA movement.
While Trump calls for mass deportations, San Francisco “wants to bus more homeless people out of the city.” City leaders push misleading data and fearmongering narratives to justify criminalization and ousting of the poor. Meanwhile, while Trump is firing inspectors general who exercise independent oversight, our very own Mayor is removing a Black police commissioner with an independent voice for holding power accountable.
There is no question that the billionaire/MAGA agenda is alive and well here in San Francisco. We will not overcome these right wing extremists by adopting their misleading, offensive, and cruel framing which always seeks to punch down. Fighting fascism means rejecting its language, its tactics, and its relentless war on the poor.
There’s a lot of that going on.
While we are talking about this: I keep hearing the same question from so many of my friends and neighbors: Where are the Democrats? I haven’t heard much of anything from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who last time around took on Trump regularly and directly and publicly. Gov. Gavin Newsom seems suddenly afraid.
It’s as if there isn’t an opposition party in this country right now, certainly not among the folks who got their start in San Francisco.
I mean, 2026 races for Congress and the Senate are coming up quickly, and some Democrat will run for president in 2028.
What is the platform?
