San Francisco police may have violated a long list of their own rules when they detained more than 80 youth during a crackdown on the Dolores Hill skateboard event Saturday night.
Public Defender Mano Raju noted in a statement today:
Showing up in riot gear, pointing their weapons at people, kettling children, and detaining them on the street or at the police station for several hours, is emblematic of the SFPD’s misguided use of resources and their willingness to criminalize youth.
We are very concerned that the SFPD may have failed to follow protocol that requires a defense attorney to speak with any youth before they are read their Miranda rights and questioned by police. Our Youth Defense unit was notified in real time that police had detained approximately ninety youth, but never got a call back to provide legal advisories to any of them to inform them of their rights. It is unclear whether those youth were questioned or Mirandized.
We have heard from several parents whose children were detained for up to four hours, and some were taken to SF General Hospital for unknown reasons before being released to their parents. We have heard from at least one family whose child was detained on their way home despite having no skateboard or any affiliation with the event.
The department has very specific rules and policies for the arrest or detention of people under 18, and they’re set out in General Order 7.01. Among the rules:
Members should avoid bringing juveniles into any police facility (including district stations) that contain a lockup for adults.
In secure and non-secure detention, members shall ensure that the following amenities are made available to juveniles: Reasonable access to toilets and washing facilities, A snack if the juvenile has not eaten within 4 hours, reasonable access to drinking water, [and] privacy during visits with family, guardian, and/or lawyer, and reasonable access to a telephone.
Immediately after taking the juvenile to a place of confinement and, except where physically impossible, no later than one hour after he/she has been taken into custody, allow the juvenile to make as least two telephone calls: one call completed to his/her parent or guardian, a responsible person or his/her employer, and another call completed to an attorney.
Based on the reporting I’ve seen (Mission Local’s Joe Rivano Barros was on the scene), many of those procedures were ignored.
Some of the kids had to urinate in their pants because they were not given access to bathrooms. Many reported no food or water, and some were not released until more than four hours had passed.
An email to SFPD public affairs was not immediately returned; I will update when I hear from them.
Emily Goldman, manager of the Youth Defender Unit at the PD’s Office, told me the cops are required to call them anytime juveniles are arrested. “We are on call 24/7, and I was on duty that night,” she told me. “I got an unusual call because of such a large number of juveniles, and I asked the officer to call me back when he knew how many were actually arrested. He never called back.”
She said: “We are pretty concerned. We have a working group looking at policies for how to handle this vulnerable population, and they were all thrown out the window as far as I can see.”
I can’t see how DA Brooke Jenkins can actually file charges in most of these cases, but still: “I can imagine how traumatizing it was,” Goldman said. “We are criminalizing juvenile behavior.”
Sup. Rafael Mandleman, who at first was making no comment, told KTVU News that he thinks the entire event should be shut down in the future. Good luck with that; the skaters will return, and if the cops return, we will see the same thing again.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the neighborhood, said the ‘Hill Bomb’ event should be shut down altogether. He said the police response was appropriate.
“Unless we can figure out a way to make this a safe event that does not attract folks who have turned it into a destructive event, I don’t think this should continue,” he said.
