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 recommended that the Department of Police Accountability, another law enforcement watchdog, absorb its responsibilities.
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 9 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.”