The 113 adults and children arrested by San Francisco police officers at the notorious 2023 Dolores Park skateboarding “hill bomb” can legally join forces and sue the city together, a federal judge said on Thursday.
It’s a significant victory for plaintiffs: Instead of filing suits individually, they can share a legal team, and others arrested that night can join the case as it progresses.
“The class certification decision is one step toward finally getting justice for these young people,” said Rachel Lederman, an attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which is representing five teenagers arrested that day.
“SFPD engaged in an outrageous round-up and mass arrest of children and youth,” she said. “They kettled them between police lines and arrested them unlawfully, without a reasonable basis to believe that they had committed crimes.”
The city’s former police chief said at the time it was the largest mass arrest of teenagers during his tenure.
17th Street on July 8, 2023, when officers arrested more than 100 mostly young people. Photo by Joe Rivano Barros.
The class-action status allows all 113 adults and children arrested to join an existing lawsuit and win compensation if the city settles or a jury awards damages, and effectively makes that potential pot of money larger. It is unclear how large a settlement or judgement would be.
But because San Francisco police officers were on the clock as city employees the night of the arrest, any eventual judgement would be paid out of the city’s general fund. Police overtime the night of the hill bomb cost the city $143,000. Any judgement would add to that.
The hill bomb is a largely informal event put on by skateboarders who speed down the hill next to the park. It is dangerous: In 2017, skater broke his ankle when a police sergeant knocked him off his board, and a skateboarding icon suffered a serious head injury; in 2019, a skateboarder went into a coma; in 2020, a 23-year-old was killed in a collision; and in 2022 a fight resulted in a stabbing.
San Francisco police officers cracked down in 2023, going block by block to push people away from the park, and declared the gathering an unlawful assembly. They eventually corralled a group of dozens on 17th Street and arrested them all.
Eighty-one of those arrested were children between 12 and 17 years old, according to plaintiffs, and many were held past 11 p.m. on the street in the cold.
Parents of those arrested said many of their children were just passing through and that the police rounded up the group without checking if each person was involved in the hill bomb. The police say the group as a whole violated the unlawful assembly declarations made earlier that evening, and the city has fought the lawsuit.
“SFPD exercised appropriate crowd control at the 2023 Hill Bomb in order to protect public safety,” wrote Jen Kwart, a city attorney spokesperson, in a statement Friday. “The City looks forward to continuing to present our case in the coming months.”
San Francisco police officers lined up at the intersection of 19th and Dolores streets during the shutdown of the hill bomb on July 8, 2023. Photo by Joe Rivano Barros.
The group was detained between lines of police officers for hours. Boys said they urinated in a bucket tossed down by a neighbor; girls said others wet themselves when they were eventually transported on buses two blocks away to the Mission District police station for processing. Others had to wait as long as seven hours before using a bathroom, according to the suit.
Parents of the kids arrived throughout the night, screaming at officers to be allowed to see their children. They were rebuffed.
The last child was released at 4 a.m. from the Mission police station nearby.
Four of the teenagers arrested that year sued the city on Dec. 19, 2023, alleging violations of local, state and federal law. The class-action certification allows all the others to join that existing lawsuit.
One teenager is being represented separately.
The subsequent hill bomb in 2024 was a far cry from the earlier fiasco. San Francisco police, unlike in 2023, made it loud and clear that they would not tolerate a hill bomb, causing skaters to take notice. Police barricaded off the street, but the crowds simply moved one block over, skated for a few hours, and left.
The city called the 2024 hill bomb a “huge success.” There was no Dolores Park hill bomb this year.