In response to Fielder\u2019s initial letter of inquiry<\/a>, Chief of Police Derrick Lew rejected Fielder\u2019s description of\u00a0 SFPD\u2019s response as \u201cclashing with residents and visitors participating in Pride activities.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Lew instead described SFPD\u2019s behavior at Trans March as the outcome of an effort to arrest several people who had been spotted using Super Soaker-style water guns filled with paint to spray-paint buildings and private security cameras. \u201cA Department drone helped track two vandalism suspects to the area of Turk and Taylor Streets, capturing footage of them placing the water guns into a paper bag, discarding the bag on the sidewalk, and removing their outer clothing and face coverings in an apparent attempt to blend back into the crowd of law-abiding marchers,\u201d Lew wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen officers moved to detain the two suspects,\u201d Lew continued, they were blocked from doing so by a crowd \u201cestimated at roughly 300 people\u201d that linked arms, chanted for the suspects\u2019 release, and threw glass bottles. \u201cAs officers attempted to place the two detained individuals into a patrol car, one person climbed onto the roof of the vehicle and was pulled down by officers, and another forced open the rear door in an attempt to free the suspects, while others pushed officers back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the size and intensity of the crowd, additional officers were called in,\u201d Lew concluded.<\/p>\n Lew\u2019s response did not answer questions from Fielder, such as what the total number of officers deployed to the scene of both events was. He stated only that \u201cPride Command\u201d at the Southern Station was staffed with \u201capproximately 24 personnel (three sergeants and 21 officers)\u201d the\u00a0 evening of Trans March, and that SFPD does \u201cnot have a complete count of the number of officers who responded to the Stud Alley incident.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In her second letter, Fielder quoted extensively from a letter from Rainbow Families Action<\/a>, a group for parents of trans and gender-expansive youth, some of whom were present at the Trans March. <\/p>\n The letter described parents who were there with their children seeing, \u201cA large pack of police officers came charging past us, weapons drawn and with a terrifying enough urgency that one officer fell. Police cars raced down streets filled with marchers who dove to the sidewalks. We couldn\u2019t see where they were headed, and started to fear the worst. The Pulse massacre anniversary echoed in our heads \u2026 We were terrified. Our kids were terrified.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Fielder\u2019s letters of inquiry come as part of a larger push for answers about SFPD\u2019s deployment of officers over Pride Weekend. In the three weeks since the initial arrests, there have been protests, petitions, and community meetings. <\/p>\n A letter with demands for change circulated by the organizers of the Trans March received more that 1,500 signatures, which organizers presented to the mayor\u2019s office<\/a> on Monday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At a police commission meeting on July 8, seats were packed with people wrapped in pride flags and holding signs with slogans like \u201cCops out of Pride\u201d and \u201cSFPD = Waste.\u201d The meeting lasted nearly three hours as participants filed up to speak at public comment. Over and over, people asked what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy were officers pointing rifles at a peaceful legal gathering? There were children there after all,\u201d one person asked. \u201cHow is this making our community safer?\u201d<\/p>\n Trans March\u00a0tied to Compton\u2019s Cafeteria 60 years earlier<\/p>\n When Jace Ritchey, one of the marchers at Trans March this year, neared the intersection of Turk and Taylor on June 26, 2026, they were expecting to see dancing.\u00a0<\/p>\n For years, Ritchey has attended the march without fail. This year, there were rumors that something special was going to happen. \u201cThere were whispers about it.\u201d Ritchey said. \u201cThere was going to be a performance with dancing and music off the side of a building \u2014 like a literally off the walls performance.\u201d<\/p>\n In August of 1966, 60 years ago, the Compton\u2019s Cafeteria riots began at that same intersection, changing the course of history in San Francisco. The riots, in response to the harassment and arrest of trans people dining at Gene Compton\u2019s Cafeteria for the crime of \u201cfemale impersonation,\u201d occurred three years before the Stonewall riots, in what historian Susan Stryker called the \u201cfirst known instance of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment.\u201d To commemorate the anniversary, march-goers this year were awaiting something special.\u00a0<\/p>\n The performance didn\u2019t happen. Instead, as the protest neared its end, SFPD officers entered the crowd in an attempt to detain several people. In the letter, Lew writes that SFPD had identified the people that they sought to arrest through drone footage, but also wrote that the suspects had already discarded the Super Soakers they were using to spray cameras and buildings and tried to melt back into the crowd \u2014\u00a0meaning that it was unlikely that the crowd knew why SFPD officers had suddenly marched into their midst.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI started to hear screaming and shouting,\u201d said Renee Coe, another march goer, at a rally outside of City Hall on Monday. \u201cI saw that a squad car had driven into the crowd. In the middle of the crowd I saw dozens of police officers in full riot gear hitting people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe arrests in both incidents involved a small number of people out of many thousands who attended these events peacefully,\u201d Lew wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for those attending the march, the distinction didn\u2019t feel quite as clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople began to flee for their safety and the consensus was that the Trans March was being shut down, and there would be a mass arrest,\u201d Ritchey said. \u201cWe were there to learn about and commemorate this event from 60 years ago, and suddenly we were living it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In total, six people were arrested at Trans March for charges of felony vandalism, conspiracy, obstructing a peace officer, and battery on a peace officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next evening, on Saturday, June 27, a large crowd gathered downtown for the \u201cStud Alley<\/a>\u201d party on Kissling Street. The informal gathering had become large and well-known enough that some of the original attendees had tried to cancel it<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re starting to feel that the alley has outgrown itself,\u201d they wrote in a post on Indybay. \u201cEach year it gets bigger, more people show up and not all of them share our dreams.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The first two arrests occurred around 10 p.m., when two participants were arrested. The party reformed on nearby Washburn Street, which one participant described as \u201cbigger and a lot more energetic.\u201d<\/p>\n Video footage shows officers forming a line on Howard Street between Ninth and Washburn streets, where the party was allegedly taking place. Many participants allege that they heard no dispersal orders before the line advanced into the alley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nikki Caballero, who was at both locations of the party, says that she did not hear any dispersal orders at the second gathering. \u201cThey had given no warning,\u201d Caballero said. \u201cI\u2019ve been to protests and marches before and I know that usually the police will give a dispersal order before they try to do a mass arrest,\u201d Caballero said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI saw people getting swung on,\u201d Caballero recalled. \u201cOne young feminine person got thrown to the ground and dragged by her ponytail.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know from the outside it looks like just a dumb street rave, but it really does mean a lot to a lot of people,\u201d another participant said, who preferred to remain anonymous. \u201cThat is the most violence I\u2019ve ever seen at one of these parties. That\u2019s the most people I\u2019ve ever seen getting hurt\u201d<\/p>\n SFPD has been accused of heavy-handed policing in situations like this before, including at several anti-ICE protests last summer<\/a>. But the department\u2019s response has, for some, brought back memories of when police officers openly harassed<\/a> and arrested queer people. \u201cThe minute I saw the press reports, I began thinking of the parallels historically and the ways in which these actions reflect long standing, deep seated institutional challenges with the SFPD,\u201d said Gerard Koskovich, a queer public historian.\u00a0<\/p>\n What stood out particularly, said Koskovich, was the intensity of SFPD\u2019s response to a relatively low-level offense. \u201cSpray painting a building is not going to harm anybody physically, right? It is not an activity that justifies police violence as a response, and police violence includes things like using pepper spray, using nightsticks, physically, violently arresting people.\u201d<\/p>\n Koskovich cited events like the Halloween crackdown of 1979 and the Castro Sweep in 1989, where minor infractions provoked massive police crackdowns.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe past isn\u2019t over,\u201d Koskovich said. \u201cIt\u2019s still present and reproducing itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supervisor Jackie Fielder has sent a second letter of inquiry to the San Francisco Police Department, asking for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[236,141770,101,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-404045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-police","tag-pride-2026","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/062026_ZM_TransMarch-47-930x620.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Protestors and marchers during the Trans March at Mission-Dolores Park on June 26, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n