{"id":491109,"date":"2026-10-10T03:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/491109\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T03:28:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:28:31","slug":"i-cant-breathe-man-beaten-on-camera-by-sfpd-lands-in-intensive-care-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/491109\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I can\u2019t breathe\u2019: Man beaten on camera by SFPD lands in intensive care unit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Francisco public defender\u2019s office on Thursday released police body-camera and security footage showing three officers punching and kneeling on a man last year in a SoMa apartment building. The office also accused the district attorney of trying to hide evidence from a jury and misleading the public about the case.<\/p>\n

San Francisco Police Department officers\u00a0kneeled on Kevon Gibson\u2019s head and neck and struck him with their fists during the Aug. 17, 2025, incident inside a Sixth Street building, public defenders said. Gibson can be heard pleading with officers and saying he can\u2019t breathe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gibson was hospitalized in intensive care for several days after the altercation. The officers contend that Gibson fought them.<\/p>\n

The public defender is filing complaints against the officers with the city\u2019s Department of Police Accountability and will seek to have state regulators decertify them, which would bar them from working in law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s our job as public defenders to fight back against government overreach, and to protect the community by confronting violence perpetrated by state actors,\u201d Public Defender Mano Raju said. \u201cThis is why we are exposing this police brutality and the district attorney\u2019s office\u2019s attempts to cover it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The public defender argues that this footage disproves police officers\u2019 claims about the altercation. | Source: Courtesy San Francisco Public Defender\u2019s Office<\/p>\n

Raju said that Gibson\u2019s words echoed those of Eric Garner, who died when placed in a chokehold by a New York City police officer, and that the SFPD officers\u2019 actions resembled those of Minneapolis officers who killed George Floyd. \u201cThank God Mr. Gibson is alive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to the public defender\u2019s office, the episode began when a resident confronted Gibson, who had been staying in the building to care for a friend. The resident called police and said Gibson had threatened him with a gun. Defenders said what the man described as a firearm was in fact a torch lighter.<\/p>\n

Police body-camera audio captured the resident making racist comments about Gibson, who is Black, and threatening to stab him, the defense lawyers said. The resident used the n-word to refer to Gibson and said he would \u201cstick this knife into his Black ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Gibson returned to his friend\u2019s apartment, running past the other resident\u2019s door in the hope of avoiding another confrontation, but the resident summoned police again with additional phony allegations, the public defenders said.<\/p>\n

\"AKevon Gibson was treated in an intensive care unit after being beaten by San Francisco police officers on August 17, 2025. | Source: Courtesy San Francisco Public Defender<\/p>\n

SFPD officers Brendan Caraway, Brian Conway, and Gabriel Rivera responded. Footage shown Thursday depicted the officers pounding on the door of the woman who is Gibson\u2019s friend, apparently believing he was inside, according to the public defender\u2019s office. The officers can be heard mocking Gibson\u2019s first name, calling him her \u201cbig ass boyfriend\u201d and telling her that if they kicked in her door, \u201cno one would care.\u201d<\/p>\n

An officer\u2019s camera shows Gibson emerging from an elevator and the cops telling him he was not under arrest and would not be pulled out, but two immediately grabbed his wrists, and a struggle ensued. Gibson said he was not resisting as the cops repeatedly hit him.\u00a0One officer said Gibson bit him. Surveillance video without audio shows officers pulling Gibson from the elevator and repeatedly striking him as he is on the floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DA\u2019s office gave a different account of what followed. It said Gibson was identified as a person with a gun at a residential hotel on Sixth Street and did not comply when officers ordered him out of an elevator. When officers tried to pat him down, it said, he began to \u201cactively resist\u201d and fight them, and three officers eventually restrained and handcuffed him. A loaded, unregistered 9mm Glock was found in his right pocket, the office said.<\/p>\n

Gibson was sedated and intubated in the hospital, defenders said, before being taken to jail, where he stayed for a year while awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

Defenders said prosecutors charged Gibson with making criminal threats, three felony counts of resisting arrest, and gun possession. They said the felony counts rested on officers\u2019 claims that Gibson bit one, punched another in the face, and nearly broke a third\u2019s thumb. Deputy Public Defender Bonnie Chan-Silen said the video footage refuted those claims.<\/p>\n

\"APublic Defender Mano Raju compared the treatment of Kevon Gibson by police to the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd.<\/p>\n

A jury acquitted Gibson of all three felony counts but convicted him of misdemeanor resisting arrest and unlawful gun possession. Prosecutors dismissed the threats charge during trial, defenders said, after problems with the complainant\u2019s credibility emerged.<\/p>\n

The district attorney\u2019s office said (opens in new tab)<\/a> Aug. 19 that Gibson was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and of three counts of resisting arrest. Defenders declined to discuss Gibson\u2019s criminal history.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompliance with our gun laws, especially for convicted felons, is not optional,\u201d District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in the statement. Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Jimenez, who prosecuted the case, said the verdict \u201crecognized the work that San Francisco police officers do every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chan-Silen said the statement amounted to a cover-up. \u201cBrooke Jenkins claiming victory, hiding any mention of police brutality, and thanking the very officers who the jury described as violent is deceitful and deeply unjust,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Defenders accused prosecutors of several missteps. They said staff from the office\u2019s Independent Investigations Bureau, which is supposed to examine police use of force independently, woke Gibson in the ICU to interview him and passed their notes to the prosecutor. They said Jimenez offered a plea deal that would have required Gibson to sign a waiver weakening potential civil claims against the officers. He declined.<\/p>\n

They also said Jimenez sought to show jurors body-camera video without audio and fought disclosure of evidence about the complainant, which a judge ordered turned over. The court allowed jurors to see and hear all of the footage.<\/p>\n

Gibson plans to appeal the gun conviction, saying he possessed the weapon briefly, out of necessity, because he feared the neighbor. His attorneys said he still suffers medical problems from the beating, including an eye injury.<\/p>\n

\"APolice said that Gibson bit one officer and nearly broke the finger of another while he contends that he did not resist the cops.<\/p>\n

The public defender\u2019s office said it plans to file a complaint with the Department of Police Accountability and to ask the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to decertify the officers. Defenders said they believe the officers are still working, and one was promoted shortly after the incident. Gibson is exploring a lawsuit, they said.<\/p>\n

The district attorney\u2019s office took umbrage in response Thursday. \u201cThe jury saw the video. The jury heard the evidence. The district attorney\u2019s office never asked the court to exclude this footage which we played for the jury,\u201d a spokesperson told The Standard by e-mail. \u201cThe jury convicted Mr. Gibson of four crimes. Calling this a \u2018cover-up\u2019 isn\u2019t just an attack on our prosecutors \u2014 it shows remarkable disrespect for the court and the jurors who heard the evidence and rendered the verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n

A police department spokesman said the district attorney\u2019s office\u2019s independent investigations bureau found the officers\u2019 use of force was justified under state law. The department is conducting its own administrative investigation, which the spokesman described as standard procedure after a bureau review. The statement did not say whether the officers are still on duty.<\/p>\n

Louis Wong, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said officers deserve \u201ca fair assessment of their actions based on the facts and the law, not inflammatory accusations or politically charged attacks.\u201d He said the evidence was presented in court, reviewed by a judge and weighed by a jury, which convicted Gibson of four criminal offenses. \u201cThose verdicts cannot simply be dismissed because the outcome does not fit the narrative being advanced by the public defender\u2019s office,\u201d Wong said. He said the union stands behind its officers and their right to due process, and that any misconduct allegations \u201cdeserve a thorough and impartial review, not a public rush to judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco public defender\u2019s office on Thursday released police body-camera and security footage showing three officers punching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[37854,101,30139,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-491109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-crisis-in-streets","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-district-attorney","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\/491109","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=491109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}