{"id":98687,"date":"2025-12-17T20:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/98687\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T20:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:17:10","slug":"orgs-want-deputies-accused-of-sf-mass-jail-strip-search-removed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/98687\/","title":{"rendered":"Orgs want deputies accused of SF mass jail strip search removed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social justice organizations on Tuesday hand-delivered letters to the offices of elected officials at San Francisco City Hall, demanding they do more to protect women in city jails.<\/p>\n

Last month, 19 women filed a claim with the city alleging that, on May 22, sheriff\u2019s deputies ordered them to undress in front of each other, laughed at them, and filmed the proceedings with their body-worn cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Immediately after Mission Local first reported the allegations<\/a> on Nov. 20, several members of the Board of Supervisors called for action<\/a>. Criminal justice, human rights, and women\u2019s advocates rallied<\/a> in front of the jail at 425 Seventh St. the following week.<\/p>\n

Now, over 20 organizations \u2014\u00a0the San Francisco Public Defender\u2019s Office and Young Women\u2019s Freedom Coalition among them \u2014\u00a0have co-signed a list of demands<\/a> to Mayor Daniel Lurie, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. <\/p>\n

The groups asked for the deputies allegedly involved to be suspended, for the woman to be released from jail and given counseling while they wait for their cases to go to trial, and for strip searches to be conducted only when there is reasonable suspicion of contraband.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are specifically troubled by the horrific May 22nd mass strip search of women in the jail and the deeply troubling harassment of women that has followed,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cWe are also deeply concerned that the Sheriff\u2019s Office is effectively condoning gendered violence in the jail by failing to take the reports of the mass strip searches seriously and by allowing the supervisors and deputies involved to remain in positions of authority over the impacted women.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group also asked the district attorney\u2019s office to consider trauma resulting from the alleged strip searches as mitigating factors in the impacted women\u2019s cases. They want Lurie and the Board of Supervisors to fully fund the Sheriff\u2019s Oversight Board<\/a>, which is currently without an inspector general to independently review concerns about the jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AAdvocates gather in City Hall before delivering their demands regarding women\u2019s jail conditions to San Francisco elected officials on Dec. 16, 2025. Photo by Abigail Van Neely.<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s department had already taken corrective measures and closed an initial investigation into the May 22 incident, said spokesperson Tara Moriarty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An unknown number of jail supervisors were found to have violated policy after the sheriff\u2019s initial investigation, according to several sources who work in the jail. They said, however, that they were not aware of any deputies who were suspended or reassigned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This month, the Department of Police Accountability opened a \u201csupplemental investigation\u201d at the sheriff\u2019s request. It had earlier declined to do so because the incident \u201craised matters outside\u201d its agreement with the sheriff\u2019s department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moriarty said she was also unaware of any staffing changes related to \u201cactivity from the May 22 searches.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bay Area officials continued to raise concerns about strip searches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a Dec. 5 meeting, William Palmer, president of the Sheriff\u2019s Oversight Board, said he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d to \u201chave to hear things about the jail from Mission Local\u201d instead of being informed by sheriff\u2019s staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a Dec. 9 meeting, a member of the Santa Clara Commission on the Status of Women suggested that San Francisco\u2019s counterpart propose policy recommendations to improve women\u2019s conditions at the jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And at City Hall on Tuesday, over a dozen representatives from the public defender\u2019s office and advocacy groups, including Nuestra Causa, the San Francisco Women\u2019s Housing Coalition and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, walked door to door delivering letters. Many of them had family members serving time, or had once been incarcerated themselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They were mostly met in the hallway by supervisors\u2019 legislative aides, who agreed to pass on the letters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A couple of these aides had been on a tour of the women\u2019s unit of the county jail on Dec. 8, which included Miyamoto, investigators with the Department of Police Accountability, and members of different city commissions. Several recalled higher-ranking members of the sheriff\u2019s department telling them that grievances aren\u2019t always brought to their attention.<\/p>\n

\"ARafael Mandelman, president of the Board of Supervisors, personally received a letter when he was met by a dozen organizers outside his office on Dec. 16, 2025. Photo by Abigail Van Neely.<\/p>\n

District 11 supervisor Chyanne Chen (who has put a hearing regarding the allegations on the supervisors\u2019 January calendar) and District 10 supervisor Shamann Walton (who created the ballot measure to fund sheriff\u2019s oversight) stepped outside their offices to talk with the people delivering letters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without oversight, Walton said, the dynamic between women being held in county jail and the deupties overseeing them is that of \u201cfox guarding the henhouse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Veronica Tellez, one of the advocates who speaks only Spanish, was shy when the group began knocking on doors. But when she learned that District 7 supervisor Myrna Melgar was from El Salvador and that Juvenile Hall was in her district, Tellez stepped to the front.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melgar was unavailable, but her aide, Jennifer Fieber, thanked the group for ensuring \u201cvoices hidden from society have a voice out here.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the group arrived at Lurie\u2019s office, a receptionist took the list of demands. Then the group moved on toward the sheriff\u2019s office. They arrived to confusion: \u201cYou all are here to deliver a letter?\u201d a deputy asked. A few minutes later, Moriarty emerged, thanked the group for coming and promised to thoroughly read their demands and relay them to Miyamoto.<\/p>\n

Before they left, Julia Arroyo and Foreign Tonga, members of the Young Women\u2019s Freedom Center, described to Moriarty their own experiences \u2014 both had been held in the jail, and did not remember it fondly. <\/p>\n

\u201cI went through a lot of trauma,\u201d said Tonga. \u201cI just want that to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social justice organizations on Tuesday hand-delivered letters to the offices of elected officials at San Francisco City Hall,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,9200,104,106,105,38813],"class_list":["post-98687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-sheriffs-office","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sheriffs-department-oversight-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98687","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=98687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}