Teens Sue San Francisco After Mass Arrest

Police in San Francisco violated their juvenile detention policies with the mass arrest of around 80 under-18s after an unsanctioned skateboarding event in July, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by four of the teens. According to the class-action lawsuit, riot police “corralled” the teens on a street, along with around 30 other young people 18 or older, and held them for more than three hours without food, water, or access to bathrooms, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The teens describe being “freezing, thirsty, and hungry, needing to pee,” Rachel Lederman, an attorney for the teens, tells ABC7. “There were teenagers that had to pee in their pants because they were not provided bathrooms.” The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages.

The group, mostly between the ages of 13 and 17, were allegedly handcuffed with zipties, the Washington Post reports. They were detained after police issued a dispersal order at Dolores Park, where skateboarders race down a steep hill in the annual “Hill Bomb” event. Police said they increased their response this year because the event has led to injuries in the past and a death in 2020, as well as violence and property damage. According to the lawsuit, the group of juveniles detained by police included people who were trying to obey the dispersal order and teens who were stopped streets away from the park. They were eventually taken to a police station to be cited and released. Charges of refusing to disperse and inciting a riot were later dropped for all the detained juveniles.

Police said bottles and firecrackers were thrown at them during the event and streetcars were vandalized. Lederman, however, says the arrests were civil rights violations because police “had no reason to believe that any of the young people they actually arrested had done those things.” “Police were supposedly responding to safety concerns about this skateboarding event,” she tells the Post. “But in fact it was police that endangered children by surrounding them on the street and holding them in the cold and darkness.” The lawsuit says the parents of some juveniles were not contacted after the arrests, a violation of department policy. Police policy also states that detained juveniles should have “reasonable” access to toilets and drinking water. (Read more San Francisco stories.)