SFPD - This Time Its <i>Child</i> Abuse

by Alex Cuff, Newsbrief Editor

by Jaxon Van Derbeken

San Francisco police officers improperly searched two girls last year and violated the rights of a 14-year-old boy they arrested, according to departmental charges that could cost five officers their jobs. The internal charges -- signed this month by Acting Chief Alex Fagan -- stem from a confrontation between police and three youth in Hunters Point that outraged the city's African American community. The incident occurred on Jan. 21, 2002 -- the national holiday set aside to honor slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. -- and led to an investigation by the Office of Citizen Complaints, resulting in the charges.

Charged are Officers Marcial Marquez and Adam Choy and Sgts. Sherman Lee and Walter Cuddy. A fifth officer has also been charged but remains unnamed and has not yet been served
with the complaint. The five officers will face hearings before the San Francisco Police Commission, which must determine what action to take against them.

According to the internal complaint, police were summoned by a report of a woman screaming as well as word that two African American men were seen taking guns out of a burgundy-colored
car near the Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point. The complaint alleges that Marquez and Choy, after arriving at the scene, improperly searched two girls for weapons after ordering them out of the car at gunpoint.

Marquez searched a 12-year-old girl, who offered no resistance but wondered why she was being searched, according to the charges. During the search, Marquez allegedly groped her with his open hands. Marquez's search violated the department policy that specifies that such searches of girls be done by female officers and was "unnecessarily intrusive, " according to the charges.

Choy was also charged with being "unnecessarily intrusive" in his search of a 14-year-old girl.
According to the complaint, Jerome King-Brown, a 14-year-old boy, started to protest the treatment of his 12-year-old cousin. King-Brown, who is 6 feet tall, afterward needed 11 stitches to close a wound received when an officer kneed him into the concrete, the complaint
alleges. "Several officers descended on the juvenile," the charges state, "forcing him face-first onto the asphalt pavement, and handcuffed him."

The officers left the boy with a lacerated lip that was bleeding heavily, the complaint states.
No excessive-force charges were lodged against any officer in the handling of King-Brown.
The acting lieutenant at the Bayview station that day, Sgt. Lee, is charged with six counts of misconduct related to the follow-up to the confrontation.

Lee allegedly allowed an unjustified criminal check on
the
youths involved. He is also accused of abandoning the
investigation of the initial report of armed men, of
failing to
properly advise King-Brown of his rights under
questioning at
the station and of failing to see that King-Brown got
proper
medical attention.

Lee also allegedly did not respond to efforts by the
boy's father
to lodge a brutality complaint and did not conduct the
mandated
use-of-force investigation after he complained that his
son had
been brutalized.

Sgt. Cuddy is accused in the complaint of neglect of
duty for
allegedly failing to follow the department's rules
governing
juvenile suspects.

Witnesses have said -- and one police official has
confirmed
-- that someone at the scene asked the fifth unnamed
officer
why guns were pointed at kids. The officer allegedly
replied:
"As long as you people are here, we will act like this."

The specifics of the allegations against the fifth
officer were
not available.

A representative of the officers suggested that she
would
challenge the charges based on a failure to file them in
time to
meet a one-year of statute of limitations, which
normally
would have lapsed last January.

"We'll be looking at all aspects, including whether they
are in
compliance with the statute of limitations," said
Katherine
Mahoney, attorney for the Police Officers Association.
"The law
does provide exceptions, including cases involving
multiple
officers as well as for when civil lawsuits have been
filed. "

Mahoney declined to comment on the specifics of the
case,
saying she had not seen all the allegations against the
five
officers.

Police have said officers were compelled to restrain
King-Brown because he was shouting and cursing and
displaying a "violent demeanor" and ignoring repeated
commands to "get back.''

Police had cited King-Brown for delaying arrests, but
juvenile
authorities said the case had been investigated and the
citation
dropped.

Susie McAllister, the mother of the 14-year-old girl,
whose
family has sued the department, says her child still
fears and
distrusts police in San Francisco.

"My child was violated," she said.

Witnesses have said that during the searches of the
girls, their
screaming, crying mothers were ordered by police to stay
back.

McAllister said the whole department needed to change.

"The San Francisco Police Department has a bad
reputation,"
McAllister said.

"It is not going to stop with those officers -- they
need to redo
the whole structure of the Police Department and the
training."

She said the "few bad apples" reflected negatively on
the entire
department.

"It makes it hard on the community," she said. "Who can
we
trust and turn to in the time of need?"

She criticized the lack of excessive-force charges
involving the
handling of King-Brown.

"That's child abuse. . . . You don't need to use that
much force on
anybody's child," McAllister said. "You can't go around
grabbing, pulling on them, not giving them their rights,
ignoring their parents."

She said officers would not respond to the angry parents
at the
scene. "The officers refused to communicate with us --
we
wanted to know, 'What in the hell is going on here? Why
are
you treating our kids like this?'

"In turn, we got guns pointed to our face; we were told
if we
moved, we were going to be shot," she said. "In the
meantime,
our kids are screaming. They didn't know what they had
done
-- they were treated like animals."

Ishmael Tarikh, director of Bay Area PoliceWatch,
lamented
that officers were not charged with excessive force
against
King-Brown.

"I thought that allegation should have been sustained,"
Tarikh
said. "The underlying cause for them to ever interact
with
those people was bogus -- they had no right to get
involved
with those people that night, let alone taking a
14-year-old
and body-slamming him to the pavement.

"They acted like thugs."