Judge questions probable cause for mass arrest of minors at San Francisco skateboarding event

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) —  A federal judge probed San Francisco over a 2023 mass arrest after an unsanctioned skateboarding event known as the Dolores Park Hill Bomb, saying the plaintiffs’ movements prior to being detained seemed unlikely to be of one cohesive group.

At a hearing for summary judgment Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros asked San Francisco City Attorney Reilly Stoler about the specific details of the movement of a group of arrested minors compared to other people whom the city claims defaced Muni vehicles and threw glass bottles at police officers.

“What made them believe that those people on that block were involved?” she asked about the police officers’ conduct, noting that many people may have been in the area but did not do anything illegal.

Using large displays of a map showing the streets near Mission Dolores Park and playing body camera footage, Stoler argued the officers had probable cause to contain and detain a group of people after several dispersal orders to leave the area went unheeded.

“That was the moment when a reasonable officer would believe that the group that had stayed together was an unlawful assembly,” said Stoler.

Plaintiff attorney Rachel Lederman argued against Stoler’s narrative, saying “pretty much every single one of the facts that counsel reported are disputed.”

Lederman told the court about declarations from several plaintiff minors who were near Dolores Park to get ice cream or go to the park, when the dispersal orders occurred, and started to move in the direction the police instructed them to. Ultimately, she said, kids were arrested with others who may or may not have been part of a larger, unruly group.

While attempting to figure out a play-by-play of the events leading up to the mass arrest, Cisneros also tried to understand the city’s evidence of probable cause as it applied to the entire group arrested.

“Was there something specific to how they were conducting themselves?” she asked. “Was there anything else specific that the officers considered, was the group chanting anything? Did they look a certain way? Were they skateboarding?”

A class of juvenile plaintiffs sued the city and its police officers in December 2023 after being arrested and detained following the July 8, 2023, annual event where skateboarders fly down steep hills at high speed.

Defendants include the city and county of San Francisco, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott, and SFPD Captain Thomas Harvey, the acting senior officer on the scene at 17th and Dolores streets in San Francisco.

The event was unsanctioned, and police in riot gear broke up the event after they said it turned violent, arresting 117 people, 83 of whom were minors. None of those arrested was charged with a crime.

The plaintiffs claim to be merely bystanders, briefly stopping by to watch the event. The plaintiffs say they were left out in the cold in tight handcuffs and were not allowed to use the bathroom, and that the police violated their own policy by failing to check parents’ IDs or otherwise ensure that adults picking up children were authorized to do so.

They claim their First and Fourth Amendment rights to free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure were violated. The youths also brought Fourteenth Amendment race discrimination claims against the city since the vast majority of those arrested were Hispanic or Black.

In June 2024, Cisneros ruled that the officers are not immune from other civil rights and false arrest claims, as it is plausible they lacked probable cause to conduct the arrests. However, she dismissed the First Amendment claims.

Cisneros did not indicate her thoughts on summary judgment from the bench and took the matter under submission. Jury selection for a trial is tentatively scheduled for October 16.