Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies Brutally Beat Man in San Francisco's Mission District

(Photographic still taken from public defender's video of the beating. Full video below.)


During the beating, the fat pig on the right hits the man with his baton so vigorously that you can hear the pig grunting with each strike. It's apparent the two pigs relished the opportunity to pummel the man and would have continued for longer had other pigs not arrived when they did. It's not until over eight minutes into the video that a wheelchair is rolled into the scene, with the man being removed from the ground twelve minutes after the beating began. (According to how the defender's office describes the workings of the time-lapse surveillance system that recorded the incident, the actual times are double what is shown in the video, meaning the man lay in the street for about sixteen minutes and was not taken away for over twenty.)

While the San Francisco Chronicle's Vivian Ho writes that the video merely raises "questions" about whether there was excessive use of force, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said the two deputies clearly used excessive force in an encounter that was "reminiscent of Rodney King." (Especially in that the severe beating occurred after a car chase.) Alameda County Sheriff's office spokesman Sergeant J.D. Nelson used the fact that video surveillance system records in 10-second segments, with gaps in between, to assert that "We're not getting the entire picture." In other words, Nelson is asking us: who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Ludicriously, the SF Examiner's headline states that the video "appears to show deputies beating suspect." Appears? Talk about lying eyes.

Continuing with the round-up of corporate "news" coverage, ABC7 similarly euphemizes the relentless beating caught on video as deputies "aggressively restraining" the man. There was no restraining, even after the beating. The man never got up past his knees after the first deputy tackled him. The man was beaten and left to wallow in the street until the wheelchair is rolled in. In one small step towards honest reporting — an improvement over the Chronicle's refusal to make any sort of factual declaration whatsoever about the beatdown, and the Examiner refusing to even acknowledge it was a beating — ABC7 does show the temerity to characterize what is seen in the Mission District alley as "Disturbing video".

The deputies showed no hesitation before pummeling the man. Most certainly, this would be because these pigs are quite familiar with beating people, on the streets or in Santa Rita or North County jails. It's just how they roll when they assume no one is watching. Stories of jailtime beatings by Alameda County deputies are a dime a dozen and generally hardly anyone cares. But this time it's caught on camera. Props to those who handed the video over to the public defender's office and to Jeff Adachi for releasing it.

ACSO spinmaster J.D. Nelson assures us all that his department will conduct a thorough investigation, although he's already trying to justify the beatdown with claims that the man earlier knocked down and injured a deputy when he rammed his car into theirs. Perhaps the San Francisco DA or the Alameda DA will do a supposed "investigation" as well. The only thing surprising that might come from these investigations will be if they hold either of these violent pigs criminally accountable for the brutal beating, or even release their names to the public. Don't hold your breath waiting.