People rallied outside of the San Francisco courthouse on Bryant Street Thursday morning to offer their support to the 18 defendants in the ‘Stud Alley’ trial. Santi Roman spoke to the crowd during the rally.
“It is so important that we're here to express our outrage at this injustice against our queer and trans siblings and community here in the Bay Area.”
Roman said she was there on the Saturday night of Pride Weekend when SFPD shut down the party known as “stud alley” and arrested 18 people. Roman called the police response that night “horrifying”.
“They came, like, fully militarized in riot gear with batons and shields and helmets, which is just clearly not an appropriate or proportionate response to a gathering of people dancing in the street,” said Roman.
The defense team is arguing that because the police never issued a dispersal order, the case should be dismissed. They point to body-cam footage that was released this week.
“There was one point in the body-worn camera where they're basically kneeling on one of our client's head yelling, 'Don't move, or I'm gonna punch you in the [...] face,'" Kate Raven, one of the defense attorneys in the case, told KALW.
Raven said that it took their team a few days to wade through the body-cam footage, and that it was disturbing.
“I was completely unprepared for the brutality of the blitz attack of San Francisco Police Department," explained Raven. "And I was a public defender for a long time. Like, I shouldn't be able to be that shocked.”
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins is prosecuting the case. She’s charging the defendants with being present at an unlawful assembly, failing to disperse, and with resisting arrest or obstructing a police officer.
KALW reached out to Jenkins' office and was told that "This is a pending criminal case. We will address the facts and legal issues through the court process and will not litigate the matter through the media."
Jenkins' team told the judge this morning that they hadn’t had time to respond to each individual motion in the case, so they asked to postpone the trial.
The defendants go back to court on September 14.
