Eighteen people were arrested on the Saturday night of Pride Weekend in June, when the party known as ‘Stud Alley’ was broken up by SFPD. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged those arrested with unlawful assembly, failure to comply with a dispersal order, and resisting arrest. But after two hours of deliberation on Monday a judge dismissed all charges.
Renee Coe was one of the 18 defendants. She tried to get out of the way of the police line, but was still arrested.
"What [the judge] concluded is that if there was any resistance at all by any individual defendant it was very passive resistance," said Coe.
The judge also ruled that the police failed to give a dispersal order before making the arrests. Coe said there was a huge sense of relief once the charges were dismissed.
"It was really difficult sitting in there and hearing our lawyers describe really intense violence and transphobic comments that were made by the police, and hear the district attorney and the judge basically justify that and explain it away as, you know, reasonable police conduct,” Coe told KALW.
But ultimately, Coe says that the charges strengthened a sense of solidarity between her, the other defendants, and the people who came out to support them.
People who were arrested at Trans March the Friday of pride weekend are still facing criminal charges. Their preliminary hearing is October 16th.
