Class motion accuses San Francisco sheriff of unlawful search and surveillance practices
The American Civil Liberties Union accused San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto on Thursday of violating the privacy rights of defendants who have been freed under electronic monitoring by requiring them to allow searches of their person or property and to share their location data with other law enforcement agencies.
Defendants who are released from jail before trial are often required to wear ankle monitors that allow officers to track their locations. But in a class-action suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, the ACLU and a private law firm said Miyamoto went beyond constitutional bounds by requiring them, as a condition of release, to consent to a search of their body, home, vehicle or possessions at any time. They must also agree to let the sheriff’s office inform other law enforcement agencies of their location at all times.
“Ankle cuffs are supposed to ensure that an individual remains in the Bay Area and shows up for court proceedings,” Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, said in a statement accompanying the suit. “They are not a license for law enforcement’s unlimited search and surveillance of vulnerable people who haven’t been convicted of a crime.”
“Stripping away privacy rights is illegal and only tolerated because of the disenfranchisement of those directly affected, who are indigenous and 70% Black and brown,” said San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju, who is not participating in the suit but helped the ACLU identify individual plaintiffs.
The three plaintiffs also objected to the searches but agreed to the conditions of release, the ACLU said, because they were able to go to work, care for a child and attend a high school graduation.
The suit accuses the sheriff and the city of violating rights against unreasonable searches, under the US and California constitutions, as well as the constitutional right of privacy approved by California voters in 1972. It seeks court orders halting the searches and erasing the shared location data .
Tara Moriarty, a spokesperson for Miyamoto, said inmates released under electronic monitoring have waived those rights, allowing the sheriff to “enforce the rules and regulations imposed by the court,” which she said included consent to future searches. “The sheriff details this information to assist the justice-involved individual to successfully complete the (electronic-monitoring) program,” Moriarty said in a statement.
More than 200 defendants are being electronically monitored in San Francisco, and that number is likely to grow as the city attempts to reduce its jail population, the ACLU said. As court backlogs have increased during the pandemic, the organization said, some people have been monitored for a year or more.
In addition to turning GPS location data over to San Francisco police and other agencies, the ACLU said, Miyamoto’s program allows Sentinel Offender Services, a private contractor that has run the program since 2019, to keep the data indefinitely.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
