A San Francisco police watchdog group found that officers wrongly arrested an attorney from the Public Defender’s Office last year at the Hall of Justice, though it was unclear whether any of them faced discipline over the incident.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi released the results of the investigation by the Office of Citizen Complaints on Friday and said Deputy Public Defender Jami Tillotson acted courageously in defending the rights of her clients by trying to stop officers from photographing them in a hallway.

“It is contempt for the poor that results in routine disrespect of public defenders,” Adachi said in a statement. “In the face of this contempt, Jami never wavered in her duty to her client. That’s because the right to counsel is a shield to protect ordinary citizens from intimidation.”

The dustup began Jan. 30, 2015, as Tillotson was standing outside a courtroom with her client and his co-defendant when five police officers began attempting to take pictures of the men she was defending without any explanation, Adachi said shortly after the incident.

Police said the officers, led by a plainclothes sergeant, were investigating a burglary case in which Tillotson’s client and the other man were considered persons of interest. Tillotson was handcuffed to a bench and cited for misdemeanor resisting or delaying arrest because she obstructed a police investigation, officials said.

Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman, declined to comment, saying, “This is a personnel matter.”

The confrontation was caught on video, which Adachi posted to YouTube, and viewed more than 1.5 million times.

Tillotson filed a complaint with the Office of Citizen Complaints soon after the incident, and Police Chief Greg Suhr apologized “for any distress Ms. Tillotson suffered as a result of her detention,” but he stood by the actions of Sgt. Brian Stansbury who he said “had reasonable suspicion to take the pictures” and a right to do so in a public area.

The Office of Citizen Complaints found that two of Tillotson’s allegations had merit, “including the interfering with the right to counsel and conduct reflecting discredit on the department in the case of an officer who made inappropriate comments to the media following the incident,” Adachi’s office said in a statement.

Several other allegations were dismissed, Adachi said.

Even with the office’s findings, Tillotson said she was frustrated by the lack of transparency as it was unclear whether any of the officers were disciplined.

“It is discouraging that even a year later in my very public case where the allegations were sustained, there has still been no response on whether the officers faced discipline or if there were any changes made in policy or training,” she said in a statement.

Tillotson went on to say the lack of information from the office only served to undercut their credibility with those they are meant to serve.

“As a public defender, my clients would frequently tell me they didn’t want to file an OCC complaint even in the most egregious of circumstances because they felt it was a waste of time,” she said. “This is particularly true in cases where someone is violently or unlawfully arrested, but never charged. It means their ordeals will never be heard in court and they will never really know what, if anything, happens to the officers involved.”

Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale