First Amendment advocates Saturday called a Friday police raid on the San Francisco home of a freelance journalist illegal and said it violated California’s shield law.

The police raided journalist Bryan Carmody’s home in search of information that would reveal the source of a leaked police report containing details about the death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

Carmody said he was detained and handcuffed for several hours while authorities searched his home and office Friday, and that police seized laptops, cameras, hard drives, business records and his cellphone as part of their search.

An independent videographer who produces news video and information that he then sells to local and national media outlets, Carmody said in a phone interview with this news organization that the search was part of a campaign to force him to reveal the confidential source of the report about Adachi’s death. In addition to the electronics, police also seized a copy of the report from a safe at his office, he said.

“The police department is using these criminal tools they have at their disposal to try to fix this leak,” Carmody said. “I have not divulged my source, nor will I.”

According to the San Francisco Police Department, officers served the search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the leaked report. No arrests were made.

My home and business were raided by the SFPD and the FBI today. This is part of a campaign to make me divulge a confidential source. I will not. https://t.co/qa7uNjy4wy — Bryan C. Carmody (@bryanccarmody) May 11, 2019

“Today’s actions are one step in the process of investigating a potential case of obstruction of justice along with the illegal distribution of a confidential police report,” the department said in a statement Friday. The department did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.

A search warrant obtained by police for the raid stated they were seeking property that was “stolen or embezzled.”

But David Snyder, executive director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, said, “This was an illegal search warrant.”

The taking of a reporter’s notes and work product, Snyder said, is “prohibited under California’s shield law,” which protects journalists from such actions.

Trevor Timm, executive director of the San Francisco-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, also criticized the raid and described the search as a “brazen intrusion on a journalist doing his job.”

“This raid is shocking and potentially unconstitutional,” Timm said. “Every city leader should speak up against this clear violation of press freedom, and there should be an immediate investigation into those who authorized it.”

Adachi, a noted police watchdog and vocal advocate for bail reform, suffered a heart attack in an apartment on Telegraph Hill and later died Feb. 22, at the age of 59. The leaked report later revealed cocaine and alcohol may have also played a role in his death, and that Adachi was at the apartment with a woman who was not his wife.

Adachi’s family and police and government officials sharply criticized the release of the report, details of which were published by several news organizations, as an attempt to smear the late public defender’s reputation.

Carmody declined to say what he provided to the outlets or how much he was paid, but said the information he markets typically includes video, interviews and documents.

Manohar Raju, who was appointed public defender after Adachi’s death, said in a statement about the search, “All of our criminal justice and City Hall leaders agree that the release of police reports in this fashion is wrong.”

Raju’s statement did not take issue with the decision to search the home of a journalist as part of the leak investigation.

“I am pleased that Chief Scott and others are keeping their word and working to get to the bottom of it,” he said. A spokeswoman for the office declined to answer follow-up questions.

Carmody’s attorney, Thomas Burke, a noted First Amendment lawyer, said a raid like the one Friday “is not proper under any law.” He added that authorities typically subpoena reporters when they want to investigate leaks.

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San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi dead at 59, police investigating cause “They can do their leak investigation, there’s no question about that, but there is a right way to go about it, and this wasn’t it,” Burke said.

Carmody said police first visited his home in the Richmond District about two weeks ago to speak with him about the leaked report, but that he “politely declined” to tell them how he received it.

At around 8:30 a.m. Friday, Carmody said, he was woken up by the sound of police trying to break down his front gate with what he described as a sledgehammer. After searching his house with guns drawn, Carmody said, authorities took him to his office in the Western Addition for another search.

Aaron Lee, who described himself as a friend of Carmody’s, set up a GoFundMe campaign to replace equipment taken in the raid. On Twitter, Carmody linked to the fundraising campaign and said, “I’m sorry this needs to be done, but I have no idea when I will get my gear back.”

“They have made it impossible for me to do my job,” Carmody said.

Thomas Peele and Bay City News contributed to this report.