The San Francisco deputy public defender who was arrested at the Hall of Justice for allegedly obstructing police filed a misconduct complaint Thursday against the city officers who handcuffed her when she questioned why they were photographing one of her clients outside a courtroom.

Attorney Jami Tillotson took her case to the civilian Office of Citizen Complaints after Police Chief Greg Suhr told the Police Commission late Wednesday that the department will not pursue charges against her. Suhr apologized “for any distress Ms. Tillotson suffered as a result of her detention,” but he stood by the actions of Sgt. Brian Stansbury and the other officers who arrested the lawyer.

Suhr’s announcement came at the same meeting in which the American Civil Liberties Union called for a review of police policy, saying last week’s courthouse incident, which was filmed and viewed on YouTube millions of times, raised serious questions about tactics and racial profiling. Tillotson’s client is black.

“While I appreciate Chief Suhr’s apology, I am concerned that he continues to support Sgt. Brian Stansbury’s actions,” Tillotson said in a statement Thursday. “My client, a young African American man, was left without the benefit of advice of counsel. The right to counsel is not a formality. It is a shield that protects ordinary people against intimidation, bullying, and overreach by law enforcement.”

Tillotson was held in a cell for an hour Jan. 27 after she objected to officers’ attempts to take photos of her client and his co-defendant, who is also black. The men had just made an appearance for a misdemeanor theft charge when they left the courtroom and were questioned by Stansbury and five other officers around 2 p.m., authorities said.

Sources told The Chronicle that Stansbury had been in court for a separate case when he heard that the two men, who were being eyed as suspects in an unsolved burglary, were in the same building and wearing similar clothing to when they allegedly pulled the heist. The men have not been arrested.

Other attorneys with the public defender’s office filmed the ensuing interaction, which showed Stansbury attempting to take photos of the two men, as Tillotson told him they did not want their photos taken. She was soon arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor resisting or delaying arrest.

“As a result of my arrest, my client was left without the benefit of advice of counsel,” Tillotson wrote to the Office of Citizen Complaints, which investigates alleged misconduct by officers and forwards findings to the police chief or the Police Commission, which rule on discipline. “The removal of counsel, and as such any protection against the actions of the officers, created an environment in which my client believed he did not have the right to object to the questioning.”

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Tillotson noted that Stansbury was one of three officers whose traffic stop of an off-duty black colleague in 2013 led the off-duty officer to file a federal civil rights suit against the city. Police officials have said the officers involved in that encounter had not engaged in racial profiling.

Alan Schlosser, legal director for the ACLU of Northern California, said he believes Tillotson’s arrest — as well as the officers’ treatment of her client and the co-defendant — provide a view into disparate treatment of young men of color.

“The spectacle of two African American young men being targeted by the police within a public space inside a courthouse without their lawyer present, and then having that lawyer handcuffed and carted away for trying to advise them, raises the specter that other young men of color are being similarly targeted for intrusive investigations and photographing in the community where attorneys are not on the scene,” he wrote in a letter to the Police Commission.

While Suhr apologized and said the investigation of Tillotson had concluded, he stood by his officers and said Sgt. Stansbury “had reasonable suspicion to take the pictures” and a right to do so in a public area.

“The rules of engagement have long been that the courtroom is sacrosanct, but the hallways have always been a public area,” Suhr said. “I do find it a little ironic that the protest was over taking a picture at the same time a video was taken and shown to millions of people.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, commissioners said they could not respond to the ACLU’s comments as the incident is under investigation. But Commissioner Petra DeJesus said she was interested in looking into policies on “confronting a suspect with his attorney.”

Soon after, the commission’s vice president, L. Julius Turman, said, “There is a policy. It’s called the Sixth Amendment of the United States” — a reference to the right to legal counsel.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo