National Media Picks-up Sheriff’s Mistreatment of Occupy San Diego Arrestees

The Washington Post has picked up the story about how our local Sheriff mistreated those arrested during the October 28th raids on the Occupy San Diego sites. This report at the venerable DC daily – although only on their blog column – has been nearly the only national attention that San Diego’s movement has received.

The Sheriff has admitted that dozens of arrestees were left in vans and a bus after the raids for many hours with no access to restroom facilities or water. Reports from those arrested have said that they were held from four to eight hours or even as much as twelve hours before they were processed at a detention center.

Dave Maass at San Diego City Beat reported:

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department has ordered a formal internal review of its involvement in the mass arrest of 51 Occupy San Diego activists on Oct. 28, particularly in regards to detainees who had no choice but to urinate and defecate while detained in county buses and vans. … In a statement provided to CityBeat …, the Sheriff’s Department acknowledges the veracity of some of the complaints, calling them “unusual” and “unfortunate.” The statement also explains that the sheriff plans to conduct a critical incident review and hold a debriefing with the San Diego Police Department about the operation.

Thanks to City Beat, here is more of the Sheriff’s statement on this matter:

On October 28th between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. the Sheriff’s department provided a bus and two vans for prisoners arrested at the Civic Center by the San Diego Police Department. During that time 51 individuals were taken into custody, 36 men and 14 women. The men were placed in a Sheriff’s bus and the women were put in Sheriff’s vans to be transported to the Vista Jail and Los Colinas Detention Facility for booking.

During that time there were no restroom facilities available for arrestees, forcing some of them to relieve themselves as they sat on the bus or van. For the Sheriff’s Department to provide mutual aid in this kind of mass arrest circumstance is not unusual; this unfortunate result is very unusual and it is currently being reviewed. The Sheriff has directed that a Critical Incident Review be conducted internally. Also, the Sheriff’s Department and the Police Department will conduct a mutual debrief to examine in detail how the operation was handled. From those reviews we will determine how to improve our practices to assure that this does not happen again.

Here is the full post at the Washington Post blog about San Diego (although it is incorrect in terms of the numbers camped out):

Compared with many of the other Occupy protests around the country, the Occupy San Diego protest has been a small, under-noticed outlier of only a few dozen people camped out in the downtown area. Little national attention went to the arrests in October of 51 men and women after the encampment was raided and torn down.

That may change. The sherrif’s department acknowledged that while in custody, some of the protesters had to relieve themselves — on themselves. The San Diego City Beat reports that the sherrif’s department released a statement saying that after the arrests on Oct. 28, protesters were detained in a police vans with no access to the bathrooms. The statement said, “This unfortunate result is very unusual and it is currently being reviewed.”

In an earlier report on San Diego City Beat, the arrestees said that they were held in the vans from four to eight hours and that the police told them to relieve themselves on the bus.

Hat tip to Voice of San Diego for picking this up in their Morning Report.

The quality of this video is lousy, but the audio says it all. Thanks for speaking out Kali.