Suspects awaiting trial in SF will no longer be assigned to home confinement or an ankle monitor, and must proceed directly to jail, because the SF Sheriff’s Office is yanking the ankle monitor program over a legal rift on warrantless searches.
We’ve covered before how ankle monitors are not terribly effective at keeping suspects awaiting trial out of trouble, as people can remove them, or just blatantly commit crimes while still wearing the ankle monitor. But ankle monitors are still effective in the sense they keep people out of San Francisco’s overcrowded and understaffed jails while they await their trial.
Yet now the ankle monitoring program has become embroiled in legal controversy, because of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of three SF defendants. That lawsuit complains that participating in SF’s ankle monitor program also subjects defendants to warrantless searches of their homes. A federal judge recently ruled in their favor, and ordered the warrantless search aspect of this program to be discontinued.
SAN FRANCISCO TO APPEAL COURT RULING: Today Sheriff Miyamoto was joined by @LondonBreed @BrookeJenkinsSF @DavidChiu to announce the City’s fight against a recent federal ruling that bars the#SFsheriff from requiring criminal defendants to consent to warrantless searches as a… pic.twitter.com/zzo2Qd7uzu
— SF Sheriff's Office (@SheriffSF) October 3, 2024
So now NBC Bay Area reports that SF Sheriff Paul Miyamoto is suspending SF’s ankle monitoring program in protest of the decision. At a Thursday press conference with Mayor Breed and DA Jenkins, Miyamoto said he was unwilling to let suspects avoid jail if his department could not perform warrantless searches on their homes.
"It is for that reason that — from the onset of this case — our office and the city attorney's office have repeatedly made it clear that we could not safely administer this valuable program without the warrantless search condition," Sheriff Miyamoto said Thursday, per KPIX.
City Attorney David Chiu told NBC Bay Area he’s appealing parts of the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in hopes of winning back the right to the warrantless searches.
The suspension of the ankle monitor program does not affect the estimated 400 SF suspects currently awaiting trial and wearing ankle monitors. But no new suspects will be assigned ankle monitors, they will be hauled right to SF County Jail to await trial there.
The ACLU points out that the court is not forcing the suspension of the ankle monitoring program, and thinks Miyamoto is just overreacting here. “It is not the federal court order that has required the sheriff to stop operating its program," ACLU of Northern California staff attorney Emi Young explained to KPIX. "It is the sheriff that has decided to stop operating [the program] as a result of the disagreement with the court's order."
Miyamoto’s decision could backfire. He had already been complaining of staffing shortages in the jails and violent behavior by prisoners, likely due to more suspects coming in thanks to the Tenderloin/SoMa drug crackdown. This will only stock County Jail with yet more prisoners, which the facility may struggle to find the capacity and staffing to handle.
And that could cause a problem right before election time for Miyamoto, who is up for reelection next month. That said, he only faces a longshot challenge from a little-known SFPD officer named Michael Juan.
Image: San Francisco Sheriff's Office via Facebook
