SF streets will likely be packed with people protesting Trump and ICE at Saturday’s “No Kings” rally, but in a Friday press conference with Mayor Lurie, Sheriff Paul Yamamoto declared “Our jails are prepared to accept guests with no reservations.”

San Francisco continues to seethe over ICE arrests of immigrants across the state and the military escalation against the LA protesters. And after a Sunday night protest here resulted in a reported 154 arrests, plus Monday night's Mission District protest where a small splinter group got into an SFPD confrontation at Civic Center afterwards, there is some City Hall anxiety over Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” protests that will be happening in at least two different parts of San Francisco.  

Tomorrow’s protest may go more smoothly, as it is during daylight hours, and most of the violent rabble-rousing usually happens after sundown. But Mayor Daniel Lurie still made his point in a Friday morning press conference that SFPD would not hesitate to make as many arrests as they see fit if they feel the protesters get too unruly.

Lurie’s full Friday press conference is seen above, and he at least started things on a diplomatic note before getting into all the tough-guy arrest talk.

“Tomorrow, June 14, we expect significant demonstrations and First Amendment activity across the city. As mayor, my top priority is keeping everyone in San Francisco safe, and I’m fully committed to protecting everyone’s First Amendment rights,” Lurie says at the outset of the video. “I know there is real fear in our immigrant community, fear that families can be torn apart, or that people who follow the rules can be unfairly targeted.”

But he also insisted police and sheriff’s deputies would make sure “economic activity can continue without disruption,” and Lurie vowed, “If there is violence or disruptive activity, law enforcement will step in. If you assault a police officer or break windows of a local business, you will be arrested.”

In an acknowledgement that Monday night’s troubles were pretty much caused by a small number of splinter-group protesters, SF Sheriff Paul Miyamoto took the podium to declare, “We are ready to intercept any folks who try to splinter off from peaceful demonstrators who cause destruction or harm.” He also quipped, “Our vans and buses are ready to provide free rideshares straight to jail. Our jails are prepared to accept guests with no reservations.”

But Miyamoto made a point to stress that “Our Sheriff’s Office does not cooperate with ICE on civil immigration enforcement.” (He then repeated that whole statement in Spanish.)

DA Brooke Jenkins also took the podium to insist that she would throw the book at anyone who gets arrested. “Law enforcement intends to make arrests for anyone who is engaged in criminal activity tomorrow. I want to make it clear that my office does intend to prosecute those who are arrested,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins has taken some heat over the fact that most protesters who've been arrested just walk away with citations, so maybe all this policing is a costly effort that doesn’t get much to show for it. So Friday, she emphasized that 147 of Sunday’s protesters are cited to appear in court on July 3 on misdemeanor charges, and that 89 of Monday night’s protesters have court dates between July 7 and 9. She also noted that she’s already filed two more serious cases — one individual has been charged with felony resistance of a police officer (plus removal of that officer’s weapon), and another has been charged with resisting an officer and misdemeanor battery of an officer.

And she was still on the warpath about the graffiti scrawled on Manny's cafe Monday night.  “The vandalism we saw on June 9 was absolutely unacceptable,” Jenkins said. “We saw antisemitic vandalism in the Mission, we saw images of vandalism that included ‘Kill Cops.’” Jenkins noted they haven’t found the suspects, but promised to bring hate crime charges if they were found and charged.

Lurie also made a point to say many of the bad actors were “outsiders,” that is, people who do not live in San Francisco. “The first night, over half of them were from outside of San Francisco, in terms of the arrest number,” Lurie said. But Saturday’s protests are all over the Bay Area, which may affect the number of so-called “outsiders” in the mix here.

And remember, Saturday is also the SF Juneteenth Celebration in the Fillmore (as well as the SF Jazz Festival nearby), plus the North Beach Festival. So even if you’re planning non-protest activities, you maybe ought to expect some major traffic delays on your way there.

Related: Thousands Pack the Mission for Peaceful ICE Protest; SFPD Pulls Pepper Spray On Separate, Smaller Civic Center Protest [SFist]

Image: SFGovTV