Nearly 20 women just filed a claim against the city saying that SF Sheriff’s deputies recorded their strip searches on video while laughing, with some deputies even threatening to post the video online.
There have been a few humdinger scandals coming out of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office in recent months. Over the summer, it came to light that SF Sheriff’’s Office Chief of Staff Richard Jue had a hit-and-run accident in a city-owned vehicle and submitted a false report about it (he was placed on administrative leave, got a slap on the wrist, and was allowed to retire). Last month, we learned that a deputy who lied to the FBI to protect Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow was rehired by the department, at the direct recommendation of Sheriff Paul Yamamoto. And just days after that, news broke that Yamamoto's own brother-in-law had been growing marijuana at SF County Jail, and smoking it on-site.
At least 20 women who were held in a SF jail say earlier this year deputies ordered women to strip down in front of each other while the deputies laughed and filmed them.
— Mission Local (@MLNow) November 21, 2025
The sheriff is looking into allegations, and lawsuits could follow.
via @abineely https://t.co/ZKY9XkBzCL
The latest scandal may prove to be the worst of the bunch. Mission Local reports that "at least 20 women" say they were subjected to strip searches that were recorded on video by Sheriff’s deputies when the women were incarcerated at SF County Jail. That report says the video was taken by male deputies’ with body-worn cameras, with the women saying that blinking green lights showed the cameras were recording. Now 17 women have filed a claim with the city, which is not a lawsuit, but shows the women have lawyered up and that a state or federal lawsuit mey be on the way.
“This Claim arises from a mass, unlawful, and degrading strip search of women housed in the B-Pod of the San Francisco County Jail on May 22, 2025, and from continuing harassment, intimidation, and gender-based violence by deputies in the days and weeks that follows,” the women’s attorney Elizabeth Bertolino says in the claim, per Mission Local.
That claim alleges that the women “were forced to strip in an open setting, were subjected to visual body cavity searches, and were required either to undergo or to witness these invasive searches while male deputies, some armed with weapons, stood by watching, laughing, and making comments.”
It gets creepier. The claim adds that “a supervising sergeant taunted the women that their nude videos could be posted online.”
There is official corroboration of these allegations. Mission Local also unearthed a separate September complaint from assistant chief public defender Angela Chan, complaining of a “mass strip search” at SF County Jail, with the exact same date, time, and location of the above claims.
“Women waiting to be searched or who had already been searched could see the current nude subject of a search being told to ‘bend over, spread cheeks, and cough,’” Chan wrote in that September complaint. “One deputy, Sgt. Ibarra, reportedly taunted the women that the videos would be posted online, but they’d have to blur their genitalia.”
Per Sheriff’s Office policy, male staff are not supposed to be present for strip searches of women, except in extreme emergencies.
There were apparently grievances filed in the aftermath of the May incident. One supervisor had to turn over his body-worn camera footage, and was found to have violated department policies. No one else was found at fault. One woman did request to have her video removed from the department database, and that request was granted.
So clearly something happened on May 22 that the Sheriff’s office has decided was not entirely on the up-and-up. But one woman Mission Local spoke with said she saw these “group strip searches” performed at least five times in the 18 months she was in SF County Jail. So there may be much more that comes out on this possibly emerging scandal.
There is precedent for this kind of thing happening in other cities, and if it’s proven true, it does not bode well for the City and County of San Francisco’s budget. As Mission Local points out, the County of Los Angeles was forced to pay a $53 million settlement in 2019 over inappropriate strip search practices with women incarcerated at the Lynwood Jail Century Regional Detention Facility.
Image: Joe Kukura, SFist
