SFPD Officers Who Pinned Hot Dog Vendor to the Ground Did Nothing Wrong, Chief Says

After a video showing officers pinning a street vendor to the ground and arresting her on Pier 33 over the weekend sparked outrage, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department would likely release body-worn camera footage that he said shows “nothing that indicated misconduct.”

On Sunday morning, the woman operating a hot dog cart was restrained and handcuffed by two SFPD officers as a young child believed to be her daughter cried hysterically and approached her before being guided away by another woman on the scene, seen in video footage first obtained by Mission Local.

The woman, identified in multiple news reports as Ana Luisa Casimer Julca, appeared to yell in Spanish, “Ya me voy,” or “I’m leaving now,” as the two officers pinned her on her stomach.

The incident drew backlash from a coalition of community groups, including the Latino Task Force, SF Latino Parity Equity Coalition and Mission Vendors Association, which posted a statement “united in absolute opposition to the inhumane treatment and abuse of street food vendors at the Port of San Francisco” on social media.

At Wednesday night’s police commission meeting, Scott said city employees with the Vending Enforcement Task Force — a coalition of the SFPD, Port of San Francisco and the Public Works and Public Health departments — went to Pier 33 on Sunday morning and gave vendors warnings. Later, they returned to find about three vendors left.

One vendor’s cart was inspected by the Department of Public Health and tagged to be impounded, according to Scott, who said that when the city worker tried to take the cart, a struggle ensued with the vendor, who would appear to be Casimer Julca, over her cart. Scott said that the altercation was not “assaultive.” As the two city employees attempted to get possession of the car, two SFPD officers stepped in, according to Scott.

Officers separated the woman from her cart, at which point she was unrestrained, he said. She then went back to the cart and grabbed it, and as the city workers tried to regain possession of it, one cut his hand, and Scott said the woman pushed the other.

After the back-and-forth, Scott said the police officers decided to handcuff Casimer Julca. She was arrested on suspicion of battery of the two city employees.

Scott said that he had reviewed the body-worn camera footage of the incident and said the officers used “a minimal amount of force.”

To release the footage, Scott said the Police Department would need to redact the face of the child and try to get permission from some of the witnesses in the video. He said he thought the department could do so within a week.

“There’s nothing that I saw in this video that officers or anybody else involved did anything other than what they were asked to do in the way that they were asked to do it,” he told the commission.

Michael Rouppet, the interim acting co-president of the Latinx Democratic Club, disagrees.

“When a woman is telling you that she’s leaving and then the next thing you see is she’s being pinned down on the ground, and the response to that is, ‘Well, we followed the process’ — that’s laughable. It’s not even genuine,” he said.

San Francisco has cracked down on illegal street vending over the past year. Last November, a 90-day vending ban along a long section of Mission Street went into effect. It was extended six months in February and again in August.

In May, the city also enacted new legislation allowing officials to remove and impound vendors’ materials if they do not vacate a location within 10 minutes of being ordered to cease vending for a safety hazard or vending without a permit, among other reasons.

“Within the last year, these folks have been targeted directly by city violence. This is directed from that focus, and what happens is it ratchets up the focus and the risk for violence,” Rouppet said.

He pointed to a video that showed Department of Public Works employees overturning a hot dog vendor’s cart on the Embarcadero last year and another incident this year in which a vendor near Mission and 19th streets had their carts taken.

“There should be some protection for food vendors across the board just by state law alone, but what’s happening is they’re trying to seize their carts, which is over the top,” Rouppet said. “When you take someone’s livelihood — and you’re threatening people’s livelihoods — there’s no question why they’re resisting that.”

The Latinx Democratic Club is calling for city officials to take steps to stop violence against vendors, which Rouppet believes will require a larger conversation about how they are treated and where they can operate.

He thinks there should “at least” be designated zones around the city for vendors to operate and more conversation between city officials, police and stakeholders like the Mission Vendors Association.

“This is clearly not working. They are not yielding the results that they were intending. I think we need to go back and redraw this entire plan altogether,” Rouppet told KQED.