Twenty women incarcerated in San Francisco sued the city and sheriff over alleged civil rights violations on Friday, one year after they were allegedly forced to participate in a mass strip search that they say was part of a coordinated pattern.
The class action claim in U.S. District Court accuses Sheriff Paul Miyamoto and multiple named deputies of a pattern of “deliberately degrading” and retaliatory strip searches, in violation of the First, Fourth and 14th amendments, as well as California state law.
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“What happened one year ago did not happen in a vacuum,” San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said during a vigil in support of the victims. “It happened in a system with processes that dehumanize.”