Charges announced in SF jail assault

You're good to go? All right. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm Chief Derek Lewitt of the San Francisco Police Department. We're here today to announce arrests and charges in two extremely disturbing cases. I want to start out by thanking District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and her team for their exceptional partnership. You soon will hear from the DA about charges in these cases. I also want to thank all our city partners for their work on these investigations, including the Animal Care and Control and San Francisco Fire Department in this first case. Again, the following incidents are very disturbing, and crimes like these will never be tolerated in San Francisco. Anytime violence occurs in this city, we will be relentless in holding the perpetrators accountable using every tool at our disposal. The first case I'll talk about occurred on July 1st, when a male suspect entered a bank ATM vestibule on the 1800 block of Market Street with a small kitten and tortured the animal to death. This is truly a sickening act. Thankfully, our partners at San Francisco Animal Care and Control assisted and identified 33-year-old Reno resident William Olson as the suspect. Officers from the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center and the Real-Time Investigation Center located the suspect at a hotel on the 100 block of Fell Street. On July 14th, officers served a search warrant at the residence and observed the suspect flee onto the roof of the building. Thanks to our drone assets and assistance from the Fire Department's ladder truck, we were able to locate the suspect and safely take him into custody. This case illustrates how technology continues to protect our officers' safety, as well as the safety of suspects with clear, real-time visual information we previously never had. A big thank you to our partners at the San Francisco Fire Department for your assistance in this case. I'll now bring up DA Jenkins to speak more about this case. Thank you, Chief. I know that this was a case that your department took very seriously. Today, I am announcing that we have charged Mr. Olson with a number of crimes related to the killing of this kitten and his actions with respect to his arrest. He has now been charged with felony killing, maiming, or abusing an animal in violation of Penal Code Section 597 Subsection A, as well as torturing or cruelly beating or cruelly killing an animal in violation of Penal Code Section 597 Subsection B. He has also been charged with resisting, obstructing, or delaying arrest by a police officer, as well, which is a misdemeanor. Both of the animal-related charges are felonies. He is scheduled for arraignment on Monday at 1 30 p.m. at the Hall of Justice and is currently now out of custody for this crime. I want to explain why he is out of custody, as I know many people will be concerned about future conduct with respect to him and other animals. Unfortunately, based on a recent California Supreme Court ruling that we are not able to seek his detention at this time, that ruling limits detention to cases involving violence against a human being, not animals. And so, I do want to stress again that we are bound and confined by the law. Although we take this case extremely seriously, and this is very, very troubling conduct, we will still do everything that we can to ensure that no other animal is in his possession and that we continue to prosecute this case through the system. And we're happy to answer questions on this case. Is that law Humphrey or Kowalczyk? Kowalczyk. Does this individual have a history with law enforcement in any capacity involving other crimes against animals? Not that I'm aware of. Christian, how will we know if this man will appear in court on Monday? That's part of the thing. If I understand, he was vagrant, not vagrant, but he didn't have a permanent address in the city. So, I can't speak to his address. I'll let the chief respond to that. He was cited to appear on Monday. If he does not appear, the court will issue a bench warrant, essentially a warrant for his arrest that we will ask for, and he would have to be picked up and brought back into custody. And sorry for a follow-up, but his home address actually was Nevada, so he, as a resident from out of state, he could flee to another state. That is true. Unfortunately, again, flight risk is not something that can be considered either when we are talking about someone's custody status. Now under Kowalczyk. Any more questions on this piece? Yeah, was the kitten recovered with him, like on his person or at the residence when he was arrested? The kitten was recovered on Market Street. After he killed the kitten, he left it there where this incident, near where this incident took place. And thanks to the ultimately a witness later, the kitten's body was recovered. Do you have a previous history of him or any criminal history of him? Has he been evaluated for his mental health? Well, he was released essentially immediately from county jail. So right now he is out of custody. We cannot compel someone to any type of mental examination. That is going to be the decision of his attorney, whether they would like to have him evaluated to understand more. So at this time, we make no assumptions about whether or not he suffers from any sort of mental illness or mental health disorder. We are strictly looking at the conduct at this point. Last question on this one, George. Can you speak to the technological overlap that led to the investigation? I understand that police became aware of the incident and then learned that ACC was already on it. And then is this first animal-related incident that the new equipment, RTIC, and so on have had to handle? To my knowledge, I think it is the first with an animal. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that is the case. What I can tell you is that we worked in partnership with ACC on this. So it was an intentional partnership there. The other piece of it was there was clearly drone usage that really helped us in terms of determining where this person was. He did flee outside of the hotel room where we got him. And the drone was instrumental in locating him there. He was located on top of a roof, which is clearly a pretty dangerous area for both him and the officers. So the drone was very useful in that situation. Now we're going to pivot to the second case. Okay. The second case I want to talk about was diligently investigated by our Special Victims Unit and involves the sexual assault of an inmate by a former deputy at the San Francisco County Jail. As law enforcement officers, our duty is to protect the public. Abusing the power as a sworn peace officer on an inmate in a detention facility is a crime we will never accept in San Francisco. Our investigators determined that on September 11th, former deputy Damon Jones approached an inmate in County Jail number two and told her to engage in sexual activity with him in a bathroom. The former deputy later threatened the victim to dissuade her from reporting the crime. SFPD took over the investigation and we placed Jones under arrest on Wednesday. I want to recognize our officers who did a tremendous job on these investigations along with partners in all these cases who continue to ensure our city is safe and that justice is served. Now turn it over to the DA. So this case stems from an incident, as the chief described, that took place on September 11th, 2025. Mr. Damon Jones is 34 years old. We have now charged him with two felony crimes. First, sexual activity with a confined adult in a detention facility in violation of Penal Code Section 289.6A2. We have also charged him with dissuading a witness from reporting a crime in violation of Penal Code Section 136B1. As you heard, Mr. Jones was taken into custody yesterday. He has now bailed out and we are waiting to find out what his future court date will be. He was placed into the Solano County Jail and so we are waiting for Solano County to transfer the documents related to his case here to San Francisco because they are responsible for providing his future court date at this time. Again, very, very troubling conduct. We have a responsibility, as the chief said, in law enforcement to make sure that those who are confined to our custody are kept safe just as much as we work to keep those who are out in the public safe. We also are dealing with an issue of public trust. We want to make sure that the has faith in us as law enforcement officers to do our jobs and to do it well in the right way. And so that is why we are here today stressing that this is a zero tolerance situation, that we take these cases extremely seriously. I'm thankful for the San Francisco Police Department's SVU unit who took this case very seriously right away when they were alerted to it and made sure that there was a full investigation into this incident so that we could be here today to announce these charges. Carmen, what is Solano's involvement? I'm not clear on that. Also, what took a year? And since this whole year went on plus time before this incident, are you concerned that there are other victims and what are you doing about that? He was arrested in Solano County. He did not waive essentially, for lack of a better term, extradition back here to San Francisco. That means then he was booked in the Solano County Jail. Therefore, there is a process related to the case now that he was in the custody of another county for paperwork to be sent here so that a court number as well as a court date can be generated for this case. He is aware that he will have to return to court. Again, he's posted bond so I expect him to be in court. What took a year? So this crime was reported fairly close in time to the event when it happened. It was first investigated by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. They have investigators in their department as well. They began to look into this case after it was reported to them by this inmate's public defender. They brought the case to my office based on some concerns we had regarding the way that the investigation took place. We contacted the San Francisco Police Department and asked them to take over and to do a number of things with respect to this investigation, almost start from scratch. They took that baton right away, but that investigation did take time. Now we are here, now that it's been completed with the charges. Of course, there's always a concern in a situation like this for other victims. Again, a part of announcing these charges is making people confident that we will do our jobs when something like this happens. I do right now encourage any other victims in the jail, if there are any, to come forward. Of course, whether it be with respect to this particular defendant or any other staff in the jail if there have been any other crimes or incidents of this nature. This is just the latest case of an allegation of inappropriate sexual contact or inappropriate contact between deputies and inmates in jail. Are you concerned about a pattern of behavior or culture that allows this to continue within San Francisco's jails? I know that our sheriff is committed to making sure that he has a well-functioning and a high-functioning sheriff's department. He is somebody who's been a sheriff for now 30 years. I know he knows the job. Unfortunately, sometimes we encounter bad actors. I hope that these investigations, that these charges that have been yielded in both of these recent cases, send a message, however, to that staff that there is no tolerance for this type of conduct, that we as law enforcement have the obligation to hold each other accountable when the law is broken and when the public's trust is violated. My hope is that we have sent the message that things should be different. This is an extension off of Christian's question and then you had a tag on it, but again this is the second case we're hearing, second case we're reporting, involving a sheriff's deputy accused of alleged misactions or assaults at a jail. Yes, again, I know that this is very troubling. There are over 1,100, I think, inmates at this time in our county jail who we have the responsibility to care for and to make sure that no matter what they did, no matter what charges they are facing, that they have the right to a safe environment to be in while they are in our custody. I know, again, that the sheriff takes that job seriously. We all take that job seriously. That's why we're here, to announce these charges. I want to point out something else, which is that immediately following becoming aware of this incident, the sheriff's department did take action and terminate this individual from their employment, which I do want to make clear as well. So again, we are working hard as a city to make sure that each and every role that each of us plays collectively are doing what we need to to hold these people accountable and to signal to every other law enforcement officer in this city that there will be accountability when they break the law. We got time for one more. It's our question and then we'll do Dan Kerman and then we got to wrap it. I'll go quickly. It sounds like you felt the need to bring in San Francisco police to conduct this investigation. Why did you feel the need to bring in San Francisco police? Do you think it was going to be challenging? Were there challenges presented to the sheriff's office investigating essentially one of their home? And if I can get Chief Blue to also weigh in on why you needed to have another law enforcement agency. Let me be clear that it was not due to a concern that the sheriff's department would not be objective in in their investigation. The concern regarded the involvement of the public defender for this inmate in the process of the investigation. Investigations like this should be handled strictly by a law enforcement agency and I wanted to make sure my office wanted to make sure that we had a thorough but independent investigation conducted into this matter that and so that was our that was our concern. Yeah I mean I would say that I would highlight underscore what the DA just said but add to it that these cases do require expertise and our SVU investigators unfortunately investigate a lot of these cases and and and have tremendous expertise in how to handle the case of this of this type and and add a lot of value in that way. So if that's the case to follow up on Christian's question, which was my question, if that's the case and we are seeing an increase in the number of these incidents there, should the sheriff's department be investigating any of these? Should these all be referred to the PD in their SVU unit for investigation? I mean it sounds like even if there was no corruption in their investigation it was not independent because the public defender was involved and they don't have the expertise of SVU for police so what is preventing these mistakes from happening again and should they all be referred to the there there's a pro I will let the chief speak on this one. Sure you know I I think that the DA mentioned this before we're all we're all committed to public safety and doing it in in a independent and you know fully transparent way. I can say that our public safety team works together all the time and we're striving for the same things for the public to trust what we're doing. To that end whatever Sheriff Miyamoto needs our department will lend those resources to him and I trust that he will you know contact me when he feels like he needs that extra expertise or investigation investigative horsepower.