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.
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.”
Hellbound and Down 