FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 6, 2024
MEDIA CONTACT: San Francisco Public Defender’s Office | pdr-mediarelations@sfgov.org
**PRESS RELEASE**
Charges Dismissed Against Black Crime Victim Who Was Wrongfully Charged and Jailed After MUNI Altercation
(Please note photos below that corroborate our client’s account)
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco man spent two weeks in jail after being falsely accused of assault and other charges stemming from an April 16 altercation on a MUNI bus. Jerry Williams, a 53-year-old Black man, was charged with several crimes despite being the victim of crime during the incident himself. Prosecutors dropped all charges on May 24.
“My client is not only innocent, he was the victim,” said Deputy Public Defender Ilona Yañez, who represented Williams. “The fact that Mr. Williams was kept in jail for two weeks, missed classes that he’ll have to retake, and was at risk of losing his housing, is emblematic of the harms caused by police bias and prosecutors’ insistence on unnecessary pretrial detention.”
On April 16, Williams mistakenly dropped some cash on the floor of a MUNI bus while boarding, and the alleged victim, who was behind him, picked it up. Surveillance footage from the bus shows this. Williams asked the man for his money back, and the man denied taking the cash, even though other passengers can be heard on the footage telling him to give it back. The man pushed his umbrella at Williams, who stopped it with his hand as he continued to ask for his money back. The man then reached out, grabbed and scratched Williams’ face, and Williams responded with a single punch in self-defense.
Williams waited for police and gave a full and honest statement to SFPD officers. Everything he said was corroborated by the MUNI footage, which Williams begged the officers to look at. The officers did not search the alleged victim for the missing cash even though Williams had reported it. Instead, they ran a background check on Williams, found out that he was on parole, and arrested him instead of the alleged victim, who appears to be white. Prosecutors charged Williams with felony elder abuse and felony assault and insisted he remain in custody.
Eventually, prosecutors dropped all charges against Williams, but he had to spend two weeks in jail, which has been locked down frequently because of overcrowding and COVID issues. Williams and Yañez believe that race was a factor in the officers’ decisions, as well as bias against Williams for being on parole. Williams was a model parolee who had been on parole for four years and not suffered a single violation in all that time—he has since gotten off parole successfully.
“Mr. Williams would never have gone to jail had he not been a Black man on parole,” said elected San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju. “Mr. Williams is justifiably upset that police did not believe him and that they used his parole status against him instead of actually investigating the incident to find the truth. The result was another innocent Black man in jail whose life and livelihood was disrupted because police wrongly deemed him to be the aggressor when he was actually the victim.”
Screenshots of MUNI surveillance footage are below. (Note: these images can also be found here).
 Williams boards bus at 16:27:57. |  Williams drops cash at 16:28:00. |
 Man boards bus at 16:28:01 and sees cash. |  Man picks up cash at 16:28:02. |
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