ACLU: Protesters’ phones not returned

Civil rights advocates said last week that San Diego police officers and county jail deputies have refused to return cellphones seized from individuals who were arrested at a protest in August, including those who may have been released without charges or who had their charges quickly dismissed.

A sheriff ’s spokesman denied the allegation.

In a letter sent Thursday to San Diego’s police chief and city attorney, and to the county sheriff and district attorney, the civil rights attorneys said the alleged seizure of the cellphones and refusal to return them appears not to be “the result of isolated decisions by individual officers,” but rather part of a “written or de-facto policy.”

The claims were made in a letter sent by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance and the Singleton Law Firm.

“The Sheriff ’s Department did not seize any phones from those arrested at a protest in downtown San Diego on August 28,” sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Ricardo Lopez wrote in a statement Friday, citing the jail policy on processing personal property items. “It is untrue the Sheriff’s Department is holding the phones of released inmates.”

Lopez said the Sheriff ’s Department has asked the civil rights attorneys for “a list of names of those claiming to not have received their phones but have not received that information.”

San Diego police officials did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the county District Attorney’s Office said the Sheriff ’s Department was looking into the matter.

The protest in question occurred the last Friday in August, when about 150 demonstrators marched through downtown San Diego and protested outside police headquarters on Broadway in solidarity with protests that erupted in Wisconsin after the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake.