San Francisco has shut down rowdy events before, but it has usually told people, repeatedly, ahead of time. Not so for the hill bomb.
Police officers kenneling a group of skaters and spectators before arresting them. Photo by Joe Rivano Barros. July 8, 2023.Until 2007, hundreds of thousands of revelers would mob the streets of the Castro every year for Halloween, flocking in from across the world for one of the country’s biggest holiday parties.
In 2023, however, none of those pre-event measures were taken in advance of another event some city officials wanted to shut down. Lofton was at Dolores on Saturday, arriving in the late afternoon to see the police already out and blocking off Dolores Street as more and more skaters arrived to bomb the hill. “They could’ve at least told us something. I had no idea,” he said. “And people kept coming in.”
No one, however, bothered to tell any of the skaters that the police would be there, and likely to shut it down. Several veteran skaters and longtime hill bomb participants said they have never seen city officials engage in outreach regarding the Dolores hill bomb. But the alternative was laid out on July 8, and now more than 100 teenagers and their parents are facing what, for many, is a first brush with the criminal justice system.
“We were scared and angry at the same time,” added Lofton, the one-time organizer of the hill bomb, “because we felt like we were being bullied, pushed around like cockroaches.”San Francisco city attorney seeks to toss Dolores Park hill bomb lawsuits Look at how “critical mass” is handled. Here you had a bunch of rowdy trouble makers blocking traffic and causing chaos. The police now simply guide them through the streets. They could EASILY have been involved in a proactive supportive way, but instead they descended upon them en masse, by surprise, in riot gear – and expected a bunch of punk teens to do what exactly? They knew it would escalate.
And… goody for them… the the SFPD just created dozens or scores of new people who will, for the rest of their lives, feel in their gut as surely as I do that the police are their enemy and never to be trusted, liked, or supported. And these are not career criminals. They’re not mafia or gangsters or commies or terrorists or whatever we’re supposed to be afraid of these days. They’re just a bunch of kids… most of whom will grow up to be as middle aged, middle class, and boring as I have.
After personally seeing how many officers were at Dolores Park that day, I can’t even imagine how EXPENSIVE this whole debacle was for tax payers. Even if the police had shared with the public the day of the event what was happening, the whole “riot” could have been avoided. When we had a picnic there the same day and asked the officers what the barricades were all about, they said “Nothing.” It seems like they were dressed for a riot, and wanted this outcome at the end of the day. So sad.
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