The city of San Francisco is paying Bryan Carmody, a freelance reporter, $369,000 in a settlement after his home was illegally raided by police last May.
Police barged through Carmody’s front door with a sledgehammer on May 10, 2019. They detained Carmody in handcuffs and seized his video equipment. After a source within the police department leaked a police report on the death of late San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, the police department was eager to identify the anonymous source. The police only knew that Carmody received an anonymous tip from someone within the police department.
“Getting woken up by someone pounding on your gate with a metal sledgehammer was not a great experience,” said Bryan Carmody.
Not only did the police raid his home, but his office as well. They seized his computer, tablets, and cellphone. The police also obtained several warrants allowing them to look through his phone records, revealing calls and text messages Carmody exchanged with two San Francisco police officers.
Carmody implied that his source was still safe when he said, “I didn’t write any of this stuff down,” and continued, “There’s no smoking gun email they’re looking for.”
Ever since the event took place, the police department has been under heavy scrutiny for potentially violating California’s journalist shield law and the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free press. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott publicly apologized late last May for his department’s reckless actions against Carmody, even though he initially defended the raids.
Four of the five judges who initially approved the warrants and therefore the searches have since found that the warrants violated the California Shield Law. This law was first put in place to protect journalists who refused to disclose sources and from having search warrants issued against them. After re-evaluating the conditions of the case, the judges ordered that none of the evidence obtained from the raid can be used in the future.
The settlement is assigned to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Government Audit and Oversight Committee, and if approved, will eventually go to the full board for consideration and a vote should occur within the next few weeks.
The First Amendment Coalition hired a legal team to get the Carmody warrants unsealed. David Snyder, head of the coalition, argues that the five judges who allowed these warrants in the first place should have known Carmody was a journalist from the start since in the warrant applications it clearly states that he “profits financially from every story he covers.”
Snyder said in a phone interview to CourtHouse News, “I think judge education is warranted here.”
“The city egregiously overstepped its bounds, and the search warrants served on Bryan were unlawful,” Snyder said. “They were in violation of California’s journalist shield law, so I’m happy to see that Bryan is going to get some compensation for that.”
Carmody’s attorney, Thomas Burke of Davis Wright Tremaine, said, “It’s critical there be a process to determine what went wrong so what happened here is not repeated.”
Burke also mentioned, “I know of no American journalist that was more targeted and didn’t go to jail than Bryan Carmody,” said Burke. “I dare to say that if this has happened here, it can happen anywhere else.”
