San Rafael police apologize after dropping off homeless man in San Francisco

San Rafael police said this week they have apologized to residents and first responders in San Francisco after an officer drove a homeless man accused of causing a disturbance to a residential neighborhood and left him there.

The incident unfolded last month, when San Rafael police were called to Northgate mall around 4:43 pm on July 30 after a caller reported a man was threatening security guards at the mall, San Rafael police Lt. Scott Eberle said.

The officers “determined that no crime had taken place,” and the man did not meet the threshold to be held for psychiatric evaluation, Eberle said.

The man whose identity has not been released was known to the police, but the department could not confirm whether he lived there or had ties to San Francisco. He was not a resident of San Rafael’s city-run homeless camp, police said.

Eberle said to an officer suggested San Francisco as a destination, “and the subject said he wanted to go.”

Once in the city, the man allegedly tried to start a fire and began undressing in a driveway in the residential neighborhood where he was dropped off, said Jen Kwart, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

He was transported to an area hospital “for a medical complaint,” according to the San Francisco Fire Department.

“It is disturbing to think another jurisdiction would drop off someone experiencing homelessness or mental health challenges in the middle of a residential neighborhood with no services or resources around,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement. “We will hold any jurisdiction accountable that is proven to engage in this behavior.”

A bystander noticed the San Rafael police vehicle and shot a video of police dropping the man off near 14th Avenue and Lake Street. Eberle said the person who took the video shared it with San Rafael police, which immediately began an internal investigation.

Eberle said it was not the department’s practice to drive people to other jurisdictions and leave them there without notifying local authorities.

“This does not reflect any practices of the San Rafael Police Department,” Eberle said. “We do not condone this officer’s actions.

“We devote so much time and resources and energy to helping combat the homelessness crisis that our city is experiencing, and we have hired and promoted people within the department to specialize in addressing the homelessness crisis,” Eberle said.

The department has a mental health liaison, Lynn Murphy, who will at times connect homeless people with resources outside the city, “but she does so in a professional manner, and just doesn’t transport somebody without gaining approval from the receiving resource or service provider,” Eberle said.

The officer and a supervisor who was involved in the incident remain on active duty as an internal investigation continues, Eberle said. He declined to identify the officer or the supervisor.

Chiu’s office only became aware of the full scope of the incident approximately a week ago.

San Rafael police said the department has apologized to the city and county of San Francisco, the neighborhood where the homeless man was dropped off and the firefighters and police who responded after neighbors complained about the man’s behavior there.

“In my 22 years of being here, I have heard of this happening in the past, but this is not normal or routine,” Eberle said.

“We do acknowledge that we made a mistake,” Eberle said. “We’re extremely apologetic to everyone who was impacted.”

Such incidents have occurred before. In 2013, San Francisco south of the state of Nevada, alleging it had improperly bused dozens of psychiatric patients from the Rawson-Neal Hospital in Las Vegas into San Francisco without food, water or medication and dropped them in the city to fend for themselves.

That lawsuit was settled when Nevada agreed to only bring patients to California if they were going to a specific home address, medical facility or program with someone waiting for or accompanying them. Nevada also paid $400,000 to San Francisco.