How AIDS Activists Fought Back Against SF Police Brutality

Following the White Night Riots in the aftermath of Harvey Milk’s assassination and the prosecution of the police assault on Peg’s Place, a lesbian bar on Geary Boulevard, relations between San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community and its police department began to improve. However, by the dawn of the 1980s, the LGBTQ+ community faced a new crisis. A disproportionate number of gay men were affected by severe and persistent cases of pneumonia. Some were also diagnosed with a rare skin cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma, sometimes concurrently.

Before long, these symptoms began to also show up in intravenous drug users, promiscuous heterosexual people, and people who received tainted blood transfusions. By 1982, the United States Centers for Disease Control officially named the new disease Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS for short. The following year, two virologists, Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier, isolated the cause as the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

Unfortunately, the Reagan administration at first didn’t take the issue seriously at all. In 1982, the White House Press Corps infamously mocked the situation as a “gay plague.” Ronald Reagan only began to acknowledge the disease as a serious problem in 1985, the same year his friend and fellow movie actor Rock Hudson died of the disease. Unfortunately, by then, there had been over 12,000 confirmed fatalities.

By 1989, the death toll rose to nearly 30,000. On Friday, 6 October 1989, the grassroots political organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP, staged a protest march through San Francisco, planned to begin at the Phillip Burton Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue and continue toward Harvey Milk Plaza, at the corner of Market Street and Castro Street. The columns of the Federal Building were festooned with red plastic tape to condemn the government for their slow response to the growing epidemic.

The police established a greater presence than at prior events, and gave orders to the marchers to stay on the sidewalk. Only one block away from the Federal Building, Bill Haskell, the tactical coordinator and police liaison for ACT UP, went into the street to reason with the police, only to be thrown to the pavement and arrested for resisting arrest and blocking the street.

Along the 30-block route, the police harassment continued, prompting chants of “First Amendment under attack! What do we do? ACT UP! Fight Back!”

When the marchers turned left onto Castro Street, about 50 protesters linked arms to blockade the police. 20 more laid down on the pavement to stage a die-in while others used chalk and spray paint to mark the street with body outlines and slogans such as “Profits = Death” and “Black People Die Faster.”

Around 8 p.m., the police declared the protest to be an unlawful assembly. Suddenly, an unoccupied police motorcycle was tipped over. The cops then proceeded to use truncheons to indiscriminately attack demonstrators and any bystander within striking range as the crowd chanted, “Cops go home!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, SFPD go away!” For the next hour, the Castro District was put under house arrest as the police prohibited people from coming outside. The Bay Area Reporter noted that there were approximately 50 arrests and at least ten injuries.

By 10 p.m., the officers vacated the area. The protest continued for a little while longer, then peacefully dispersed.

The following day, Mayor Art Agnos condemned the police brutality as unacceptable and urged people who were victimized by the officers to file formal complaints. That night, roughly 1,500 people staged a second protest in the Castro in response to the police actions.

On 11 October 1989, ACT UP called for the resignation of San Francisco Chief of Police (and future mayor) Frank Jordan and disciplinary actions against the officers involved. Frank Jordan, taking decisive action, reprimanding Deputy Chief Frank Reed, who was head of the SFPD’s Patrol Bureau, reassigned Captain Richard Fife to the Traffic Bureau, and suspended Captain Richard Cairns, who was the tactical squad leader on duty during the sweep. The latter sued the city, claiming to have acted in self-defense. Deputy Chief Jack Jordan, Frank Jordan’s brother, resigned to avoid disciplinary action.

For the next three years, the San Francisco LGBTQ+ community staged protests demanding accountability on the part of the police. During this time, a series of lawsuits stemming from what would be known as the single most massive police attack on San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community would cost the city about a quarter of a million dollars in settlements.

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