SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Friday said the recent incident involving a homeless woman being sprayed with a hose reminded her of how police treated civil rights protesters during the 1960s.
All week, there has been outraged over a gallery owner spraying a homeless woman with a hose. Video captured the gallery owner — identified as Collier Gwin, owner and operator of Foster Gwin Gallery on Montgomery Street in the city’s Financial District — spraying a homeless woman with a garden hose late Monday morning.
CBS
Reporters on Friday morning asked the mayor about the confrontation that was captured in a video that went viral and sparked both widespread anger and a police investigation. After acknowledging she felt frustration when she saw the video, she said she was reminded of the civil rights struggle in the south during the ’60s.
“When I saw it, all I can think about is what happened during the civil rights movement,” Breed said. “Sadly, at a time when African Americans were fighting for our rights to be considered equal in this country, even at that time law enforcement and others used water hoses to stop protesters. And it just kind of takes us back unfortunately to that time. And no other human being should be able to do that to any other human being, period.”
Her comments echoed what Rev. Amos Brown — the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP — said in a statement earlier this week when he called the video “an immensely disturbing image of violence and inhumanity.”
“They [the images] are especially disturbing as we approach the holiday marking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday,” his statement read. “As a Black man who was active in the fight for Civil Rights in the 50s and 60s, the scene was chillingly reminiscent of the images of ‘Bull’ Conner turning the fire-hoses on Black protesters in Birmingham in 1963. Those images, broadcast on national television, were a powerful wake-up call for change and led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year.”
Rev. Brown added, “The images in San Francisco today must be a similar wake-up call for change. It’s past time for the City to fully enact the Care Not Cash program that I first proposed when I was on the Board of Supervisors.”
Breed went on to say that she felt Gwin should face charges in the incident.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s assault. And there should be consequences,” the mayor said. “Clearly, we know that there are people on our streets who are struggling with mental illness with substance-use disorder. We know that people are very frustrated, but this is not the solution. This is not how you take out your frustrations and your anger, you know, on someone who clearly not only couldn’t help themselves, but also someone who said they were not interested in pressing charges.”
“Our system is broken and right now,” Mayor Breed noted. “My hope is that we are able to help someone like this even when they say they don’t want help.”
When Gwin spoke to CBS News Bay Area earlier this week, he was apologetic about the incident.
“What they saw is very regrettable,” Gwin told KPIX in an interview. “I feel awful, not just because I want to get out of trouble, or something like that, but because I’d put a tremendous amount of effort into helping this woman on the street.”
SFPD Chief Bill Scott has said the investigation into the incident is ongoing. Threats leveled against Gwin in the wake of the video have led the department to station a police vehicle outside Gwin’s gallery. Authorities have not said when they would come to a decision on what charges Gwin might face.
