Christiana Porter had just finished printing court documents at Office Depot for her domestic violence case when it happened. As she was crossing Second Avenue at Geary Boulevard, a San Francisco Police Department officer turned on his lights to flag her down — for jaywalking.
Porter said she had on headphones and didn’t hear the sirens at first. The officer peeled around the corner, driving against traffic, and jumped out of the car. He asked Porter where she was going and what she was doing in the neighborhood. She said she was going to visit a friend and asked why she was being detained.
In the scuffle that ensued, the officer, Josh McFall, pushed Porter against a wall, causing her to hit her head and sustain a concussion. More cops soon ran over, pulling Porter’s hands behind her back. She suffered a separated right shoulder. The whole time, she was screaming in panic.
“I just remember I couldn’t breathe, and I had to just try to find any ounce of energy to scream,” she said of the July 2024 arrest. “It felt like being hit by a ton of bricks.”
Now Porter is suing the city. In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday, her lawyers argue that the detainment was illegal — jaywalking has been decriminalized in California since Jan. 1, 2023 — and that McFall used excessive force.
In 2018, McFall was one of several officers who left an unhoused man with two broken arms after arresting him for trespassing, Mission Local reported.
Representatives of the SFPD referred a request for comment to the city attorney’s office. In a statement, the city attorney’s office said it was reviewing the complaint and would respond in court.
Porter says that as a result of the incident, she has ongoing pain in the back and arms that forced her to leave her job as an esthetician. She said her concussion caused ongoing difficulty with thinking and a heightened sensitivity to light, and the arrest triggered trauma from her experience of domestic violence.
“The last six months have been just me trying to rehabilitate my body, get me back to where I can go back to a full quality way of life,” she said. “And for me, that’s working. I love my job.”
She is seeking an undetermined amount in damages.
“The most important thing here is he broke the law,” Porter’s attorney Treva Stewart said of McFall. “There is a California law and a department policy that says he cannot do what he did.”
As the arrest went on, a small crowd formed, and people began filming on their phones. Several expressed shock that the arrest was for jaywalking. One yelled, “Fuck the police!”
“The response from the bystanders speaks volumes to the egregiousness of [McFall’s] conduct, and I think a jury will see it the same way,” Stewart said.
After being detained, Porter was given a citation for resisting arrest and released. Porter, who studied directing and screenwriting at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, is working on a film script about her experience.
In an October forum hosted by the San Francisco NAACP Youth Council, candidates for mayor fielded a question about Porter’s case.
“It has no place in our city,” Daniel Lurie, who went on to win the election, said of the incident. “It should have no place in our police department.”
He added that, if elected, he would make sure San Francisco continues to have police oversight.
A spokesperson for Lurie declined to comment on Porter’s lawsuit and referred questions to the city attorney’s office.