San Francisco police are facing public backlash after arresting a woman who was operating a hot dog cart.
Members of the public say the cops were way too aggressive in handling an incident with Ana Julca when they arrested her last week in front of her five-year-old child who was crying loudly during the interaction.
For their part, the San Francisco police say that video of the incident circulating on social media has been deceptively edited to leave out important context that explained why cops made the arrest. On the social media platform X, city cops said the woman’s child appeared to have been instructed to cry loudly “to manipulate the situation.”
SF cops tried to explain the situation in a thread on X. They said that police approached Julca at her hot dog cart because she was selling food illegally on a boardwalk, and they intended to give her a warning. When they came back later and discovered Julca still selling food, the officers tried to take her hot dog cart away from her but Julca refused and held onto the cart “tightly.”
The cops say that, at that point, they had probable cause to arrest her, and that they tried to de-escalate before it became a heated confrontation. But Julca then attacked a Port employee, police said, and officers moved in to handcuff and arrest her. They say Julca resisted arrest while several other food vendors stepped in and tried to intervene on Julca’s behalf.
The city’s police say their officers’ body-cam footage recorded the entire situation from start to finish, but what people are seeing online is only a small portion that highlights Julca’s arrest for dramatic effect.
People who watched the video online characterize the police response as aggressive, but the San Francisco Police Department said that the child who appeared to be in great distress was not even actually crying.
The cops also claim that a sergeant tried to figure out who the child belonged to, but that another man came over and retrieved the girl to take her away. But a few minutes later, they said, the little girl was back. They claim that one witness told the police she saw an unidentified woman push the child back toward the altercation with the instruction to start crying so that the police would release her mother.
