SFPD officers’ stop, use of force, and arrest of Black man were tainted by implicit racial bias
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 9, 2026
MEDIA CONTACT: PDR-MediaRelations@sfgov.org
**PRESS RELEASE**
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco judge has dismissed all charges against 33-year-old Kenneth McCurry after finding that two SFPD officers displayed implicit racial bias against McCurry in violation of the state Racial Justice Act. Judge Patrick Thompson found that the way the officers followed McCurry, who is Black, shoved him off his scooter and into a wall without warning, and later described him in their reports demonstrated implicit bias. On May 8, the court dismissed all three felony drug charges against McCurry.
“The Racial Justice Act was designed for just this type of case, where the officers’ conduct at every decision point was infected by racial bias,” said Deputy Public Defender Aaron Pressman, McCurry’s attorney. Deputy Public Defender Lilah Wolf, who litigated McCurry’s RJA arguments, added: “We’re grateful the court dismissed the charges—as the RJA empowers courts to do—because it is the proper remedy for these harms.”
On April 29, 2024, McCurry was riding a non-motorized scooter on the sidewalk near Civic Center when SFPD officers John Quinlan and Chiluugin Tumurchudur began following him. After McCurry crossed UN Plaza—a designated city skate park where people regularly ride non-motorized scooters—Quinlan shoved McCurry into a wall without warning. In doing so, the officer did not comply with SFPD’s use-of-force policy, which requires officers to use de-escalation techniques and to use the minimal amount of force necessary. When McCurry fell to the ground, a shopping bag hanging from the scooter’s handlebars dropped, narcotics fell out, and officers arrested him. The officers later claimed in their reports that McCurry had been ducking, fleeing, and evading them prior to the arrest, even though body-worn camera footage shows him riding toward the officers.
The Racial Justice Act
California’s Racial Justice Act prohibits the state from convicting or sentencing a person based on a person’s race, ethnicity, or national origin. Unlike prior law, it does not require proof that police or prosecutors acted with intentional bias; evidence of racially biased charging, policing, or sentencing is enough to entitle a defendant to relief. To prevail on an RJA claim, a defendant must first petition the court for an evidentiary hearing, and if that is granted, they must present convincing evidence of bias. Prosecutors may present evidence that refutes defense claims at such hearings.
In McCurry’s case, his defense team presented expert testimony, corroborating statistical evidence, and the officers’ own reports and body-worn camera footage. Among the defense’s arguments were that the SFPD’s own policy limiting so-called pretext traffic stops states that “pretext stops are disproportionately carried out against people of color and return negligible public safety benefits.” Pretext stops describe when officers stop someone for a minor issue—such as a broken taillight—as an excuse to search the person. The defense also noted that prior to the Pretext Stops policy, Black men constituted about 3 percent of the city’s population but accounted for 14 percent of police traffic stops.
Patterns of implicit bias
Camille Gear Rich, a University of Southern California professor of law and sociology who specializes in implicit bias, testified for the defense that the officers appeared to show implicit bias at several key decision points: Officers selectively targeted McCurry to follow him for several blocks even though he was only in violation of a minor traffic regulation—a “textbook” example of the kind of enforcement pattern the SFPD’s own Pretext Stop policy is attempting to constrain. She also testified that the officers’ use of force without warning was consistent with research showing that implicit racial bias can distort officers’ perceptions of Black people, contributing to unnecessary and disproportionate uses of force. Further, Rich testified that the officers’ reports about the arrest used language that reframed McCurry’s non-threatening behavior as suspicious and criminal. Research shows that police often mischaracterize a person’s neutral behavior as “furtive” or “evasive” as a way to justify, after the fact, their own outsized and biased response to that behavior.
“Our office has been at the forefront of enforcing the Racial Justice Act because our clients deserve more than a recognition that racial bias occurred. They deserve meaningful remedies,” said elected San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju. “We’re encouraged by the court’s decision in this case, which reinforces that the RJA has real power to hold our justice system accountable when racial bias taints a prosecution. I’m proud of our team for securing that result for Mr. McCurry.”
McCurry’s defense team included Deputy Public Defenders Aaron Pressman, Lilah Wolf, Ilona Yañez, Madeline Walsh and Nikita Saini, Paralegal Sandra Reyna and Investigator James Faulkner.
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