'discipline' for breaking protester's arm in March

May 17, 2004 at 11:54 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) -- A San Francisco police officer is facing discipline charges this week involving excessive force against a woman whose arm was broken during last spring's antiwar demonstrations downtown.

Officer Anthony Nelson is accused in charges going before the police commission Wednesday night of improperly striking the woman from above with his baton and then falsifying the incident report afterward to justify his account that she charged at him during a Market Street encounter between police and demonstrators on March 20, 2003.

"Most of the witnesses and film footage of the incident do not support the accused officer's interpretation of the baton swing or the threat posed by the victim," reads the statement signed by Police Chief Heather Fong.

According to the Police Department's documents, the woman described feeling a "hot searing pain" and repeatedly yelled out that her arm was broken afterward, but Nelson failed to include any reference to injury in his report to superiors. The demonstrator was treated for a broken forearm at Kaiser Permanente Hospital.

Wednesday night's commission agenda, which lists Nelson's case as ready for assignment to one commissioner for review along with a second discipline case in which a private police contractor known as a "patrol special officer" is accused of misrepresenting himself, also includes a number of follow-up items from last week's meeting. Commissioners may urge police to release the names of officers involved in the recent fatal shooting of Cammerin Boyd as well as future officer-involved shootings. They are also set to discuss a recent California Highway Patrol crackdown on traffic offense in high-crime areas.