Yount
Yount v. City and County of San Francisco CA1/5
Opinion
Opinion
Needham, J.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On February 16, 2010, at about 3:07 p.m., the San Francisco Police Department received its first 911 call regarding a man who was standing on a ledge of the Forever 21 retail store building near the corner of Market Street and Powell Street. Dispatchers broadcast the call and Officer Cezar Perez arrived on the scene, where he saw Mr. Yount standing on the ledge outside of an apartment on what appeared to be the sixth floor of the building. Perez immediately began yelling at Mr. Yount to go inside.
1 Perez took several steps after his arrival: (1) calling for a “Code 33” to clear all radio traffic on one of the channels except for communications about the incident; (2) calling for a “hostage negotiator,” an officer specially trained to deal with both suicide attempts and hostage situations; (3) calling for more officers to clear the area below the ledge to protect the public. Perez continued to yell at Mr. Yount to go back inside, at one point yelling, “Get back inside your apartment, you fool! Get back inside!” Police officers taped off the area below the ledge and cleared it of pedestrians. Officer Craig Canton, a trained hostage negotiator, arrived…