Police officers raided freelance reporter Bryan Carmody’s San Francisco home last week — after Carmody failed to reveal the source responsible for sharing a confidential police report with him several weeks ago.
On Friday, approximately 10 police officers appeared at Carmody’s home at roughly 8 a.m. and started smashing the gate of his home with sledgehammers, waking Carmody. When Carmody said he would permit them entry to his home, the officers presented a search warrant that authorized them to search his home from “top to bottom” as they had their guns drawn.
“They treated me like I was some kind of drug dealer,” Carmody said, according to the Washington Post.
The police wanted to know who was responsible for leaking a confidential police report concerning the death of the city’s public defender, Jeff Adachi — information that Carmody failed to provide them when they appeared at his home two weeks earlier.
“I’m smart enough not to talk to federal agents, ever,” Carmody said, “I just kept saying ‘lawyer, lawyer, lawyer.’”
After being questioned by the police and two FBI agents about the source, Carmody didn’t surrender the information and was subsequently taken into police custody from 8:22 a.m. to 1:55 p.m. while police raided his home. They eventually recovered the information they sought in a safe.
Reports first emerged that Adachi, who died in February, was killed from a heart attack. But two days after his death, ABC 7 reported that a police report and photos indicated that Adachi had been with a woman who was not his wife, and that he was found in a disorderly apartment with empty bottles of alcohol and cannabis gummies and “two syringes that may have been left by the paramedics.”
Adachi was a disliked figure by the police department, but Carmody said he had no reason to dislike him.
“I had no beef with him, I had no beef with anyone, I’m just a journalist in the middle of this,” Carmody said.
Although outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle also included information from the police report, Carmody said he’s convinced his home was barged into because he’s a freelancer.
“I don’t think there was a police raid at the Chronicle with a sledgehammer yesterday,” he said.
Carmody’s lawyer, Thomas Burke, said that the police should have issued a subpoena rather than a search warrant.
“The appropriate thing was to issue a subpoena, not a search warrant,” Burke told the Post.
Despite scrutiny and questions about First Amendment rights, the San Francisco Police Department has defended its actions.
“The citizens and leaders of the City of San Francisco have demanded a complete and thorough investigation into this leak, and this action represents a step in the process of investigating a potential case of obstruction of justice along with the illegal distribution of confidential police material,” the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement to local reporters.
According to Carmody, the police took at least four tablets, seven computers, 10 hard drives, a dozen phones, two cameras, and reporters’ notebooks when they searched his home.
