Try to help cops in SF, get your arm broken and your career flushed down the toilet

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SAN FRANCISCO

Bonds' trainer, student sue city, alleging police assaults

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

A college student and a personal trainer for Barry Bonds are suing San Francisco police in separate federal civil rights lawsuits, accusing officers of assaulting them for no reason when they tried to help them.

Guitarist Daniel Alvarenga, 30, said his hopes of attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music were dashed when an officer broke his arm and arrested him after he offered to translate for a Spanish-speaking suspect in the Mission District.

Bonds' trainer, Greg Oliver, 36, said he was attacked by an officer after telling him that police were chasing the victim, not the suspect, of an assault he witnessed in North Beach.

"Society, I think, has the right to expect police officers to exercise some type of restraint or just make a better decision as it relates to ferreting out who is a potential threat or who could be Good Samaritans," Alvarenga's attorney, Adanté Pointer, said Tuesday.

Matt Dorsey, spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, declined to comment Tuesday, saying the city had not yet been served with the lawsuits, which were filed last week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Alvarenga, a City College of San Francisco student, said he was walking home May 12, 2005, after playing the guitar at Radio Havana when he came across three officers arresting a Spanish-speaking man at 17th and Valencia streets.

Alvarenga said he overheard the suspect saying in Spanish, "Why are you arresting me? I did nothing wrong," the suit said. When the officers didn't respond, Alvarenga assumed they didn't speak Spanish and asked the suspect if he knew why he was being arrested, the suit said.

After the suspect told Alvarenga that he didn't know why he was being arrested, Officer Mark McKinney told Alvarenga that the police had an interpreter and that Alvarenga had better leave or he was going to be arrested for "interfering with a police investigation," the suit said.

Alvarenga replied that he didn't think he could be arrested for "merely trying to translate" and began to leave the scene. McKinney, now 32, then grabbed Alvarenga's wrist and suddenly jerked upward, breaking his humerus, and thwarting his plans to attend the conservatory and promote his new CD, said the suit, which seeks $300,000 in damages.

Oliver said in his suit that he saw three men attack another man on Broadway in North Beach on Aug. 20. Oliver said he saw the victim "on the receiving end of force" of an arriving officer and was then surprised when another officer, Jesse Serna, 41, pushed Oliver in the chest with a baton, the suit said.

Oliver said he told Serna that other officers were wrestling with the victim and not the suspect. But Serna struck him again with a baton, this time in the upper thigh, and officers threw him on the ground, said the suit, which seeks $1 million in damages.

Both Alvarenga and Oliver were arrested on suspicion of obstructing police, but no charges were filed, their suits said.

Police should always try to "keep their cool," said Ben Nisenbaum, Oliver's attorney. "When you lose your cool, bad things happen to good people."