Advocates are calling for an investigation into reports that more than a dozen women incarcerated at a San Francisco jail were strip-searched in front of male deputies and recorded on body-worn cameras, in violation of city policy.

At a rally on Monday outside the county jail on Seventh Street, attorneys and organizers urged officials to suspend the involved deputies while an investigation takes place, and called on the city to fund independent oversight over the sheriff’s department to protect incarcerated women going forward.

“It ends here,” said attorney Elizabeth Bertolino, who last week filed a government claim on behalf of 19 women who say they were searched. The complaint could be a precursor to a lawsuit against the city, according to San Francisco public defender’s office spokesperson Valerie Ibarra.

“This is not going away, this is not being swept under the rug. We are not asking for an apology, we are demanding change,” Bertolino said.

On May 22, women incarcerated at the 7th Street jail allege that sheriff’s deputies entered their housing unit and conducted strip searches, according to a separate complaint filed last month with the Department of Police Accountability and San Francisco Sheriff’s Office by Assistant Chief Public Defender Angela Chan.

It said the women were called to the center of their housing area around 4:45 p.m. and taken one by one to a bathroom or meeting room, where female deputies instructed them to undress, “bend over, spread cheeks and cough.” The searches were conducted in spaces visible to the other women in the unit, according to the complaint.

They say that male deputies were present and laughed and joked as they watched the women undress. Some deputies activated body-worn cameras, they said, and one deputy allegedly taunted them that he would post the videos online.

“There was no explanation for the dehumanizing, violative searches that left several women crying,” Chan wrote.

Attorneys said the incident violated multiple laws and department policies, which state that male deputies should not be present when women are strip-searched, except in emergency situations, and that body-worn cameras cannot be activated. The searches must also happen in private areas and cannot be performed indiscriminately.

“By antagonizing the women and taunting them with threats of publishing the video — and even with making the videos in the first place — they violated policies put in place to ensure everyone is treated with respect,” Chan said.

The Sheriff’s Office said it was aware of the allegations and takes complaints seriously.

“The conduct described is deeply concerning and does not reflect the policies, procedures, or professional standards we require of our staff,” spokesperson Tara Moriarty said via email.

She said “personnel action” was taken in response to the complaints, but she did not specify and she denied the allegations of a mass strip search by deputies.

“Rather, women were individually searched by female deputies in single-person stalls,” the statement reads.

City attorney’s office spokesperson Alex Barrett-Shorter said via email that the office was reviewing the claims and would respond to the claimants.

According to Chan’s report, multiple women had already filed grievances about the May incident and similar situations that had occurred in a different housing area. At least some of the women whom the public defender’s office spoke to are now a part of the government claim filed last week by Bertolino.

“Many more fear reprisals for speaking out about their treatment,” Chan wrote.

After Mission Local first published an investigation into the mass search on Thursday, Supervisor Shamann Walton called for independent oversight of the Sheriff’s Office, saying the city’s current system failed to protect women.

“These are not isolated incidents,” he wrote on social media. “This is a system that allows abuse to go unchecked because the offices responsible for accountability do not have the staff or resources they need to do their job. When oversight is underfunded, people in custody, especially women, are left vulnerable.”

Supervisor Jackie Fielder echoed Walton, saying at the rally on Monday that the incident is an example of what happens when the city’s current sheriff’s oversight commission is not funded.

Voters passed a ballot measure creating the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board in 2020, after years of complaints of misconduct in city jails. The body is tasked with fielding complaints and recommending policy changes for the Sheriff’s Department, and appointing an inspector general to oversee investigations.

But in 2024, then-Mayor London Breed’s budget did not allocate funding for the inspector general position, and the body has continuously had a vacancy rate over 25%. Over the summer, it was included in the list of “borderline inactive bodies” recommended for possible elimination by the city’s Commission Streamlining Task Force, which was created by a 2024 ballot measure to reduce the high number of city committees and commissions.

Supervisors have also said they plan to hold a hearing on the issue, but details about when that will be held aren’t known.

“There are laws on the books to prevent and also to have accountability for instances of injustice like this, which amounts to blatant human rights abuses,” Fielder said at the rally on Monday. “This is gender-based violence.”

KQED’s Ezra David Romero contributed to this report.