‘Unlawful search’ claim after lady cop’s intimate frisk of male perp leads to gun find

September 3, 2024

A lady SFPD officer who found “an abnormal bulge” in the groin of a male detainee whom she was frisking was surprised to find a Glock handgun he had injudiciously hidden between his legs, a court heard today.

Ricky Rollins asked a federal judge to throw out the evidence found after his pants were subsequently pulled down and the firearm seized.

The episode began when police served a search warrant at the home of Rollins’ cousin, George Washington, with whom he was staying. Officers were looking for evidence of firearms possession and gang-related activity after receiving information that Washington was involved in an attempted murder.

Prosecutor Kevin Barry told the court that an SFPD SWAT team entered the Sunnydale Avenue residence in the early hours of November 8 2023 and detained Rollins, Washington and two others.

Over the next few minutes, according to Rollins, he was searched on four or five separate occasions by male police officers, each of whom failed to detect the 7.36” -long gun.

Subsequently Officer Erika Viola conducted her own “pat search” of the detainees.

Viola began frisking Rollins and first found a wallet in his left pocket. A few moments later she ordered him to spread his legs and “felt something near Rollins’ right pocket that was suspicious”. The suspect then began resisting, she reported, as she detected “an abnormal bulge coming from his groin area” and “felt a hard metal-like object that was consistent with a firearm.”

“She rubbed her hands between my legs and came up on my penis,” Rollins wrote in a declaration provided to the court. “She asked me what it was, and I told her it was my penis.”

It wasn’t the defendant’s penis, however, it was a Glock 32.

Prosecutors say that Viola announced to colleagues “there is something between his thighs” at which point other officers pulled down Rollins’ pants which afforded Viola the opportunity to seize the weapon.

Rollins says that the warrant authorizing the search only allowed officers to search Washington’s home and Washington himself – not others, like him, who were present. Still less did it allow him to be frisked on multiple occasions without ‘additional circumstances’ having developed between searches.

Prosecutors say a “limited pat down” of Rollins for weapons was “objectively reasonable” for officer safety and did not compromise his Fourth Amendment rights. They pointed out that, in any event, Rollins was on supervised release after serving a 15 year prison term for attempted murder and firearm possession and so had a “significantly reduced expectation of privacy.”

Today in Courtroom 12 at San Francisco Federal Courthouse U.S. District Judge William Alsup said he wasn’t prepared to rule on the issue without a full evidentiary hearing which he set for October 8.

“It’s an interesting problem not resolved clearly by the case law,” said Alsup. “It’ll probably go to the Court of Appeal and I’d like to give the Court of Appeal…an adequate record for their purposes.”

The judge said he wants to hear testimony from “whatever tactical team [members] did frisks, Viola, and if you know of anyone who overheard anything, bring that person in, but you are not required to bring everyone else.”

The original target of the search, George Washington, was of interest to police who were investigating an Independence Day 2023 incident when a woman was shot with a rifle on the 1900 block of Sunnydale Avenue. The victim was the sister of a Tre-4 gang member and a girlfriend of Deniro Gulley. Gulley was arrested one month later on suspicion of the murder of Yuerra Blaylock.

Officers had seen an Instagram post in which Washington was pictured carrying a handgun. A loaded Glock 43 was also found at Washington’s residence.

Rollins faces one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The case continues.