A former Black Panther Party leader is suing San Francisco over a spring police raid on the activist group’s namesake apartment complex in West Oakland, alleging officers used excessive, “commando-” style force while executing a search warrant.
Elaine Brown, party’s first and only female chairwoman and owner of Black Panther Apartments, said San Francisco police deployed more than 20 plainclothes officers to the affordable housing building on May 21, and failed to identify themselves before smashing through its front door windows, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday.
The police served a search warrant in an apartment on the fifth floor, a unit rented by the suspect’s girlfriend, plaintiffs’ attorneys said. There, police seized a pair of shoes and a jacket connected to a San Francisco robbery a few months earlier…