A former San Francisco fire commissioner has been accused of involvement in a series of bear spray attacks on unhoused people in the city.
The San Francisco public defender’s office said in a statement on Wednesday that the district attorney’s office had turned over evidence that may link Don Carmignani to eight unsolved assaults using bear spray.
The statement from the public defender’s office stems from an assault case involving Carmignani. In that case, the former city official claimed he was attacked by an unhoused man with a metal rod, leaving him with a fractured skull. The incident drew widespread media coverage and fueled concerns about safety in the city, which has a growing homelessness crisis.
However, the public defender’s office argued that new evidence shows that it was Carmignani who instigated the altercation, not Garret Doty, the unhoused man who was ultimately charged in the assault. The public defender for Doty has asked that the DA drop the charges against him.
“He is terrorizing [unhoused people] with a 10-inch can of bear spray, not pepper spray. He sprayed anything and everything, including my client,” Kleigh Hathaway, the public defender representing Doty, reportedly said in court.
An attorney for Carmignani told the San Francisco Standard that he was not involved in the attacks.
“Our client vehemently denies that he is the alleged individual who is committing these acts against homeless people,” Nick Colla said.
Video, turned over to the office by the prosecution, shows Carmignani with pepper spray in his hand as he approaches Doty, at which point the pair begin arguing. A witness told police she heard Carmignani threaten to stab and kill Doty if he did not leave, according to the public defender’s office.
The prosecution also turned over evidence that includes information about eight attacks between November 2021 and 2023, in which a man the public defender’s office said fits the physical description of Carmignani approached unhoused people and sprayed them with pepper spray or bear spray, a more concentrated version of the spray.
In one incident, an assailant attacked an unhoused man and woman with bear spray and then took the woman’s wallet, cellphone and earrings and picked up and threw to the ground a dog that belonged to one of the victims.
Video of a November 2021 incident shows someone walking by an unhoused man sleeping on a sidewalk and spraying him. The prosecution indicated the suspect might be Carmignani, the statement said.
The San Francisco district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, said at a press conference that police had not presented a case against Carmignani to her office regarding the attacks, the Standard reported.
“I am not aware that Mr Carmignani has ever been arrested for any of these incidents,” Jenkins said. “These are all allegations right now.”
In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Jenkins said her office had not dropped charges against Doty, the unhoused man accused of assaulting Carmignani. The charges required testimony from the victim, Jenkins said, and Carmignani had not yet provided an interview to police despite multiple requests.
