One officer convicted, one acquitted of violating civil rights in hotel room search

SAN FRANCISCO -- One San Francisco police officer was convicted and a second officer was acquitted in federal court Thursday of conspiring to enter and search residential hotel rooms without a warrant during drug investigations.

Peter Furst, a lawyer for Officer Richard Yick, 38, said Yick was acquitted of all charges in the verdict pronounced shortly before noon by the jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco.

Officer Arshad Razzak, 42, was convicted of the four counts leveled against him, Furst said.

Those charges were conspiring to violate civil rights through illegal searches and entries of single-room occupancy hotel rooms; depriving an occupant of her civil rights by conducting an illegal entry and search on Dec. 23, 2010; and falsifying an informant's pay slip and a police report related to the incident.

Razzak will be sentenced by Seeborg on April 28.

The search was carried out at a room at the residential Henry Hotel at Sixth and Mission streets.

The two officers were originally also charged with violations related to a search of another room at the Henry Hotel on Jan. 5, 2011, but prosecutors dropped those charges shortly before trial.

The civil rights investigation began after San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi in March 2011 released hotel surveillance videotapes that appeared to show officers entering the rooms without a warrant or consent of the occupants.