San Francisco public defenders are seeking accountability for three police officers after an arrest that left 33-year-old Kevon Gibson hospitalized in a medically induced coma and facing criminal charges. The office released body-camera footage Thursday showing officers punching Gibson in the head, pulling his hair and kneeling on his neck during the Aug. 17, 2025, struggle at a residential hotel on Sixth Street. Gibson can be heard telling officers to listen and saying he cannot breathe. He was taken to intensive care, intubated and placed in a coma for several days. His attorneys, Bonnie Chan-Silen and John Paul Passaglia, said he also suffered temporary blindness in one eye and continued urinating blood for nearly a year after leaving the hospital. The confrontation followed a call from a white resident who alleged Gibson had threatened him and displayed a gun. Gibson’s lawyers say the resident had threatened Gibson earlier that morning. They point to body-camera footage from officers’ first visit in which, according to the defenders, the resident directs a racial slur at Gibson and threatens to stab him, saying he would “stick this knife into his Black ass.” The attorneys say officers did not pursue those threats. When officers returned around 1 p.m., footage shows them asking Gibson’s roommate to open the door so they could speak with her and her “giant ass boyfriend.” One officer threatens to kick the door down. Officers then encounter Gibson as he leaves the elevator. Although they initially tell him he is not under arrest, they grab him, prompting the struggle shown in body-camera and surveillance video. Officers later said Gibson bit and punched them and tried to injure an officer’s thumb. Passaglia said video presented at trial contradicted those claims. In August 2026, a jury acquitted Gibson of three felony counts of resisting arrest but convicted him of misdemeanor resisting arrest and being a felon in possession of a firearm. His attorneys say they will appeal the gun conviction, arguing he temporarily took possession of the weapon to protect himself from the resident who threatened him. Gibson’s defenders also accuse the District Attorney’s Office of trying to limit what jurors heard, including by seeking to exclude audio from the arrest footage and the resident’s alleged threats and racist remarks. They say prosecutors offered a plea deal that would have dropped the felony resisting charges but required Gibson to waive potential future civil claims against the officers. He rejected the deal and went to trial. After the conviction, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins described Gibson as actively resisting officers who were trying to search him for weapons, but did not mention the injuries that put him in a coma. Public defender Chan-Silen said Jenkins had “villainized Mr. Gibson as a Black man with a gun.” The San Francisco Police Department said its Independent Investigations Bureau found the officers’ use of force justified under California law. An administrative investigation is still underway. The Public Defender’s Office plans to file a complaint with the city’s Department of Police Accountability and ask the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to decertify officers Brendan Caraway, Brian Conway and Gabriel Rivera.