Kevon Gibson was hospitalized in intensive care after San Francisco police officers arrested and beat him in a SoMa apartment building in August 2025, according to his public defenders, who say body-camera footage contradicts the officers’ account of the encounter. At a news conference Thursday, public defenders Bonnie Chan-Silen and John Paul Passaglia released video of the arrest and alleged that District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ office tried to conceal evidence of the police violence. The prosecutors’ office rejected the accusation, saying Gibson’s convictions reflected the evidence and jury’s verdict. Gibson, 33, was staying with a friend at a Sixth Street apartment when another resident called police on Aug. 17, 2025, alleging Gibson had threatened him and displayed a weapon. Gibson’s attorneys said the caller had threatened Gibson earlier that morning. Footage they released shows the caller using a racial slur and threatening to stab Gibson while officers were present during an earlier visit that day. Police returned around 1 p.m. after a second complaint. The video shows an officer threatening to kick down the apartment door before officers find Gibson and take him to the ground. The footage appears to show officers punching his head as he pleads with them to listen. Gibson later says he is afraid and cannot breathe as an officer kneels on him and pulls his hair. Officers alleged Gibson bit and punched them during the arrest. He was taken to an intensive care unit and sedated for several days. Chan-Silen said he temporarily lost sight in one eye and urinated blood for nearly a year after leaving the hospital. Gibson remained in jail for about a year and pleaded not guilty. At trial in 2026, jurors found him guilty of possessing a firearm as a felon and of misdemeanor resisting arrest, but acquitted him of three felony resisting-arrest charges. His attorneys argued that the officers’ claims that Gibson attacked them were not credible. They said he plans to appeal the gun conviction, arguing that he had received the firearm from a friend shortly before the encounter. Gibson’s lawyers also accused prosecutors of trying to restrict what jurors could see and hear, including asking the court to exclude audio from the body-camera footage and to bar footage of officers’ interactions with the complainant. They further alleged that investigators from the district attorney’s office woke Gibson while he was medically sedated to interview him. The district attorney’s office said Gibson was convicted of several crimes and disputed the defenders’ characterization. “Calling this a ‘cover-up’ isn’t just an attack on our prosecutors — it shows remarkable disrespect for the court and the jurors who heard the evidence and rendered the verdict,” the office said. The officers were identified as Brendan Caraway, Brian Conway and Gabriel Rivera. The Public Defender’s Office said it plans to file a complaint with the city’s Department of Police Accountability and ask the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to consider decertifying the officers. The San Francisco Police Department had not responded to requests for comment. Public Defender Mano Raju said the case raised questions about the account presented to jurors. “I think San Franciscans want to know the truth about what happened,” he said.