protect and serve;

CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. - A federal jury awarded a mother and her two daughters $8.25 million after they were unlawfully searched and handcuffed by Alameda County sheriff's deputies at a Castro Valley Starbucks on their way to taking one of the young women to a college math test in Berkeley. 

The women were not physically harmed by law enforcement, but the dollar amount of the award signals that the jurors felt the family's constitutional rights had been stripped from them because of the color of their skin. 

"I think that everybody recognizes we all have implicit bias," their attorney, Craig Peters of San Francisco, said in an interview on Monday. "I have it. You have it. We've all got it. These officers are no different. And so, subconsciously, there was something going on that made them unreasonably suspicious of this family. I think that if this same scenario happened and these were white women, it would have played out very differently." 

The verdict was reached March 1 following a two-day civil trial before U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco. A jury deliberated for 16 hours before awarding the mother and daughters this unprecedented amount from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. ........more.....