How do you think your life would be different if you had spent your first five years as an adult incarcerated? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Kevin Ortiz, a progressive political activist in San Francisco whose life was very nearly derailed by a run-in with the police when he was 19 years old. We hear Kevin’s story, learn how the nonprofit SF Pretrial helped him out, and get some first-hand insight into a legal system that is tilted against young men of color. Then, we hear an excerpt from our 2022 discussion with San Francisco Public Defender Peter Calloway.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Kevin Ortiz | 00:14 - No system's perfect, right? But if we're going to look at the overall successes of people being able to get connected, and through SF Pretrial, able to come out of it with secure jobs, housing, drug rehabilitative services, and then social emotional supports, right? And then being able to go back into being successful citizens, then that's a model that we should be actually continuing to expand funding for and not underfunding it or cutting funding to it.

Narrator | 00:40 - How do you think your life would be different if you had spent your first five years as an adult incarcerated? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Kevin Ortiz, a progressive political activist in San Francisco whose life was very nearly derailed by a run-in with the police when he was 19 years old. We hear Kevin’s story, learn how the nonprofit SF Pretrial helped him out, and get some first-hand insight into a legal system that is tilted against young men of color. Then, we hear an excerpt from our 2022 discussion with San Francisco Public Defender Peter Calloway.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:30 - I'm joined on Sea Change Radio by Kevin Ortiz. Kevin is the president of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club. Kevin, welcome to Sea. Change Radio.

Kevin Ortiz (KO) | 01:42 - Hey, thanks for having me on. 

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:44 - Why don't you start us off, Kevin, by giving us your backstory and how you encountered legal troubles as a younger man. 

Kevin Ortiz (KO) | 01:53 - Yeah, definitely. So maybe diving a little bit backwards, um, so I, I just turned 30 when I was 19 years old. I was in a much different place than I'm at now, and so I, you know, was kind of in the party scene drinking a lot more than I should have been. I think, you know, at the time I was also doing drugs, and so it was a different kind of lifestyle that I was living to where I currently am. And so I went out to a club event when I was like 19. I think I was 19 and a half when the incident happened. And so, you know, on 22nd admission for an 18 plus event at that time. And, um, you know, I stumbled out of the bar, right? And, you know, intoxicated, being underage, um, there was already a situation that was going on at that time. And so, you know, I kind of stumbled into it as I was trying to jaywalk across the street. Police stopped me, immediately arrested me because they had so seen that I was intoxicated. And from there I got slammed on the back of a police car. And, um, at that time, you know, I had a little bit of a motor mouth . And so, um, you know, I got into a verbal altercation with the police while I was basically getting handcuffed and arrested. And so I got hogtied thrown right back in the, the back of a police vehicle. Uh, you know, it got taken back to the Mission police station, which is about, it's five blocks away from, um, you know, where the incident happened, about actually a block away from where I lived at the time. And so I experienced what we would now describe as police brutality. I was, you know, basically, you know, as I was getting taken outta the car, hogtied talking a lot of smack. And so from there I basically, you know, ended up getting, you know, like I got beat up on.

 AW | 03:31 - And you were initially just arrested for jaywalking?