Attorney Adante Pointer stands on the steps of the Hall of Justice on Thursday, May 24, 2018. He represented three men, including Arthur Higgins, in a federal lawsuit alleging civil rights violation after a San Francisco police encounter in 2019 allegedly left Higgins with injuries. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors settled the lawsuit for $375,000 on June 28, 2022.

A new UCSF study is drawing a sharp link between lingering racial segregation and the increased threat of police violence against Black residents. The study, published Wednesday in the JAMA Network, an online medical journal, also reveals something else:

Out of 52 California counties included in the study, San Francisco had the highest injury rate for Black residents.

“San Francisco definitely stood out and it was certainly surprising to me because it’s considered such a progressive city,” Dr. Cora Ormseth, a UCSF physician and the study’s lead author, told The Chronicle. “But then if you look back at the history, it all starts to make sense.”

Using statewide hospital data, the study examined 27,671 “legal intervention injuries” — or injuries requiring hospitalization and resulting from encounters with law enforcement personnel — from Jan. 1, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2019.

The study excluded six counties where the Black population numbered fewer than 100 residents: Alpine, Sierra, Glenn, Mono, Trinity and Amador.

The UCSF physicians who authored the study compared the ratio of “observed” to “expected” injuries for Black and white residents based on their population makeup in each of the remaining 52 counties. Researchers totaled the number of injuries recorded in hospitals by county and divided them by the number of expected injuries in each county based on its population demographics.

Statewide, the study found that Black residents accounted for 18% of police-caused injuries over the four-year period, even though they represented 6% of California’s population.

San Francisco had the highest injury ratio for Black residents.

Black people experienced 408 injuries from 2016 to 2019, but were only expected to experience 60 injuries based on their 6% share of the county’s population.

White San Franciscans experienced 383 injuries, slightly more than the 355 they would be expected to experience.

Del Norte County, bordering Oregon in the state’s northwest, had the highest ratio of police-caused injuries for white residents with 57 injuries vs. 11 expected.

The report associates segregation with higher injury ratios for Black residents, but not white residents. For the latter, the higher injury rates were associated with living in poverty and in rural areas.

Ormseth said the study’s findings speak to the long-standing legacy of discriminatory housing practices intentionally created through policies, zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants, and overall decisions on where to allocate resources.

Another study released last summer by UC Berkeley echoes the message that Bay Area segregation is worsening, and is driving unequal outcomes in life expectancy, access to health care and a host of other issues.

While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed discriminatory housing practices and policies, UCSF’s study noted that a “large proportion of Black residents continue to be disinvested in, resulting in economic deprivation and inadequate infrastructure and resources.”

These conditions bubble up in neighborhoods, leading to a higher likelihood of law enforcement interactions, Ormseth said.

The study’s findings do not surprise Arthur Higgins, who landed in San Francisco General Hospital following a Sept. 2, 2019 interaction with police that he says resulted in facial lacerations and nerve damage to his hands and back.

Higgins, who is Black, said he was in the backseat of a car outside of Condor Club in North Beach with two friends around 2:50 a.m. that Monday. According to a federal lawsuit the three men later filed, San Francisco police informed them they were parked in a bus lane and told them they were being detained.

According to video footage obtained by the San Francisco Standard, an officer grabs Higgins’ wrist and pepper-sprays him after Higgins refuses to put out a cigarette and exit the car. As Higgins stumbles out of the car, three officers force him onto the sidewalk and beat him with fists and batons.

More than two years later, Higgins remains upset about what happened to him.

“There’s no sense of humanity when they interact with Black people,” Higgins told The Chronicle. “We are met with hostility more than anyone else, and it continues to build on the trauma.”

Higgins spent 48 hours in jail and was charged with resisting arrest, the lawsuit states. But the district attorney at the time, Geroge Gascon, did not press charges against him. Higgins and his two friends, Larry Tiller and Lorenzo Ball, sued the city, alleging civil rights violations. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved spending $375,000 to settle the lawsuit.

The San Francisco Police Department declined to comment on the Higgins case, but said in a statement that it has taken important reform steps toward reducing bias and improving accountability, recruitment and hiring through its Collaborative Reform Initiative launched in 2016.

“Chief (Bill) Scott recognizes that part of being a leader in 21st Century policing means not just creating new policy but understanding the historical issues of institutional racism and reviewing existing policy for concerns with disproportionate policing contacts,” the statement said.

The city’s Department of Police Accountability did not return The Chronicle’s request for comment.

Oakland civil rights attorney Adante Pointer, who represented the three men in their federal lawsuit, said the DPA did look into Higgins case and found the officers involved used excessive force. The Chronicle was unable to independently confirm this and it is unclear if the officers faced any disciplinary action.

Pointer said what happened to his clients isn’t an anomaly when it comes to San Francisco police.

“This is about the culture of SFPD,” Pointer said. “The Black population in San Francisco is next to nothing and yet, study after study point to data-driven evidence that show officers are harassing, and using more force against Black people.”

Higgins said this was not his first and likely not his last tense experience with police, but is hopeful for a reformed and fair police force.

“They need to build trust in the Black community,” he said. “It could be as simple as better training, better social interactions, and empathetic listening. Maybe treat everyone like family, with respect, and not as subjects.”

Shwanika Narayan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: shwanika.narayan@sfchronicle.com Twitter @shwanika

Shwanika Narayan covers workplace discrimination, income inequality, and poverty, at The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously covered retail and small businesses on the business desk. Before joining the paper in 2019, she worked at The Los Angeles Business Journal and freelanced for AJ+, NBC News, Quartz, and Hyphen magazine, covering national and global news and writing about Asian American identity. Shwanika has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA.