SF Man Convicted of Kicking Neighbor's Dog 11 Times in SRO Hallway

A San Francisco jury convicted Aljerone Green, 33, of animal cruelty after surveillance footage showed him kicking a neighbor's small dog 11 times in the hallway of a Mason Street single-room-occupancy hotel, the District Attorney's Office announced April 7.

The attack unfolded on Sept. 18, 2025, when Green opened his apartment door and fixed a prolonged stare on the Papillon-mix, roughly the size of a Pomeranian, which had been barking in the hallway. Prosecutors say he retrieved a cutting board from inside his unit and threw it at the animal, then crouched and yelled at the dog as it cowered and tried to escape. Green chased the dog down the corridor and kicked it 11 times, with several kicks driving the animal into a wall. The dog belonged to a neighbor in the same building.

That the entire sequence was captured on the building's own surveillance system proved central to the prosecution and underscores a critical dynamic inside San Francisco's SRO stock. Hallway cameras, sometimes contested on privacy grounds, can be the difference between an unwitnessed allegation and a documented criminal case. Under San Francisco tenant law, landlords are permitted to install surveillance in common areas, including corridors, as part of their obligation to keep residents safe, and those recordings can and do end up in court.

No sentencing date was announced alongside the verdict. Under California Penal Code 597, animal cruelty is a wobbler offense chargeable as either a misdemeanor or a felony. A felony conviction carries up to three years in state prison and a fine of up to $20,000; a conviction on either level can also result in a court-ordered ban on owning animals for up to 10 years.

The Mason Street address sits within the Tenderloin, the densest concentration of SRO hotels in the city, where low-income tenants share hallways, stairwells and common bathrooms with relative strangers. The Department of Building Inspection runs an SRO Collaborative Program pairing the agency with nonprofit organizations to support tenants in those buildings, but enforcement of resident-on-resident conduct falls primarily to SFPD and the DA's Office. Animal cruelty complaints in congregate housing are routinely underreported, advocates say, often because neighbors fear retaliation in buildings where they share walls with an aggressor.

Anyone who witnesses animal abuse inside an SRO or any other shared-housing setting should call SF Animal Care and Control at (415) 554-9400. The line runs 24 hours a day; reports are confidential and do not require a caller's name. Officers will respond and investigate. For situations where a crime may be actively in progress, the SFPD non-emergency line is (415) 553-0123. Tenants with broader building-code or habitability concerns about their SRO can reach DBI directly at 628-652-3200.

Neither the Department of Building Inspection nor SF Animal Care and Control responded to questions about whether the Mason Street conviction would prompt changes to how animal-cruelty complaints inside SROs are investigated or tracked. Green's sentencing date had not been set as of April 8.