The San Francisco District Attorney announced the booking of former civil rights activist Sheryl Davis into the county jail on Monday, March 30.
The case follows a standard script: Government officials (or others) exploit taxpayer programs — often under the guise of helping charities — and then when caught, blame others and complain of discrimination.
Davis, the former executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, is now facing 17 charges — including charges of embezzlement, conflict of interest involving government contracts worth more than $8.5 million, perjury, and accepting gifts from prohibited sources.
Her longtime partner, James Spingola, the former head of a San Francisco nonprofit, was charged with aiding and abetting her alleged harassment.
The details released by the authorities read like bad political satire.
Davis allegedly directed millions from the troubled city’s Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI), an estimated $120 million plan launched by former London Mayor Breed in 2021, to Collective Impact, which Davis’ boyfriend ran for.
Meanwhile, these funds are said to have helped pay for his VIP lifestyle: first-class flights, concert tickets, lavish events, PR firms to promote his personal brand.
A city audit revealed $4.6 million in improper or questionable spending under his watch.
DKI was born amid the emotional aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Marketed as a bold response to “systemic injustice,” it directed money away from the police and toward programs that targeted blacks.
During Davis’ tenure at the Commission on Human Rights, this high-minded equality experiment descended into scandal-filled chaos that resulted in funding freezes, grant cancellations, and changes under new city leadership.
This is where things have become predictable. Davis’ attorney, Tony Brass, offered a shop-worn defense: He allegedly lacked proper direction, financial oversight, and adequate support from the city.
It is ludicrous to suggest that the veteran professional specially hired to lead the big commission somehow lacked basic resources or was doing it to avoid allegations that he siphoned off millions of taxpayer dollars from his long-time beauty while apparently behaving like a public VIP.
The audit shows that Davis willfully violated procurement rules, ignored employee concerns, and split invoices to avoid oversight restrictions.
Further complicating the obsession is the predictable rhetorical pivot that follows these moments of self-reflection.
Instead of talking candidly about the mountain of evidence, undisclosed relationships, incorrect invoices, and personal enrichment, defenders quickly turned to questioning the motives of investigators, often pointing to the wrongful targeting of a prominent human rights figure or an attack on the equality programs themselves.
A well-worn text:
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson faced a 2025 Justice Department investigation into hiring after he publicly boasted about filling senior roles with black hires to ensure “our people get a chance.” He dismissed it as a politically motivated “attack on diversity”.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wrote criticism of the massive fraud scandals, more than 1 billion dollars in social funds that were misused, many of which involved the Somali community, as “bad lies, racist and slanderous,” and testimony in the hearings showing that fear of allegations of racism has reportedly slowed down brutal investigations.
Attorney Ilhan Omar warned that linking such fraud cases to the Somali-American community runs the risk of reusing the “wires of racism.”
In all of these examples, racial identification –– or the ongoing branding of money –– magically turns into a defense against the usual rules of purchase, disclosure, and basic fiduciary duty.
It’s as if standard auditing and conflict-of-interest laws are just as suspect when it comes to equity programs.
This tactic not only insults public intelligence; it risks blocking real bad behavior from programs designed to help vulnerable communities, breeding skepticism and ultimately changing the very people the fund was meant to help.
Effective governance requires something we should actually find refreshingly easy: distinguishing policy disagreements from clear evidence of dishonesty, lying, favoritism, or ego.
Outcomes in cases like Davis’ — arrests, ethical findings, and ongoing investigations — should turn on facts, documents, bank records, and due process, not simplistic rhetoric that equates basic accountability with discrimination.
Public trust in government, especially when it involves hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money for public spending, depends on the consistent application of neutral laws, regardless of the official’s background or how well the program may have started.
Anything less is a disbelief committed to the very values we claim to adhere to.
Richie Greenberg is a political analyst based in San Francisco.
