San Francisco’s district attorney announced the booking of former human rights honcho Sheryl Davis into county jail on Monday, March 30.
The case follows a familiar script: Government officials (or others) exploit taxpayer programs –– often under the auspices of helping disadvantaged groups –– and then, when caught, blame others and cry racism.
Davis, the former executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, now faces 17 felonies –– including charges of misappropriation of public funds, conflicts of interest involving government contracts worth more than $8.5 million, perjury, and accepting gifts from restricted sources.
Her longtime partner, James Spingola, former head of a San Francisco nonprofit, was charged with aiding and abetting her alleged grift.
The details released by authorities read like bad political satire.
Davis allegedly steered millions from the city’s troubled Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI), a roughly $120 million program launched by former Mayor London Breed in 2021, to Collective Impact, the group Davis’ live-in boyfriend ran.
Meanwhile, the funds allegedly helped bankroll her VIP lifestyle: first-class flights, concert tickets, luxury events, PR firms to promote her personal brand.
A city audit exposed $4.6 million in ineligible or questionable spending under her watch.
The DKI was born amid the emotional aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Marketed as a bold response to “systemic inequities,” it directed money away from police and toward black-specific programs.
During Davis’ tenure at the Human Rights Commission, this high-minded equity experiment devolved into a scandal-ridden mess that has since triggered funding freezes, canceled grants, and reforms under new city leadership.
Here’s where things have turned predictable. Davis’s attorney, Tony Brass, offered a shopworn defense: She supposedly lacked proper guidance, financial supervision, and adequate support from the city.
It is downright ludicrous to suggest that a seasoned professional specifically hired to head a major commission somehow lacked the basic resources or wherewithal to avoid allegedly funneling millions of taxpayers’ dollars to her longtime beau while apparently treating herself to a VIP lifestyle on the public dime.
Audits indicate that Davis knowingly violated purchasing rules, overrode staff concerns, and split invoices to dodge oversight thresholds.
What also strains credulity is the predictable rhetorical pivot that follows these accountability moments. Instead of squarely addressing the mountain of evidence, undisclosed relationships, dodgy invoices, and personal enrichment, defenders quickly pivot to questioning the investigators’ motives, often hinting at unfair targeting of a prominent civil rights figure or an assault on equity programs themselves.
It’s a well-worn script:
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson faced a 2025 Department of Justice civil rights investigation into hiring practices after he publicly boasted about stacking senior roles with black appointees to ensure “our people get a chance.” He dismissed it as a politically motivated “attack on diversity.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz labeled criticism of massive fraud scandals, over $1 billion in misused social services funds, many involving the Somali community, as “vile, racist lies and slander,” with testimony in hearings revealing how fears of racism accusations reportedly slowed aggressive investigation.
Rep. Ilhan Omar has warned that connecting such fraud cases to the Somali-American community risks recycling “racist tropes.”
Across these examples, racial identity –– or the progressive branding of the spending –– magically transforms into a shield against ordinary rules of procurement, disclosure, and basic fiduciary responsibility.
It’s as if standard audits and conflict-of-interest laws suddenly become suspect the moment they touch equity initiatives.
This tactic doesn’t just insult public intelligence; it risks insulating real misconduct in programs ostensibly designed to help vulnerable communities, breeding cynicism and ultimately shortchanging the very people the funds were meant to serve.
Effective governance requires something we should actually find refreshingly simple: separating genuine policy disagreements from clear evidence of grift, perjury, favoritism, or self-dealing.
Outcomes in cases like Davis’ –– arrests, ethics findings, and ongoing probes –– should turn on facts, documents, bank records, and due process, not convenient rhetoric that equates basic accountability with prejudice.
Public trust in government, particularly when it involves hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money for social spending, hinges on applying neutral rules consistently, no matter the official’s background or how nobly the initiative may have originated.
Anything less is just performative disbelief in the very standards we claim to uphold.
Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based in San Francisco.
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