Man Charged With Murder in Shooting of Urban Alchemy Worker Near SF Civic Center

The man accused of fatally shooting an Urban Alchemy street ambassador outside San Francisco’s main library last week has been charged with murder, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Thursday.

Edmund Bowen, 42, is accused of shooting Joey Alexander, 60, with a shotgun at close range after Alexander asked him not to use drugs in public. Alexander, who had worked for more than two years as an ambassador for the nonprofit contracted by the city to help improve safety and cleanliness on downtown streets, died Tuesday of his injuries.

“Urban Alchemy ambassadors work every day to provide safe passage for [the Tenderloin’s students], to make sure that families feel that there is somebody looking out for them as they move about this community,” Jenkins told reporters on Thursday. “To have one of those ambassadors who has come back into the community after once serving time in prison and now coming back to give back to the community, be hurt and be tragically killed in this way, of course, is very disheartening and alarming.”

Alexander was manning his usual post outside San Francisco’s main library on Larkin Street just before 5 p.m. Friday when he approached Bowen, who was allegedly using drugs on the street, according to the nonprofit.

After Alexander asked him not to, Bowen pulled a shotgun out of his bag, said “F— Urban Alchemy” and shot Alexander, an Urban Alchemy spokesperson said. According to the district attorney’s office, Bowen was standing about 20 feet from Alexander when he fired.

Bowen was arrested shortly after the shooting and has remained in custody since. He also faces an assault charge after another nearby worker said they were injured by shrapnel from his shotgun.

Alexander was rushed to the hospital, where doctors treated him for multiple days before he died Tuesday, according to Jess Montejano, a spokesperson for the nonprofit. He is at least the third Urban Alchemy employee to be shot on the job. Montejano said he believes Alexander is the first to die from related injuries.

“Mr. Alexander was a beloved member of our team, and it’s a devastating loss,” Montejano said. “[He] was an exceptional employee, … loved his job, loved giving back and serving the community and doing his work. [He was] just beloved among everyone that worked with him and that knew him.”

Like many Urban Alchemy employees, Alexander had lived through some of the same challenging experiences — like homelessness, addiction and incarceration — as the people he aimed to serve, Montejano said.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Alexander had previously spent 23 years in prison. An Oakland resident, Alexander worked for Urban Alchemy as a “street practitioner” for more than two years.

“Our entire team really shares a higher purpose of giving back to the community and serving these vulnerable populations because many of them share that same experience that these people in crisis are going through themselves,” Montejano said.

While many street practitioners can connect with people and manage crises situations based on their own life experience, Montejano said the employees, who do not have law enforcement training, are sometimes put in dangerous situations.

“Our practitioners serve some of the most tough neighborhoods impacted by addiction, poverty, homelessness and crime in San Francisco,” he said. “They are trained with their lived experience … to bring more peace, safety and cleanliness on the streets. It’s an unfortunate reality that, yes, we do experience hate and sometimes violence in the line of work that we do.”

Jenkins said Thursday that the shooting raises concerns about these workers’ safety, and she said the city should ensure police are in a position to “serve as a buffer” to protect them.

However, she said, the nonprofit’s model for patrolling the neighborhood is worthwhile.

“These are people who make [Tenderloin residents] feel safer,” Jenkins said. “And what we do know is that we are over 500 [police] officers short, and so we have to do something as a city to supplement the shortage in police staffing who can also help us maintain our street conditions.”

The shooting comes at an inflection point for Urban Alchemy, once heralded for its breakthrough community-centered approach to tackling homelessness and drug use.

San Francisco first contracted with a predecessor of the nonprofit, Hunters Point Family, then led by Urban Alchemy’s Executive Director, Dr. Lena Miller, in 2014. At the time, it was tasked with operating and cleaning public toilets throughout the city overnight.

Since its founding in 2018, Urban Alchemy’s responsibilities have steadily mounted, from stationing practitioners during daytime hours downtown to dissuade public drug use and clean up streets to operating safe RV parking sites and homeless shelters.

The organization has expanded to nine cities in six states, and received praise from former Mayor London Breed and community activists in the Tenderloin. A 2024 Stanford University study found that when its practitioners are present on street corners, crime dropped significantly.

But it’s also struggled to live up to its lofty mission in recent years. Friday’s tragic incident comes as the nonprofit has faced backlash for overspending, management struggles and employee misconduct allegations.

In April, Urban Alchemy lost contracts with Bay Area Rapid Transit to provide bathroom and elevator attendants at San Francisco stations and in August, the city placed it on a nonprofit “watch list,” citing serious fiscal or programmatic concerns.

In September, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the organization gave staff pay raises that overspent its contract to operate a shelter in Lower Nob Hill by about $800,000, despite warnings not to by city analysts. The nonprofit disputed the claim, saying it requested $800,000 in budget increases after being asked to run a larger operation but overspent by only $336,000.

At the end of last month, Austin, Texas, opted not to renew contracts with the company to operate emergency centers after finding it misrepresented client exit data, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Last year, the city controller in Los Angeles, another of Urban Alchemy’s outposts, launched an investigation into the organization after a video circulated of an employee spraying water toward an unhoused person as they scrambled to collect their things on a sidewalk in the Skid Row neighborhood, the Los Angeles Times reported. Urban Alchemy denounced the incident at the time and said that it had fired the involved employee.

Last February, a man who had lived at a homeless encampment in Sausalito managed by Urban Alchemy filed a lawsuit alleging that an employee assaulted him after raising concerns that the nonprofit’s staff had engaged in dealing methamphetamine and sexually exploited unhoused residents. Urban Alchemy said it is seeking to have the suit dismissed and noted the court has already dismissed multiple of the initial complaints.

Montejano said the nonprofit’s “community-based” safety models are proven and data-driven. He said he doesn’t expect Alexander’s death to mean any change in the way it operates.

“We’re doubling down on the mission and the model, and we’re making sure that Mr. Alexander’s death isn’t in vain,” he told KQED. “We always train our employees to be safe; we are not the police. But we’re going to continue to work on our mission, our model that we know is effective, and providing safety, cleanliness and connections to care and support, and housing in some instances, for the communities that we serve.”