Former SF Human Rights Chief Is Arrested on Felony Charges After Corruption Scandal

Former San Francisco human rights official Sheryl Davis, who resigned in disgrace after a 2024 City Hall corruption scandal, was arrested Monday on multiple felony charges after a series of investigations exposing the misallocation of public funds.

Davis, 57, surrendered and was booked into county jail just before 10 a.m., according to county records, on suspicion of misappropriation of public funds and a slew of felony corruption and misdemeanor perjury charges. San Francisco sheriff’s deputies also arrested James Spingola, 65, the head of local nonprofit Collective Impact and a man with whom Davis had a close personal relationship.

Both were held on $50,000 bonds, and Davis’ attorney said Monday afternoon that she had been released from custody and plans to plead not guilty at arraignment Tuesday.

As executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, Davis was tapped by former Mayor London Breed to lead the city’s Dream Keeper Initiative — an ambitious, multimillion-dollar equity program designed to reinvest in the city’s Black communities and reckon with racial injustice. But the fallout from the scandal surrounding Davis’ relationship with Spingola, her conflict of interest with Collective Impact, and her use of her position to enrich herself and her friends and family was far-reaching.

In a noon press conference announcing the arrests, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins described the ways in which Davis’ and Spingola’s finances were “completely intertwined, suggesting a deep personal relationship in which the financial benefits to Spingola resulted in a benefit to Davis.”

In 2021 and 2022, Davis signed contracts awarding $1.5 million in Dream Keeper funds to Collective Impact without disclosing to the city that she and Spingola lived together, Jenkins said Monday.

“The benefits to Spingola resulted in a benefit to Davis,” Jenkins said. “They have lived together since 2015, have multiple shared bank accounts at two banks, and Spingola also wrote monthly rent checks to their landlord from the bank account where his Collective Impact paycheck was deposited. They also traveled together and paid for one another’s flights and hotel stays.”

Multiple city investigations have laid out corruption charges against Davis and revealed that the Human Rights Commission had misspent at least $4 million under her leadership. In the fall, the city’s public ethics watchdogs revealed Davis accepted flight upgrades, vacation rentals, support for personal business ventures, a portrait of herself and other gifts totaling nearly $40,000 from nonprofits that received large contracts and payments from the HRC.

In the wake of the scandal, more than 30 arts and culture organizations were left in the lurch after the city canceled their funding last spring.

“This is certainly a lesson for the city that there has to be an infrastructure of checks and balances to ensure that things like this don’t happen,” Jenkins said Monday, adding that her office’s investigation into Davis and Spingola is ongoing.

Tony Brass, Davis’ attorney, said he had “a lot of questions” to be answered during the discovery phase, adding that Davis had disclosed her relationship with Collective Impact and had sought oversight and resources from the city attorney’s office.

“The city recruited somebody from Collective Impact to run the city department, and then now we’re shocked that she had conflicts of interest with Collective Impact. I mean, it’s actually just, you know, it’s really nonsensical,” Brass said.

Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said the office plans to suspend Davis, Spingola and Collective Impact from bidding on or receiving new city contracts, and it will continue its appeal of an administrative decision in October to allow the nonprofit to keep operating.

“James Spingola and Collective Impact were not responsible contractors that could be trusted with public money,” she said in an email.