Former executive director of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission, Sheryl Evans Davis, was taken into police custody where she was booked into the county jail on charges of multiple felonies for allegedly misappropriating city funds, conflicts of interest, and more. She’s currently facing a total of seventeen charges.
James Spingola, Davis’ housemate and the former executive of the nonprofit organization Collective Impact, is alleged to have steered toward contracts that personally benefited her financially. Spingola has been accused of aiding and abetting Davis in her criminal activity. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins spoke about the arrest and subsequent charging of Davis during a press conference.
“We have to hold government actors accountable, certainly when they are abusing the trust of San Franciscans, when they are abusing taxpayer dollars,” Jenkins told the media. Both Davis and Spingola were booked on $50,000 bail. Davis was released, but Spingola, as of this writing, remains in custody. Jenkins revealed the two arrests were the result of an 18-month long investigation by the Public Integrity Unit and involved the issuance of 50 search warrants.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, Jenkins stated the investigation started immediately after Davis stepped down from her position with the Human Rights Commission in September 2024 after a story broke that she allegedly approved contracts worth $1.5 million with Collective Impact, a group she once ran that provides a wide variety of services for the community.
After her time with Collective Impact, Davis was appointed by former Mayor Ed Lee to lead the Human Rights Commission in 2016. In that role, Davis was responsible for distributing tens of millions of dollars of city money — taxpayer dollars — through the Dream Keeper Initiative. The program was later restructured and relaunched in 2025.
The goal of the initiative was to give San Francisco’s black communities a boost after the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020. The Dream Keeper Initiative was a huge chunk of former Mayor London Breed’s administration. The scandal with Davis became public while Breed was running for reelection.
As of this writing, no evidence has been found to connect Breed to Davis’s actions or to suggest she was aware of them. Davis’ legal representative, Anthony Brass, put out a statement about the situation, pinning the blame for the ordeal on the city for not giving Davis proper guidance concerning conflicts of interest, despite the fact she openly discussed such potential issues and even requested “financial oversight and audits, and even went to the Board of Supervisors to secure funding for proper accountability — demonstrating a consistent push for more transparency.”
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“After a prolonged, two-year process, The City’s decision to pursue felony charges is unfair — especially given that Dr. Davis consistently acted in good faith and pushed for oversight from the start,” Brass said in his statement. Randall Knox, Spingola’s lawyer, stated that he had yet to see the evidence against his client. “I understand he’s charged with four counts of aiding and abetting a conflict of interest by Sheryl Davis,” Knox remarked.
“He is presumed innocent under law. The burden will be on the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” he added. Davis is being charged with a whopping 17 felony counts, including 13 alleging a financial conflict of interest in a government contract, one of misappropriating public funds and three of perjury. There are also two misdemeanor counts against her including one count of receiving gifts from a restricted source. The other is for a financial conflict of interest in a government decision.
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