On Feb. 11, 2025, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder posted on social media platform X that she issued a Letter of Inquiry into the “dangerous San Francisco police chase that sent 6 people, including a mother and child, to the hospital, resulted in two car crashes, and destroyed a parklet on Super Bowl Sunday.”
Written in the style of a high school junior’s prose, Fielder blustered five follow-up posts. “The public deserves answers into how this decision was made by SFPD and what accountability mechanisms are in place when innocent bystanders are injured or killed, and small businesses extensively damaged,” she said in post number three. In all six posts, Fielder blamed the police without ever mentioning the real culprits of the crash — the criminals. The other thing Fielder left out is that one of the suspects participated in a notorious program working for the city and county of San Francisco.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged Taylor Silver Ross, 27, of San Francisco, with seven counts of hit-and-run driving that resulted in injuries, three counts of hit-and-run driving that resulted in property damage, wrong-way driving, reckless driving, vehicle theft, and receiving stolen property. She was also charged with evading officers and resisting arrest. Ross was also booked for outstanding arrest warrants in Alameda and Sacramento counties and San Pablo. The second woman, Eureeka Lee Abrams, 29, of San Francisco, was charged with resisting arrest, but police also booked her on an outstanding arrest warrant from Los Angeles County. The district attorney’s office moved to detain Ross as the case heads to trial “because of the public safety risk she poses.”
Abrams also has a long, violent record. On July 25, 2024, she was arrested for grand theft in Los Angeles, and on Nov. 22, 2019, for resisting and obstructing a police officer in Oakland. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department arrested her for grand theft from a person to another on June 30, 2016. And one month prior, on May 27, 2016, She was arrested in San Francisco for conspiracy to commit a crime, robbery, battery, cruelty to a child by inflicting injury, exhibiting a deadly weapon other than a firearm, grand theft, auto theft, and assault likely to produce great bodily injury. As if her criminal record isn’t disturbing enough, those 2016 arrests coincide with Abrams working for the City and County of San Francisco as a public service aide at the Department of Public Works (DPW). You might think it’s just a fluke, but in fact, other high-profile criminals have been part of the “public service aide” program, prompting DPW supervisors to wear bulletproof vests.
On Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023, I shared a video on the X platform of a brazen smash-and-grab near San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, one of the most well-known tourist spots in the city for car break-ins. “10 a.m. today — SMASH & GRAB AT PALACE OF FINE ARTS: Hungarian tourists decided to stop before getting on plane home, now all their stuff is stolen. Waited an hour for police. Plates of thieves clearly visible but probably stolen,” I wrote above the video, which has since been viewed over 545,000 times.
The following Saturday night, video journalist Stanley Roberts was at the scene of a vehicle crash that resulted after a police pursuit, killing the driver and injuring the passenger. The car was wanted in connection with an armed robbery and auto burglaries — including, it turns out, the smash and grab at the Palace of Fine Arts from my Wednesday post. At around 4 a.m. that morning, officers from San Francisco’s Tenderloin Police Station tried to pull the car over, but the driver fled. With the officers giving chase, the driver lost control at San Bruno Avenue and Mansell Street near the Paul Avenue offramp of U.S. Highway 101 and smashed into a wall. Officers removed driver Marcellus Gayden, 26, and passenger Michael Humphrey, 27. Gayden was pronounced dead at the scene. Humphrey was taken to the hospital in critical condition and placed under arrest. He was transferred to County Jail 2, which has an infirmary.
Roberts later discovered that the blue Kia involved in the chase and fatal crash was registered to Gayden, but the license plates were believed to have been stolen out of Oregon. Roberts’s video shows a flattened, crumpled mass of plastic and metal that makes it hard to believe Humphrey survived.
“Tragic end for car bippin’ crew,” the San Francisco Police Union posted on X. “One dead, one critically injured. 2-person car burglary team spent day breaking into cars at the Palace of Fine Arts.” Bipping is Bay Area slang for stealing from cars, which, according to an article in the San Francisco Standard, is so prevalent in San Francisco it earned the city the nickname Bip City.
It turns out, Gayden and Humphrey both went through a San Francisco street violence prevention program called “Interrupt, Predict, and Organize,” or IPO. Launched in 2012 by the late Mayor Edwin M. Lee, IPO is intended to reduce family and street violence in San Francisco and, according to the program’s city website, the mayor’s office is responsible for implementing the initiative.
Millions flowing through Young Community Developers
So, who funds and runs IPO? Documents show that on June 18, 2021, the San Francisco Human Services Agency Department of Benefits and Family Support requested authorization “to enter to a new grant for the provision of the Community Jobs Program — The Interrupt, Predict and Organize (IPO) Program” with Arriba Juntos for the period of July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024, in an amount of $2,653,860 plus a 10 percent contingency for a total amount not to exceed $2,919,246.”
The Department of Benefits and Family Support also requested authorization “to enter to a new grant for the provision of the Community Jobs Program — The Interrupt, Predict and Organize (IPO) Program” with Young Community Developers for the period of July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024, in an amount of $2,653,860 plus a 10 percent contingency for a total amount not to exceed $2,919,246. The purpose of the grants is “to provide transitional employment services to participants in the Interrupt, Predict, and Organize.” The total value of the grant to Arriba Juntos and Young Community Developers for fiscal years 2022 through 2024 is an eye-popping $5,838,492.
Arriba Juntos was created by three social justice activists — Leandro Soto, Herman Gallegos, and James McAlister — in 1965. The founders changed the organization’s name in 1967 to Arriba Juntos. According to their website, “from the 1990s to the present AJ has expanded its vision and now provides all of its programs on a citywide basis. In doing so AJ serves more of San Francisco’s diverse population and better stands for its clarion call: Upward Together.”
If the name Young Community Developers, or YCD, rings a bell, that’s because I’ve written about them multiple times in my ongoing City Hall corruption investigation. YCD, a “non-profit community-based service education, training, and employment placement service provider to San Francisco’s underserved (Bayview/Hunter’s Point) community residents,” is the most prolific beneficiary of the Community Benefits Program pay-for-play scheme, where joint venture boards, made up of firms bidding on large contracts, are “encouraged” to donate to favored nonprofits which benefit cronies in and around the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).
Longtime City Family member Dwayne Jones, who was arrested in 2023 on 59 fraud charges, was YCD’s executive director from 1998 to 2003. His mentee Shamann Walton held the six-figure position from 2010 until he joined the Board of Supervisors in January 2019 — handpicked, of course, by disgraced former SFPUC head Harlan Kelly (sent to prison on eight of 10 fraud charges) to head up District 10, where all those Community Benefits supposedly go (ask most Bayview residents and they’ll tell you the money doesn’t reach the residents). During Walton’s tenure, an enormous amount of “community benefits” flowed to YCD. Another close Kelly, Jones and Walton pal currently runs YCD, Dionjay Brookter, who was deputy director under Walton from 2010 through May 2016.
Several DPW employees told me that YCD runs “scam classes” via various job training programs where they pay “the same kids to sit in the same classes over and over with their headphones on not paying attention so they can keep getting money.” Some of those kids, like Humphrey and Gayden, do go on to apprenticeships and eventually get city jobs. “DPW is like a prison yard,” one worker told me. “The supervisors need to keep certain guys away from others because of beefs and gang affiliations.”
Humphrey started with the city as a seasonal watershed worker in 2011, becoming a public service aide for DPW in 2012, and worked as a DPW public service trainee until 2019. Over the course of his career with the city, Humphrey earned $448,641 in salary and benefits.
Gayden started as a public service trainee in 2013, overlapping with Humphrey from 2013 until 2019. He also worked as a public service aide for DPW from 2017 through 2022, earning $242,019 in salary and benefits.
Criminal histories before, during, and after city work
A search of their records reveals that, despite their young ages, Humphrey and Gayden had violent criminal backgrounds.
In April 2016, Gayden was arrested in Marin County for taking a person for prostitution without consent and selling a person for immoral purpose. He was also arrested twice in San Francisco in 2018 for attempted robbery and assault likely to produce great bodily injury, and for obstructing a police officer.
Humphrey has a much longer record. He was convicted of a 2019 robbery with a firearm in San Francisco. He stayed in county jail for a year and negotiated a sentence with probation for 287 days, with 144 days of actual time required. He pled guilty and was released on Sept. 3, 2020. Other arrests between 2015 and 2019 include cruelty to a child by inflicting injury, battery on transportation personnel, petty theft, fraudulent use of access card, receiving stolen property, obstructing a police officer, grand theft, and multiple burglaries.
Elijah Dmitrius Ifopo worked for DPW as a public service aide in 2018 and 2019 and made $33,000 in salary and benefits. On the evening of Black Friday, 2021, officers were in the area of Bay and Kearny streets in the Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhood at approximately 6:54 p.m. when they observed a white sedan actively casing vehicles in a nearby parking lot. The officers recognized the vehicle as the same one wanted in connection with several auto-burglaries and an armed robbery in San Francisco. Officers approached the suspects in a parking lot, where they got back into the car and began to flee the scene. During the pursuit the suspect vehicle struck a number of other vehicles, injuring an occupant. At the termination point of the pursuit, all three suspects exited the vehicle and attempted to flee on foot. Officers pursued each suspect and took them into custody. One of the suspects was 23-year-old Elijah Ifopo of San Francisco. While fleeing from officers, Ifopo discarded a loaded firearm with an extended magazine that was later located and secured by officers.
Inside sources, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, told me that due to their criminal records and gang ties, service aides have also been victims of violence. “We’ve had people targeted and killed,” one worker said. In November 2016, 27-year-old Jermaine Jackson Jr., a father of two, was fatally shot while cleaning the streets of the Mission District. Then DPW Director Mohammed Nuru (who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for fraud) said Jackson had been a laborer apprentice since March 2015. He came through the IPO program and had earned his GED while in it, Nuru said, describing Jackson as a “motivated, hard-working and well-liked employee.” According to one worker, Nuru paid for Jackson’s funeral: “Believe it or not, I think it was out of a shred of kindness in his shriveled little heart, but I may be foolish for believing that.”
Both current and former DPW employees told me that, despite the huge cost and number of people who go through it, the IPO program doesn’t work out for most participants. “I know of some people that continued on and became permanent Civil Service and actually turned their lives around, but that margin is very slim compared with how many participants have gone through this program,” one worker said. “There were many logistical problems with the participants, like they couldn’t be in certain neighborhoods if that was a territory of a rival gang. The participants are mainly all ‘former’ gang members. The shooting at Crocker-Amazon Park a few years ago was IPO participants — they were the targets. The bad part is that there are many different ‘programs’ that utilize the 9916 classification. The majority of participants come through HSA [Human Services Agency] and are tied to some form of public funding but then the mayor’s office and OEWD [Office of Economic and Workforce Development] do programs like IPO that just tarnish the whole classification and make it appear they are all involved in nefarious activities.”
Other departments besides DPW have hired employees from the IPO program — in some cases they tried to discontinue their participation but were pressured by city officials to resume hiring.
“For a while, RPD [San Francisco Recreation and Park Department] discontinued employing 9916s but then was pressured by City Hall to participate again in hiring IPO participants,” one city source said. “The nonprofits like YCD are supposed to be doing ‘soft skills’ and working with the participants to help them with résumé building and other issues but some supervisors say that they go by the nonprofits when the 9916s were supposed to be reporting there and they wouldn’t be there. One supervisor was concerned because he had to do the payroll and didn’t want to get in trouble saying they were there and pay them when they weren’t. When he brought up the concern and the nonprofit called Nuru, the supervisor was told to ‘leave it alone and not go there anymore.’ IPO was always a ‘mystery program’ with little information being shared. I can’t believe they highlight the ‘Summer Violence Prevention’ — even Nuru was done with it and stopped having the program. There were several shootings where journey level members that supervised the Mission Neighborhood Center participants were shot at, and Nuru said he wasn’t going to continue it. Maybe that’s why 9916 management staff are being issued bulletproof vests.”
Follow Susan and the Marina Times on X: @SusanDReynolds and @TheMarinaTimes.
