Scandal-plagued department head Sheryl Davis and nonprofit exec James Spingola, whom she lived with, were arrested and booked into jail today
who was fired in 2024 after she was accused of misusing funds and failing to disclose her live-in relationship with grant recipientCourt records show that Davis and Spingola were booked into county jail at 9:57 a.
m. Both of their bonds are set at $50,000 and both are facing multiple felony charges. At her office, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced today at noon that both Davis and Spingola surrendered on their warrants this morning. Davis has been formally charged with 17 felonies and two misdemeanors, including for improper spending and accepting prohibited gifts. Spingola is facing four felony counts of aiding and abetting Davis. “These are not routine charges,” said Jenkins, surrounded by her investigative team. “But I want to be clear: These are allegations that will ultimately be proven or disproven in court.” The district attorney’s investigation is ongoing, and it is possible that Davis and Spingola could see more charges in the future. The city attorney’s office, after launching a probe against the department, had previously stated that Davis could be accused of bribery, and accused her department of misusing nearly $4 million in funds. The DA’s office has stated that Davis’ charges reflect a misuse of just $350,000 in misappropriated funds from Proposition Q and the Dream Keeper’s Initiative. A charge of bribery is currently not being waged. “We have charged what we believe we had the evidence to prove,” said Jenkins on Monday., two months after an anonymous whistleblower alleged that Davis and Spingola had misused public funds, public records requests to the Human Rights Commission’s office revealed thathad been directed to Spingola’s Collective Impact. Davis failed to disclose that she and Spingola were in a relationship and shared a home and a vehicle. The DA’s investigation found that Davis and Spingola’s finances were more entangled than initially believed: Davis and Spingola shared multiple bank accounts, traveled together and paid for each others’ airfare and hotel stays, and Davis served as the signatory on Collective Impact’s bank account. The investigative team also found additional potential conflicts of interest: Davis allocated millions of dollars to the Homeless Children’s Network, where her son was working as an independent contractor, and directed funds earmarked for an initiative she started known as MegaBlack into Collective Impact’s bank account. , called her failure to report the relationship and the misdirection of funds a “mistake.” She argued that her relationship with Spingola was “widely known,” and she didn’t feel the need to formally report the relationship. Davis and her lawyer, Tony Brass, have alleged that she made multiple requests to the department asking to avoid any direct, or perceived conflicts of interest in awarding grant funding to Collective Impact on the basis that she used to serve as the organization’s director — but not because she lived with the organization’s current director. The city attorney’s office has stated that her former position at the organization was not a conflict of interest. Her relationship with the organization’s director however, was. A probe found that funding from Collective Impact had been used for flight upgrades for both Davis and Spingola to attend a “fundraising event’ in Martha’s Vineyard, for booking costs for Davis’ podcast,, for a performance by the singer Goapale at Davis’ book signing event, along with $19,000 paid toward her son’s graduate school tuition. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins stands alongside her investigative team, who filed criminal charges against Sheryl Davis and James Spingola on March 30, 2026. Photo by Marina Newman. Davis has argued that the financial decision-making of her department, including determining what organizations receive grant funding, was largely not up to her. But on Monday, Jenkins announced that the investigative team found that Davis was heavily involved in the decision-making process. The excessive purchases were largely made on Davis’ behalf and for her personal ventures, including for the promotion of her children’s book and for her podcast. “Our investigation was very thorough,” Jenkins said. The team executed 50 search warrants and combed through Davis’ emails, finding evidence to support Davis’ involvement. Jenkins noted that though Collective Impact received a low score through the city’s request-for-proposal process, a scoring metric to allocate funding, and was recommended to not receive funding by a committee, it received funding anyway. “Now, there’s so many different allegations,” said Davis, in May 2025, after she resigned office. “There’s the conflict of interest, but then some of the other things are just the most … I can’t even think of how to respond to the allegations of bribery. Like, really? They hired someone to perform at an event, and that’s a bribe from me? If you really unpack it, it doesn’t even make sense.” In the wake of these allegations, funding for Davis’ former department, which provided grant money to community based organizations led by people of color, has since been halved, and the department has been merged with the Department on the Status of Women, which has also been plagued by allegations of misconduct.Join the 3,300 readers who keep Mission Local free for all!All we can say is thank you. Thank you for choosing to invest in a local newsroom rooted in San Francisco’s communities — one that listens first and reports deeply. Your contribution today helps sustain the reporting our city relies on all year long.Yes The executive director of the commission of the status of women who was also accused of conflicts of interest and misused funds was also a crony of London Breed’s. Breed just acted like her mentor, Willie Brown.Yes The executive director of the commission of the status of women who was also accused of conflicts of interest and misused funds was also a crony of London Breed’s. Breed just acted like her mentor, Willie Brown.Mismanaged city department providing grants using racial preferences merged with mismanaged city department providing grants using gender preferences. What could go wrong?Early 2014, I was at a retreat with the SF Human Rights Commission as part of that year’s Commission committee. Sheryl Davis, commissioner president at the time warned all 20 who attended, “Do not embarrass the mayor” . Three months later I was kicked off the Commission committee by Davis. Why? My integrity would not allow me to go along with using a doctored document for our committee assignment. Fast forward, Ms. Davis embarrassed the mayor as well as the city and I am not surprised by her arrest. Breed should never have appointed her to be the director of HRC. That said, the HRC had me in tears for how they got rid of me, and I can honestly say, I shed a tear on her arrest. I do not believe she is a typical government crook. I just think she was in over her head. And yes, I could be wrong. And if I am, it would be good that I would never be on the jury 🙂As usual, tge city attorney’s office finds and does? nothing. I guess no one will sue to claw back all the illegally geanted and used funds. I wonder how Davis and her attorney plan to defend the use of city funds to pay her son’s tuition at UCLA Federal state and local government persons continue to be unworthy and on the grift or steal from the public.She was a department level executive in the San Francisco government, she had to have been making at least $250k, and likely on the order of $300-400k per year. But she still had to steal $19k for her son’s tuition!?!? Is it that hard for her to live within her means? I make under $70k in this expensive af city but I manage to get by and then some without stealing anything, it’s called a budget.Please keep your comments short and civil. Do not leave multiple comments under multiple names on one article. We will zap comments that fail to adhere to these short and easy-to-follow rules.Sign up for Mission Local's daily newsletter: The latest San Francisco news in your inbox, no more than once a day, for free.
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