Founder and Managing Partner
The San Francisco Police Department is threatening to terminate its contract with SF SAFE, the troubled nonprofit partner it has worked with for decades, after a series of financial scandals in the past month revealed that it misspent public funds and stiffed its vendors.
SFPD sent a letter last week to SF SAFE with a series of questions that followed up on a Controller’s Office report that found that the organization wrongly spent about $80,000 of taxpayer funds on luxury gift boxes, limo rides and a Lake Tahoe trip, Diana Oliva-Aroche, SFPD director of policy and public affairs, announced at a Board of Supervisors hearing Thursday.
On Friday, SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said the department was working with the Controller’s Office to see if SF SAFE had responded to its demands.
“If they have not, we will move forward with termination of the contract,” Sernoffsky told The Standard.
During that same hearing, Supervisor Aaron Peskin raised the specter of another issue that may put SF SAFE’s city funding in jeopardy: The group’s nonprofit status is listed as delinquent with the California Attorney General’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers. California nonprofits that fail to submit their annual filings to the state and enter delinquency should be blocked by law from receiving funds.
It’s not the first time Worthy was accused of misspending money: A 2017 investigation by the West Contra Costa Unified School District found that the nonprofit she led before joining SF SAFE submitted false invoices, and the district demanded the return of nearly $235,000
Since learning of the Controller’s Office findings, SFPD conducted its own review of SF SAFE’s spending and identified about $95,000 in ineligible expenditures by the nonprofit, the department’s former CFO, Patrick Leung, said during the Thursday hearing.
SFPD and SF SAFE did not reply to requests for comment on this story.