Break-in duo worked for DPW, earning nearly $700,000 while still committing crimes

Marcellus Gayden and Michael Humphrey went through mayor's multimillion-dollar street violence prevention program — and they're not alone

X owner Elon Musk reacts to revelations Stanley Roberts and I made about car burglars who worked for the City of San Francisco.

Fate works in mysterious ways. On Wednesday September 27, 2023, I tweeted a video on the X platform of a brazen smash and grab near San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, one of the most notorious 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 534,000 times.

On Saturday night, Gotham by the Bay video producer 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 evening, 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.

Stanley 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. Stanley’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.

As if all of this wasn’t strange enough, I discovered that 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 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.” 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 recently arrested on 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, recently convicted on 8 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 San Francisco Department of Public Works (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 September 3, 2020. Other arrests between 2015 and 2019 included 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.

Sadly, Humphrey and Gayden aren’t the only IPO participants to continue their criminal behavior while earning city paychecks, mostly under the 9916 classification.

In 2021, Elijah Dmitrius Ifopo was arrested along with two other suspects after police officers identified their vehicle as the same one used in a number of auto burglaries and at least one armed robbery. Ifopo was booked on charges including being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying a loaded firearm in public.

Inside sources, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, also told me that the DPW yard isn’t the only place they have problems with people from the IPO program. “We’ve had people targeted and killed,” one worker said.

In November of 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 tell 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 in the program, 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 suppose 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 is why 9916 management staff are being issued bulletproof vests.”