A member of two key oversight bodies in San Francisco’s criminal justice system has been arrested on suspicion of a slate of suspected felony sexual assault allegations, records show.

William Monroe “Tariq” Palmer II  — whose story of redemption after three decades in prison led to media coverage and his emergence as an advocate — is accused of assault with force likely to commit great bodily injury, assault with intent to commit a felony, sexual battery by restraint, sodomy by use of force and false imprisonment.

The alleged incident took place in late August, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the case, who asked to speak anonymously. Investigators believe Palmer offered a ride to a woman who was walking to a BART station, took the woman to his home and assaulted her.

He was booked into San Francisco jail at 10:33 a.m. Thursday and is being held without bail.

Palmer was arrested on a warrant from the District Attorney’s Office, and his first court appearance is set for Monday, said Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for the agency.

Palmer was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison after accosting an off-duty police officer at gunpoint and demanding money. When the man told him he didn’t have any cash on him, Palmer took him — in the man’s car — to an ATM at gunpoint, where the off-duty officer withdrew $200. When they returned to the car, the officer retrieved his gun and shot Palmer in the knee.

Palmer ran away but was arrested soon after. 

In prison, Palmer earned his GED and an associate’s degree. He studied art and took up painting. He painted murals there and, after his release, in a pod at the San Francisco County Jail. 

His requests for parole were denied repeatedly over 20 years, and ultimately he challenged his continued detention. When Palmer’s lawyers argued for his release decades later, they acknowledged that he “was reckless and impulsive and created a dangerous situation.” His sentence, however, was “constitutionally disproportionate,” they said.

The California Supreme Court ruled that his 23 years of incarceration were excessive. 

He was released in March 2019 and was on parole at the time of his arrest Thursday.

His experiences — both during and after his incarceration — drew significant media attention, from the Marshall Project and the Washington Post, which looked at the challenges former prisoners face while on parole. And he was featured in the Chronicle for his efforts to stop generational cycles of incarceration. 

After his release in 2019, Palmer immersed himself in civic life. He worked with an organization providing legal services to prisoners with children. On his LinkedIn page, he listed jobs with a Black-owned newspaper and a nonprofit to help “formerly incarcerated, at-risk youth, and system impacted individuals” find their footing back in society. He also hosts a local radio show.

The re-entry council appointed him to sit on the Sentencing Commission, which advises the mayor and Board of Supervisors on strategies “to improve public safety, reduce recidivism, and reform criminal sentencing.”

Palmer’s bio on the oversight board’s website says that after leaving prison, he “immediately assumed the position as a leader by advocating for social reforms, and mentoring youth.” It also noted he “had his own challenges with reentry.”

The Post story detailed Palmer’s efforts to rebuild his life, highlighting his work the Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe, a collective of former prisoners turned thespians. The story also chronicled his struggle with parole since his release, describing several encounters where he was jailed for violating terms of his parole, including one in which a fender bender in May 2020 led to an arrest. Court records show he was arrested in September of that year on another parole violation but further details were not immediately available.

Voters approved a charter amendment creating the oversight board in 2020. It consists of seven members, four appointed by the Board of Supervisors and three by the mayor’s office.

In 2021, members of the San Francisco Jail Justice Coalition — including Glide, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and the Young Women’s Freedom Center, urged Supervisor Shamann Walton to support his application to the oversight board, saying he had “been instrumental in moving our jail system towards more just and fair outcomes for incarcerated people and their families.”

On his 2021 application to join the sheriff’s oversight board, Palmer said he is passionate about justice and equity in sentencing, adding that he would bring an essential perspective to the board because of his experience as a youth offender who’d received an unconstitutionally long sentence. 

“My period of incarceration has prepared me for my purpose in life,” he wrote, “to reform the criminal justice system with fair sentencing for juveniles, adults and life term inmates while maintaining public safety and justice.“

In July 2021, Walton submitted the names of Palmer and  three others to the supervisors’ Rules Committee, which forwarded them to the full board. 

Supervisors then appointed Palmer in 2021 to fill a seat. His term expired this year, and he was reappointed for a full four-year term.  

Upon hearing of the arrest, Supervisor Aaron Peskin said Saturday he’d written to Palmer and asked him to resign from the sheriff’s oversight board “effective immediately.”

“Otherwise I’ll have to go through the process of removing him,” he said.

Reach St. John Barned-Smith: stjohn.smith@sfchronicle.com 

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The former San Francisco fire commissioner, who said a homeless man brutally attacked him with a metal pipe, has been accused of instigating the April 5 altercation.

Attorneys representing homeless man Garret Doty said video evidence showed that former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani was the attacker and that he doused Doty with bear spray. They also claimed that Carmignani may have been involved in other incidents involving the spraying of homeless people in the Cow Hollow and Marina District neighborhoods.

Carmignani’s attorney, Nick Colla, said his client was “repeatedly hit with a metal rod” by Doty as he retreated nearly two blocks from the original point of contact.

He also denied that Carmignani was involved in any of the other alleged incidents.

“It is unfortunate that the narrative has shifted to the victim’s alleged story while the focus is not at all on the defendant’s well-documented history of violence and harassing behavior,” Colla said in an emailed statement.

Doty was arrested April 5 and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and battery. San Francisco prosecutors said he was acting in self-defense and asked prosecutors to drop the charges.

He was being held in the San Francisco County Jail. A judge on Thursday ordered his release after failing to appear in court for a preliminary hearing.

Prosecutors said Carmignani could not testify in the case because he sustained injuries in the alleged assault. The hearing was postponed to May 23.

On Wednesday, prosecutors released two videos they received from prosecutors. The video shows a man “fitting the physical description of Carmignani” unprovokedly approaching homeless people, according to a press release from the Public Defender’s Office.

“Prosecutors released this evidence because they believed it was relevant to the circumstances surrounding Doty,” the press release said.

In video of the April 5 incident involving Doty, a man appears to be pulling a can out of his jacket pocket. Doty is not seen being sprayed or Carmignani being attacked with the whistle.

In the video, Doty can be seen running away before turning to face the man. In the video, Doty appears to walk away several times while the man follows him.

Doty, left, appears to be walking away as the man follows him. Office of the San Francisco Public Defender

Doty’s attorneys said Carmignani approached her client and sprayed him with bear spray.

“There was a fight between the two men. A third witness told police she heard Carmignani threaten to stab and kill Doty if he did not leave the area. Doty responded to Mr. Carmignani in self-defense,” the public defender’s office said.

The second video, dated November 6, 2021, shows a man spray-spraying a homeless man on Magnolia Street. The public defender’s office said the victim was asleep and the perpetrator took “additional measures to spray him intensely in the face.”

On November 6, 2021, a person in San Francisco appears to spray-spray a homeless man.Office of the San Francisco Public Defender

The public defender’s office charged Carmignani with being involved in seven other bear spray incidents, one of which was on November 11 in which the attacker unzipped the victim’s tent, sprayed bear spray inside and told the victim to “leave my town.” “. .”

In one incident on Jan. 6, the attacker spray-sprayed a man and a woman, took the woman’s wallet, cellphone and earrings, and threw her dog on the ground, the public defender’s office said in a press release.

Carmignani’s attorneys said he was not the man in the 2021 video and denied his involvement in the other incidents, NBC Bay Area reported.

They also released four videos of Doty pulling a long metal gun out of a trash can and attacking Carmignani. In videos obtained by NBC News, a man can be seen repeatedly brandishing a metal object before punching Carmignani twice. Another video shows the man armed with the metal object chasing Carmignani.

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Carmignani told San Francisco-based KPIX-TV on Tuesday that he has had nightmares of someone attacking him since the alleged beating.

“I’m lucky if I get two hours of sleep a night at all,” he said.

He said he had two head wounds and needed a plate placed in his broken jaw.

Minyvonne Burke is senior breaking news reporter at NBC News.

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News

From Jorge Fitz Gibbon

04/26/2023 | 7:25 p.m

San Francisco prosecutors made an abrupt about-face on Wednesday and said they would now charge a tramp who hit a former fire commissioner with a crowbar – after The Post revealed they were quietly trying to drop the case.

The district attorney’s new rotation comes a day after prosecutors reportedly ruled that interim Garrett Doty acted in self-defense when he fractured former Commissioner Don Carmignani’s skull on April 5, telling him they were dropping the charges .

After Carmignani commented on the decision and released a new video showing the attack, they quickly backed down.

“We have not dismissed the charges in this case,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement.

“Holding violent criminals accountable is a top priority for our office to protect public safety,” Jenkins added. “Following the arrest of Garrett Allen Doty in connection with an attack on Don Carmignani on April 5, 2023, we filed multiple criminal charges against Doty and attempted to hold him for violent crimes.”

A day earlier, Carmignani said he had been informed the charges should be dropped because prosecutors said he instigated the attack by using pepper spray on the homeless man he was about to take away from outside his mother’s home .

Prosecutors said they had prepared a preliminary hearing in the case to give Carmignani a chance to make a statement on Wednesday – before postponing it to Thursday.

Former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani, 52, was beaten with a crowbar by a passerby on April 5. City prosecutors tried to quietly drop the charges against suspect Garrett Doty until The Post exposed the ploy.CBS News

“At our request, the court has continued this case for a hearing until tomorrow,” the prosecutor’s statement said. “We summoned [Carmignani] to appear tomorrow by his advice. The defender [Doty] remains in custody.”

Jenkins claimed that Carmignani “did not give an interview on this case, despite repeated requests from the San Francisco Police Department,” although Carmignani’s attorneys claimed the opposite was the case and that authorities have not contacted him since the attack to offer his perspective to experience.

“We hope he is available to testify in court as he now recalls giving an on camera media interview about the attack,” Jenkins said in the statement.

Footage shows Doty pulling back to hit Carmignani with a metal bar.Colla & Ray LLP

Carmignani, 53, has admitted he reached out to Doty after the city neglected his mother’s calls to 911 to ask for help – she had seen three people using drugs and harassing neighbors in their entryway.

Joe Alioto-Veronese, a prominent attorney and friend, said when Carmignani asked them to move, he was hit in the back of the head by Doty, injuring the ex-smoker’s skull and brain.

The video shows Doty swinging the metal bar, pinning a heavily bleeding Carmignani against the wall of a gas station shop, punching Carmignani and chasing him down the street. Doty, 24, was later arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

The former fire chief sustained head and brain injuries in the attack.Colla & Ray LLP

“[Doty] was actually seen blowing the whistle and walking around the neighborhood after the attack,” Alioto-Veronese said.

Dotty’s public defender, Kleigh Hathaway, is calling for the charges against her client to be dropped and made shocking allegations against the former fire chief to ABC News.

“Police have reason to believe that Carmignani was involved in eight separate acts of violence … perpetrated against the homeless,” she told the network, without elaborating.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Prosecutors have alerted former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani that they will drop the charges he suffered a caning in front of his mother’s home in the city’s Marina District Earlier this month, according to his attorney.

Carmigiani, 53, was hit with a metal pipe and suffered serious head injuries, including a fractured skull. Hours earlier, he and his mother called 911 to report that three homeless people had set up camp at her home and said they had threatened his family with violence.

Carmigiani said neither the San Francisco Police Department nor homeless service providers responded to emergency calls. That evening he passed by the house and after telling the group to leave the house said that two people approached him threateningly, one of whom attacked him with the metal pipe.

In his first public statements since the attack, Carmignani said prosecutors had alerted his attorney that they were dismissing the case based on new evidence they had received — a video of a person alleging prosecutors Carmignani was using bear spray against him Homeless people in another incident.

Carmignani denies he is the person in the video and said the decision to dismiss the case came as a surprise to him.

Carmignani is still recovering from his serious injuries and said his doctor told him if his attacker had hit him in a specific spot again, he would have lost his life.

“I didn’t go out to fight anymore, I try to get them out on the street, go to the park,” Carmignani said. “It’s three against one. I know the odds. I’m 52 years old. I have two hip prostheses. I’m an old guy, I could have been a dead guy.”

Carmignani said his attorney pointed out that other evidence of assaults on homeless people believed to have been committed by Carmignani led to the decision to dismiss the case.

“All I know is that they showed me an interesting person and that wasn’t me,” he said.

After the attack, Garret Allen Doty, 24, was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault and violent assault.

A spokeswoman for the public defender’s office said Doty’s public defender “received a discovery from prosecutors containing evidence of previous unprovoked attacks on the homeless allegedly committed by Carmignani,” but she would not confirm if district attorney Brooke Jenkins to do so would drop the charges.

The prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests to drop the charges. The preliminary hearing for Doty is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday morning in the Hall of Justice.

Carmignani noted that neither the police department nor the prosecutor’s office interviewed him to get his version of events.

Cellphone video image of the attack on former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani

CBS

Carmignani said he was saddened by this new development and believed the city was in a complete state of chaos. He says the suspect is a threat to the community and he and his family fear for their lives living in the Marina District.

He said he thinks the city’s government has failed its residents, though he stopped blaming District Attorney Jenkins, and said he thinks politicians’ hands are tied.

After the attack, both Jenkins and Police Chief Bill Scott said the attack was the type of street crime that had rocked the city and that they were both committed to fighting it.

“I understand how a violent attack like this can upset a community and I am committed to holding the accused accountable so we send the strongest message that violence like this is unacceptable,” the prosecutor said in one Explanation. “I send strength to the victim as he continues his recovery and we will do everything in our power to achieve justice for the victim and the traumatized community.”

“Our hearts are with him and his family,” Scott told KPIX. “He is expected to survive his injuries, which is good news. But those kinds of brutal attacks and those kinds of brazen attacks, those are the things that scare people.”

If convicted on all charges, Doty faces up to seven years in prison.

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Local cannabis entrepreneur and former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani was hospitalized after he was beaten by two men after an altercation outside his mother’s Marina home on Wednesday night.

“My son Don was beaten with a steel pipe by two men on Laguna Street and Lombard Street last night,” reads a Nextdoor post by Carmignani’s mother, Joan, thanked the neighbors who got involved, ended the fight and called 911. “If they weren’t there, my son would be dead!”

“He’s in the hospital with a fractured skull, a broken jaw and lots of lacerations,” added Carmignani’s mother.

The San Francisco Police Department confirmed that at 5:20 p.m. a man was attacked with a metal object in Laguna, near Magnolia Street, and was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. A suspect has been arrested.

“Right now, one of my dear friends is in the hospital after being attacked by a homeless man with a metal pipe in the marina last night,” San Francisco supervisor Catherine Stefani, whose District 2 covers the marina, said at a city meeting Thursday.

Stefani explained that Don Carmignani’s mother called the police because homeless people were taking drugs outside her door and wouldn’t leave. When the police didn’t respond, her son came to speak to the men outside her door and was attacked.

“We’re short of 55 officers at North Station. It’s a real thing,” said Stefani, who said Carmignani’s sister-in-law is her daughter’s teacher. “It’s not scaremongering… I’ve been here for 21 years and it hasn’t happened before. I think it’s a direct result of not having enough officers on our street.”

Ali Jamalian, a friend of Carmignani and head of Sunset Connect dispensary and the city’s cannabis regulatory committee, said: “There were two guys smoking meth or crack outside his mother’s house like they were blocking the entrance and she is late seventies. ”

He said the same men had been hanging out there for a while. “And I think the Bulls wouldn’t come out, despite some complaints from others. When he went out and asked them to move away, they attacked him.”

“He’s a very well-known local cannabis entrepreneur,” Jamalian said. “He’s always been a pro-cannabis landlord and a fighter for the cause. And he’s a local boy – Sacred Heart, third generation, a wonderful man.”

Mayor Ed Lee appointed Carmignani to the Fire Department Commission in 2013, but resigned after just four months following an arrest for domestic violence crimes. According to a 2016 SF Weekly report, he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to a fine, probation and counseling.

He then received several cannabis licenses from the city and became an early key player in the city’s business when California relaxed regulations on the drug.

The Standard Staff can be reached at [email protected]

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(KRON) – Incumbent Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is moving on to the November general election, the Associated Press projects.

Lara won 39.8% with 35% of precincts reporting, according to preliminary election returns Tuesday at 9:59 pm Who he will face is unclear, though Democratic State Sen. Mark Levine (D-San Rafael) has 18%.

Lara, the son of immigrants and a former state senator from Long Beach, was first elected to the insurance commissioner seat in 2018, when he became the first gay person ever elected to statewide office in California. He won against incumbent Steve Poizner, who had just dropped his GOP party affiliation

Since his term started, however, Lara has faced a series of ethics challenges. He accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies despite a pledge not to do so, and socialized with industry leaders as they had cases pending before his office, multiple media outlets have reported.

He faces a strong challenger in Levine, who was endorsed by California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. Levine, an assemblyman since 2012, promises to be an anti-corruption crusader. He became involved with the insurance issue since wildfires particularly impacted his North Bay district, leading to insurance claims.

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Note: This story contains allegations of sexual assault that may concern readers and survivors of sexual violence.

Tenant rights activist and Stanford alumna Sasha Perigo accused San Francisco prominent politician Jon Jacobo of rape in a social media post on August 6. Jacobo, who has denied the allegations, resigned “with immediate effect” from the city’s building inspection committee, he said later in the day.

In a seven-page document of text messages, police documents, and medical summaries posted on Twitter on Friday, Perigo claimed she was publicly raped by Jacobo on April 4.)

“When I got home, I crawled under my covers and lay there for hours before I finally got the courage to tell loved ones what happened to me,” she wrote in the document.

“If you don’t know Jon, you’re in luck,” she wrote earlier. “He’s a prominent figure in the San Francisco political scene and, like many rapists, is known for being a really nice guy.”

In a statement shared on Twitter the same day, Jacobo said, “I believe that every woman needs to be heard. I believe that every victim of trauma needs to be heard and the process of speaking out is part of the healing and righteousness am deeply saddened by the profound pain Sasha Perigo suffers and which she says I caused. “

He said his “memory of these events is different from their memory”.

“I believed then as now that our relationship was completely consensual,” he said. “We tried a recovery process in April and I will continue to work to understand why and how she feels that I harmed her.”

Jacobo said he was on leave from work and was resigning “with immediate effect” from the building inspectorate.

Perigo, who did not respond to a request for comment, also wrote: “He has not only crossed the lines with other women in the past, but continued to do so weeks after our conversation,” but did not provide any further details regarding the other women .

Jacobo was Commissioner for the San Francisco Building Inspectorate and Vice President of the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District. He also chairs the Health Committee of the SF Latino Task Force and is the director of community engagement and public policy for the nonprofit TODCO Group on Housing.

He previously served as the Californian Latino press secretary in Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and served as legislative adviser to District 6 supervisor Jane Kim.

Jacobo did not respond to a request for further comments, nor did the Building Inspection Commission, Calle 24, the SF Latino Task Force or the TODCO Group.

In a statement shared on Twitter, San Francisco Regulatory Authority Shamann Walton said, “My thoughts are with the victim for their courage and courage in speaking out on this dire situation that no one should ever experience. These are very serious allegations against a city commissioner . ”

“One of the reasons I kept this story to myself for so long is because I didn’t mean to hurt Jon by coming forward,” Perigo concluded in her document. “I took great care of him and it will break my heart forever that someone I once admired could hurt me this way.

“But going on means accepting that Jon isn’t who I thought he was. I have to free myself from the burden of protecting him from the consequences. “

People who have been sexually assaulted can find resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673.

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