When allegations of sexual abuse against rising San Francisco political star Jon Jacobo surfaced in April, the reports contained a familiar refrain: The three women said police had failed to sensitively and thoroughly investigate their cases. 

In 2018, when a dozen women and advocates had voiced similar complaints about reporting sex crimes, city officials created a new office to fix the system that had let down so many survivors. 

The Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, promised to process victims’ complaints about city departments’ handling of their cases and to help them access services. It would notify departments if one of their employees was accused of breaking the law or failed to follow policy for reporting sex crimes, and it could require city employees to meet with the survivor to hear out their concerns. Ultimately, SHARP’s staff would distill what it learned into policy proposals to help reform a process widely seen as broken. 

But six years after the office was created, there’s little evidence it has met its goals, according to more than a dozen interviews and a Chronicle review of thousands of pages of public records. 

SHARP has proposed no official policies to improve how the San Francisco Police Department treats those who come forward. The office has also not suggested policy changes to the district attorney’s office or the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, which provides services to sexual assault survivors and is run by the Department of Public Health. The three city agencies are the largest that work directly and extensively with survivors. 

SHARP officials could identify only one instance, in 2021, in which the office required a city employee to meet with a person who filed a complaint. Officials did not provide details on the nature of the complaint, but said the meeting included the SFPD and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the police investigation is continuing. 

Neither the police department nor the district attorney’s office has changed any policies related to their work with sex crime accusers since SHARP’s creation, officials from both departments said. Officials with the Department of Public Health said SHARP had never contacted them to share a complaint.

Representatives from two city agencies that oversee police — the Department of Police Accountability and the Police Commission — said they had no record of SHARP contacting them since at least 2021. “I’ve never heard of SHARP before,” said Police Commission Vice President Max Carter-Oberstone. 

SFPD’s special victims unit, which handles sex crimes, told the Chronicle that it had “no record of communications with SHARP” until two weeks ago, when SHARP leaders requested a meeting — days after Chronicle reporters sent the office a detailed list of questions about its activities. 

In interviews and statements, officials with SHARP and the Human Rights Commission, the city agency that oversees SHARP, said its employees attend team meetings that include the special victims unit. SHARP has “brought three issues to the attention of the SFPD command staff directly”: an “issue of interpersonal violence,” an “issue related to an overdose” and an alleged “violation of consent,” SHARP Director KellyLou Densmore said in an email. 

She did not respond to requests for more information about these complaints. Evan Sernoffsky, a police spokesperson, said the meetings involved criminal cases that were already under investigation. Sernoffsky said he was not sure what role SHARP played in these meetings. 

Sheryl Evans Davis, executive director of the Human Rights Commission, acknowledged SHARP’s shortcomings but said it has done important work to help individuals in vulnerable communities and to raise awareness about sexual violence.

Davis said SHARP helped domestic violence survivors secure housing during the pandemic, created policy recommendations to protect students from sexual assault in schools and has helped find community resources for people who didn’t want to report a crime. This was particularly important for communities who are distrustful of police, she said, including people of color and undocumented immigrants.   

Davis said that, over time, SHARP’s focus shifted from helping alleged sex crime victims who felt let down by the justice system to those who chose to avoid it altogether. She said the change was based on the needs of the community, but conceded that the department had lost sight of its intended purpose: to reform existing departments and remove roadblocks for those seeking justice. 

“I think that, if we’re going to make the system better, we can’t just avoid the system,” Davis said. “We actually have to talk to them (city agencies) about what they need to do to improve.”

For instance, Davis said, SHARP could have provided referral cards to police and asked officers to hand them out to people who reported a sex crime. Currently there is no formal channel for police to make referrals to SHARP. 

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who proposed the legislation that created SHARP, said she has been “really underwhelmed” by the department’s performance. Ronen is holding a hearing Thursday to probe SHARP and the broader city response to sexual assault in response to the Jacobo allegations.

When asked about concerns that SHARP wasn’t functioning as intended, Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, told the Chronicle that the department will “dissolve” into a new office city voters authorized in 2022.

The Office of Victim and Witness Rights is intended to streamline services for victims of crime, including sexual assault, into one central office. Cretan could not provide a date when the new office would open, but said Breed plans to announce its leadership soon.

Davis said that SHARP never intended to neglect the people who tried to work with the official criminal justice system.  

“It has been a challenge to find the balance,” she said. “And we are committed to working to address the systemic problems that impact everyone — those who report and those who do not.” 

New case, same concerns

Last month’s bombshell allegations against Jacobo shook the city’s political world, and the fallout was swift. 

Jacobo, a well-known figure in local progressive politics involved in many community organizations, was widely viewed as a potential successor to Ronen, whose district includes the Mission, before a previous sexual assault allegation surfaced in 2021.

But after the women’s reports surfaced in April, he resigned from his leadership position at the powerful housing nonprofit TODCO, as well as his position on the board of directors at the Mission District nonprofit Calle 24.  

But while Jacobo’s political career has stalled, it remains less clear what’s to come of the three women’s other troubling allegations: that San Francisco police failed to thoroughly investigate their reports of abuse, as the San Francisco Standard first reported. 

One of Jacobo’s accusers said her calls to police went unreturned; the other two said they felt “discouraged” by their interactions with investigators.

San Francisco police have denied that they mishandled or dropped the cases and said investigations are pending.

The issues Jacobo’s accusers allegedly faced in reporting their allegations to police echoed those raised in a 2018 hearing that led to the creation of SHARP, suggesting little progress in the city’s handling of such sensitive cases. 

During the hearing six years ago, speakers said they felt blamed by officers who took their reports, and said investigators failed to promptly collect evidence or interview witnesses. Some said they had to wait hours at S.F. General to have blood and urine samples tested, while others said police did not reach out to key witnesses. One woman said a police officer told her the case would come down to her “state of mind” during her alleged rape; another said that when she told hospital employees about her assault, they said she needed to “continue on with” her life. 

Two of Jacobo’s accusers told the Chronicle that they did not recall police referring them to SHARP when they reported the alleged crimes. The Chronicle was unable to reach the third woman in the Standard’s reporting.

Interviews with city officials and domestic violence advocates paint a picture of a department that was well-meaning but lacked resources, focus and oversight. For instance, the $400,000 department was expected to hire three full-time employees, but instead has two people on staff.

Since its creation, SHARP has received 67 complaints about city departments’ response to sex assault reports or other requests for help from its website, Densmore said in a statement. The office has received another 185 “community informed” complaints from town halls, private conversations with SHARP staff and other channels. 

Densmore said her office investigated all of these complaints, and has worked with 33 people who requested “advocacy” help from SHARP. This often involved connecting them to legal services or community groups because their cases weren’t related to a city agency, Densmore said.  

In an interview, Ronen blamed the mayor’s office for failing to ensure that SHARP fulfilled its intended mission. “Legislators are not supposed to implement the legislation. That’s the job of the executive branch of government,” she said.

Without directly addressing Ronen’s criticisms, Cretan said SHARP was well-intentioned but “an example of piecemeal, inefficient systems that don’t deliver their intended outcomes.” He said that because SHARP was a government agency, it couldn’t keep survivors’ experiences confidential, which “limited its ability to build trust.”

Under the new victims’ services agency set to absorb SHARP, however, employees may still be unable to offer confidentiality to survivors who file complaints. Cretan said the city is considering making it possible for victims to report confidentially by partnering with law enforcement — although some of the complaints could be about police. 

Lost in the system

One city employee who reported to police last year that she may have been the victim of a sexual crime said the creation of SHARP typifies a fundamental flaw in the city’s lawmaking: When San Francisco leaders identify a problem in one department, they tend to create a new city office rather than fix the issue through existing channels. 

In addition to SHARP, the city has at least five other departments that offer services to crime victims, not including the new Office of Victim and Witness Rights.

Last year, the city employee, who asked not to be identified, came across an article about an employee at an alterations business who had been accused of secretly recording women in the business’ changing room. In horror, the woman realized that she had undressed in that changing room on several occasions. 

“I basically freaked out,” the woman said. “It wasn’t clear to me, like, how long (the recordings had been happening); am I on that video?” 

In search of answers, the woman called the SFPD investigator handling the case. But, she said, the detective refused to talk about any details, or to even confirm or deny any video existed, saying divulging that information could compromise the investigation.

The detective told the woman that police would reach out to her with any developments, and that she could contact the district attorney’s office if she wanted to press charges, she recalled.

“I’m like, ‘Am I only allowed to get answers to these questions or be notified if this person is going to be back in the neighborhood if I press charges? And what exactly am I pressing charges on?’ ” the woman said.

Sernoffsky, the SFPD spokesperson, said he could not comment on the woman’s case without knowing her identity. (The Chronicle does not identify alleged victims of sex crimes without their consent.) In general, he said, “SFPD does not publicly discuss evidence in open investigations because it could compromise the case and potential prosecution.” 

The suspect, Andrew Hong, pleaded not guilty to six counts of misdemeanor invasion of privacy and has since been released from jail while awaiting trial. The woman said she has not been contacted by police since her frustrating conversation with the detective over a year ago.

The woman said she did not know what further steps she could take with the case and was never directed to SHARP. 

“We have a district attorney’s office who offers victim services, we have the (pending) Office of Victim Services, we have the SFPD’s special victims unit,” the woman said. “I’m a city employee, and I understand how these systems work and what resources are available and even I find it confusing. 

“Imagine someone that doesn’t work for the city — how are they supposed to navigate this confusion?”

Reach Megan Cassidy: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com. Reach Susie Neilson: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com