City of thugs: SF's busted poop patrol boss Mohammed Nuru pulls knife on food-bank worker — and skates

What kind of criminal thugs are running San Francisco?

Here's a bit of an indicator, according to the Washington Free Beacon:

San Francisco police on Wednesday arrested a disgraced former city official who served under successive Democratic administrations for attempting to rob someone at knifepoint at a food bank.

Mohammed Nuru, who served as the city's director of public works under Democratic mayors Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, Ed Lee, and London Breed, allegedly brandished a kitchen knife and attempted to steal a bag of potato chips from a volunteer at a city food bank, according to ABC 7. The victim fled the scene and called the police, who took Nuru into custody. After the incident, Nuru reportedly said he was just "kidding."

Last year, the FBI arrested Nuru on corruption and bribery charges. Federal prosecutors say Nuru, who resigned from his position after his arrest, oversaw a kickback scheme with city contractors, who exchanged tens of thousands of dollars in gifts for city contracts. The FBI also alleges Nuru attempted to bribe an airport commissioner to secure restaurant space at San Francisco International Airport for an associate. If convicted, Nuru faces up to 20 years in prison.

Nuru served in San Francisco's city government for nearly two decades and earned a reputation as a "guy who can get things done," former Newsom spokesman Nathan Ballard told the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Naturally, the prosecutors declined to prosecute, despite the police work it took.  Guess who the prosecutor was: Chesa Boudin, son of a terrorist, and Hugo Chávez's trusted adviser.  Chávez knew all about excusing and encouraging crime as a means of intimidating internal opposition.  Chesa was "educated" at Hugo's knee.  So of course he let Nuru off

Meanwhile, much of the press is reporting this as a joke gone wrong or a trivial attempted theft of potato chips from someone who used to be powerful.  What they're not doing is focusing on what it really was: a scary knife-drawing on an unwilling victim.  That's what makes the story noteworthy.  What kind of person casually pulls out a knife and threatens to use it on someone he'd never met over something stupid like potato chips he could afford easily?  A political thug, that's who.

Turns out that Nuru got his political start from none other than Willie Brown, godfather of San Francisco politics, who in his past had served as lawyer to pimps, a rough bunch.  Nuru rose from an urban-gardening NGO known as SLUG, where he rapidly turned the group into a $6-million front for social justice warriors before coming under Brown's wing.  With Willie's help, he got himself appointed to a series of boards, as Kamala Harris had, and eventually became a power center of his own as public works director, letting the city go downhill and introducing the famous "poop patrols," which were his "baby."  Along the way, Nuru was "dating" now-mayor London Breed, in one big happy blue family.  Like Kamala Harris, another Brown protégée, Nuru knew where to go to get a leg up in politics.

It was always all about power for him.

According to Mission Local, a San Francisco news site:


"It was big, but it wasn't grand," the mover and shaker continues, describing Nuru's third-floor space in City Hall. "Mohammed was always a little p----- he had a s----- office. He had strong opinions about the quality of his office." 

He made them known. And they were adhered to — to many of his colleagues' chagrin. 

The grand office that Nuru never had the chance to move into is located high atop 49 South Van Ness, a graceful 16-story tower sprouting out of the former Goodwill site on South Van Ness and Mission.

So now that he's busted and out on his ear, facing 20 in the can for corruption, all based on the investigative work of an outside agency, the FBI, he's reverted to what appear to be his old ways.

Knife.  Potato chips.  Rob. 

It was weird because, supposedly, Nuru volunteered at the food bank, a place where free food is passed out.  He couldn't have asked someone at a place like that for some free potato chips?  Or being a "volunteer," just go help himself?  He needed to pull out a knife?  Who thinks of that?  Who does such an act with ease unless he has practice at it?  And what was he doing at the food bank at all?  His work pattern suggests he tends to be someplace only if there is something in it for him.  What was going on there?

It makes no sense, unless he enjoyed wielding the power of the knife and watching someone get scared from it.  That's the activity of a thug, and it seems to be the only explanation for his so-called joke.  You can take the thug out of the tiki-cane shakedown racket of San Francisco's NGOs (that Tom Wolfe wrote about), but you can't take the shakedown racket out of the thug.  Thugs thug.  That's what one of the most powerful people in San Francisco had been and still is.  Now he's off to trial and probably jail, where he'll feel comfortable among the "talent."

It raises questions as to how many other corrupt pols with ease of pulling knives and an insistence of getting what they want are still out there.  Right now, the FBI is hosing the place out but the cleverer ones know how to stay out of the spotlight and cover their tracks.  Not this guy.  He wanted what he wanted and expected to get it, all by pulling a knife.

Scary place, that San Francisco, undoubtedly with more secrets to reveal.

Image: Screen shot from NBC News video, posted on shareable YouTube.
