Supervisor In Crime-Plagued City Using Family’s Foundation To Bankroll Anti-Cop Groups

Democratic San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston donated over a million dollars to a family-run trust fund and used his position as trustee and co-founder of the group to direct substantial amounts of his family’s money to anti-cop organizations over the past several years, the Fund’s website shows.

Preston, a self-described democratic socialist who has received criticism from even his Democratic colleagues over his left-leaning policies, gave $565,818 in stock to the Arch Community Fund (ACF) in 2018 and an additional $1.1 million worth of stock in 2019, tax documents from the nonprofit group showed. He also has served as one of the two ACF trustees since 2017, helping to direct funds toward groups that oppose incarceration, the criminal justice system and police, investigative journalist Lee Fang first reported on his Substack.

“Arch Community Fund launched in 2017 in response to the alarming rise of overt racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, religious intolerance, and corporate dominance in the United States,” the website said. “[T]he founders of the Arch Community Fund felt compelled to invest in efforts to challenge the rise of intolerance and fascism and help build a more equitable society. We are especially concerned with the rise of hateful ideologies of white nationalism in the current political climate.”

Although the ACF has donated to a wide variety of causes, it has given substantial funding to several groups that have heavily campaigned in Oakland, California, to defund the police, including $90,000 to the Anti Police-Terror Project and $125,000 to the Critical Resistance project, the fund’s website shows. Oakland’s crime has worsened since 2020, leading many residents to demand action from their local politicians to improve security in the area.

Despite donating substantial amounts of money to the group and directing where ACF funding goes, Preston does not mention his involvement with the group anywhere on his campaign website or his official supervisor page. While Preston has focused his political career on housing issues and preventing tenants from getting evicted, he has supported moves in office to reduce police funding and restrict how security guards can respond to shoplifting incidents, according to his campaign website.

Preston made headlines in September by telling residents to “not leave anything in the car” to avoid break-ins, but said the city should rely on the DA and police for “the enforcement side of it,” local station ABC7 reported.

ACF has not announced any new donations since 2022, although it pledged funding to Critical Resistance and several other activist groups through 2023, according to the fund’s website.

Preston and the ACF did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.