When housing rights advocate Sasha Perigo first accused Jacobo of sexual assault in 2021, El Tecolote interviewed Perigo and provided community resources for victims. Jacobo has since held several key roles within the Mission District’s Latinx community, including as executive at TODCO, vice president of Calle 24 and leader of the Mission Street Vendors Association.
The new allegations made by several women against Jon Jacobo, published by the SF Standard April 16, have renewed tensions and an unresolved reckoning within the neighborhood’s Latinx communities. As a community-oriented publication, our editorial priority is to give space and amplify the voices most impacted.
El Tecolote has partnered with Mission Local to translate their reporting of the allegations to Spanish, in order to make it more accessible to our bilingual audience. We will be following up with our own reporting soon.
Note from El Tecolote Staff
Jon Jacobo, a Mission District community leader who faced a series of allegations April 16 of rape and abusive behavior toward multiple women, has resigned from his executive position at affordable housing developer TODCO and nonprofit Calle 24.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen has since called for a hearing on the handling of sexual assault cases by the police department; Jacobo was first publicly accused of rape in August 2021. In the months following that charge, three separate woman filed police reports against Jacobo for a range of crimes, including domestic violence, sexual assault, and rape, the women told the San Francisco Standard.
It is unclear what, if any action the San Francisco Police Department has taken regarding the three separate reports filed years ago.
TODCO’s CEO Anna Yee said the company conducted an internal review of his work after the initial allegations and found no issues. “We were not aware of the issues raised today,” Yee said, adding that law enforcement is responsible for investigating such allegations.
“We can, and do, believe in two deeply held convictions equally; we must listen and hear the voices of women when they speak out and we must remember everyone deserves due process.”
Mission leaders who have had close working relationships with Jacobo declined to comment on the rape allegations or distance themselves from the longtime neighborhood figure who many still hold close.
After Jacobo was first publicly accused of rape by Sasha Perigo in August 2021, Mission community leaders were split on how to respond. Some remained silent or appeared to stand by the once rising political figure, while others spoke out — and faced repercussions, as in the case of employees at Mission Girls who were fired.
Jacobo was heavily involved in the Latino Task Force during the pandemic and was more recently the vice president of Calle 24. More recently, he has served as the spokesperson for Mission street vendors as they fight a ban on street vending. Last month, Jacobo posted on his Facebook page that he was the keynote speaker at a young entrepreneur event hosted by Bay Area Community Resources.
Jacobo’s Facebook posts were made private as of this afternoon.
It is unclear if anyone on the Latino Task Force knew that police reports had been filed. Since Perigo first came forward in 2021, but declined to file charges, some community leaders have tried to normalize Jacobo’s position within the community. As part of an effort of restorative justice, Jacobo participated in men’s groups and began returning to different local events, including taking up the cause of the street vendors.
He also recently became engaged to his partner, Gabriela Lopez, the former president of the school board who was ousted in a recall last year. The couple is expecting a child in June.
Calle 24 co-founder John Mendoza declined to comment and asked Mission Local to refrain from publishing any story. Susana Rojas, executive director of Calle 24, did not return calls.
Even if Jacobo’s friends and colleagues have stuck with him, the apparent inactivity by the San Francisco Police Department has elicited criticism.
Jackie Fielder, a candidate for District 9 supervisor, wrote in a Twitter post that she was “sickened” reading the allegations against Jacobo.
“Calls to SFPD unreturned? Massive failure. How does SFPD expect anyone to come to them with stories like this?” Fielder wrote.
Other community leaders, reached by phone, did not want to speak about the new accusations, with some saying that they would wait for the legal process to play out.
But San Francisco law enforcement has had a history of brushing off sexual assault victims, leading Supervisor Ronen to spearhead a new Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) in 2018 to help victims through the process of reporting assaults.
Also today, in response to the allegation that three women had filed separate police reports accusing Jacobo of different abuses since 2021, Chief Bill Scott thanked the Standard “for shedding light on this important issue.”
But the women who came forward in today’s article said their calls to police went unreturned, or that they were discouraged by the process.
“The SFPD is working diligently on these open investigations,” Scott said in a statement today. “We take sexual assault cases very seriously and we work closely with our victims. We urge anyone who is a victim of sexual assault to come forward and report your case to the SFPD.”
What investigative work has occurred over the past two and a half years is unclear.
One woman who accused Jacobo of rape told the Standard that she filed a police report in October 2021, two months after Perigo publicly accused him, and the other two women filed reports close to the same time. Jacobo’s ex-girlfriend also filed a civil lawsuit anonymously in San Mateo County in 2022, accusing him of choking her, threatening her with a knife, and stalking her.
Though Perigo published a well-documented report including text messages with Jacobo, contemporaneous corroboration from friends she confided in at the time, and documentation from a rape kit, she refused to report the encounter to the police.