The District of Columbia’s attorney general sued an activist known for his calls to abolish the police, saying that he diverted $75,000 from a charity to pay for mansion rentals, a trip to Cancún and designer clothes.
Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who oversees nonprofits in the city, said Brandon Anderson had turned an anti-police-brutality charity called Raheem AI into a piggy bank for himself, reports the New York Times. Schwalb also sued Raheem AI. He asked a judge to shutter the organization, bar Anderson from leading any other Washington nonprofit and order him or Raheem AI to repay the $75,000. The money would be given to a charity chosen by the judge. "Brandon Anderson misused charitable donations to fund lavish vacations and shopping sprees, and the Raheem AI board of directors let him get away with it,” Schwalb said. “My office will not allow people to masquerade behind noble causes while violating the law."
Anderson has said, “The bottom line is simply that it didn’t work, and as the leader of that effort I share most of the blame.” The Times reported on Raheem AI’s downfall in August. Anderson founded the charity in 2017, telling donors and journalists that it was born out of deep personal tragedy: His fiancé, Raheem, had been unjustly killed by the police in Oklahoma in 2007. He promised that his group would deliver world-changing technological breakthroughs that would make the police more accountable — and also less necessary. It sought to build a program that would allow people to file police complaints from their phones. Later, the organization took to building an alternative to 911 that would dispatch aid workers, not law enforcement, for nonviolent calls like drug overdoses, loitering or mental-health emergencies. Raheem AI raised more than $4.3 million from liberal-leaning groups, particularly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The group’s high-tech projects fizzled. Raheem AI still appears to exist, as a recognized nonprofit but it appears inactive.