The man whose job it was to keep San Francisco’s streets neat and orderly has been arrested by the FBI over allegations of corruption.
Mohammed Nuru, San Francisco’s public works director, was taken into custody Monday and charged with felony safekeeping, according to Mercury News. Nick Bovis, a local bar owner, was arrested on similar charges.
The Northern District of California’s Office of the U.S. Attorney alleges that the duo was part of a wire fraud scheme.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the two attempted to bribe a San Francisco airport commissioner with money and other incentives in order to open a restaurant in the San Francisco International Airport.
“The complaint describes a web of corruption involving bribery, kickbacks, and side deals by one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking city employees,” U.S. Attorney David Anderson said in a news release.
“The public is entitled to honest work from public officials, free from manipulation for the official’s own personal benefit and profit.”
To add on that, the public is also entitled to functioning streets and sidewalks — something their tax dollars help pay for.
The condition of San Francisco’s streets seems to hint that Nuru may have been more interested in lining his own pockets than keeping the city he worked for clean and healthy.
Nuru, who goes by MrCleanSF on his active Twitter account, oversees a department that has been largely ineffective in keeping San Francisco’s sidewalks clear of human waste and other unhealthy things.
Today we joined Mayor @LondonBreed along Mayors from Oakland and San Jose with Many City leaders to give out turkeys to SF residents for thanksgiving.
See Mohammed Nuru's other Tweets
On top of human fecal matter littering many areas, drug paraphernalia and needles are also a common sight.
The condition of the streets has chased away untold numbers of residents and business opportunities, with even local tech giants starting to take notice of San Francisco’s disgusting problem.
The problem is driven in part by the city’s large homeless population, which leadership has been unable to fix.
San Francisco’s homeless, which includes the mentally unwell, drug addicts, and those that have genuinely fallen on hard times, underscore a stark difference between the bay area’s big tech megawealth and those at the very bottom of the liberal city’s socioeconomic ladder.
Some of the homeless are causing even greater issues than the condition they leave the sidewalks in, with at least one being caught in the act of using a grocery store aisle as a personal toilet.
Hopefully with Nuru’s absence, the people of San Francisco can find someone who is actually able to do their job.
Although Nuru’s fate is still unclear, one thing is for certain: whoever takes over has their work cut out for them.
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