Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen are trying to kick down a $9.4 million gift to the SFPD in the form of drones and surveillance gadgets, a new “surveillance gadget” coordinating center, and an apparent $2 million video wall.
The co-founder of cryptocurrency form Ripple Labs, Chris Larsen, burst into the SF public eye in 2019 when he had 1,000 private surveillance cameras placed about town in an effort to help law enforcement. He’s also been a moderate political candidate mega-donor in local elections, and helped fund the 2024 Prop D ballot measure that allowed SFPD to use more drones and other surveillance devices. Meanwhile, his Ripple Labs has been showering President Trump with $5 million in contributions to ensure that the crypto racket remains as unregulated and scam-friendly as possible, and so Larsen’s money continues flowing too.
And is it ever. Mission Local reported Monday that Larsen if offering the SFPD $9.4 million in gifts, mostly to be used on surveillance tools and drones.
The news broke in the Monday release of Mayor Lurie’s proposal to accept the $9.4 million gift. Though that proposal notes that the cash value of the gifts is only $7.2 million, the other $2.2 million is the donation of unused Ripple Labs office space to SFPD for their use as a “Real Time Investigation Center” (RTIC). So there may be some tax write-off incentives for Ripple Labs here.
The police department already has an existing RTIC facility at 850 Bryant Street, but like anything at 850 Bryant Street, it is dilapidated and badly outdated. The Chronicle report on the gifts from Larsen and Ripple Labs notes that at a recent SFPD press conference at the current facility, “police asked reporters to refrain from charging their equipment in the room’s electrical outlets because doing so risked overwhelming the system."
Thus, SFPD’s new RTIC will be at 315 Montgomery, in office space that Ripple Labs has leased but is not using.
Though the big bucks are in the $7.2 million sum. That money will be considered a gift from Larsen’s charitable organization called San Francisco Police Community Foundation that he founded last year. And it’s likely he founded that because another SFPD-related nonprofit called SF Safe financially imploded with all sorts of alleged improprieties, and Larsen himself may have ended up being bilked out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But could that happen again? Notably, this gift avoids vendors having to submit competitive bids. That’s a red flag for sweetheart deals with vendors (vendors Larsen has invested in?), and the lack of competitive bids has been a common thread among SF City Hall scandals.
Going through the details of the $9.4 million, we see “$5,277,107 for the purchase of 12 docks and 12 drones” plus “related software and services.” There’s also $1.7 million for a giant video wall, and a few hundred thousand here and there for vaguely described “computer equipment.”
We will simply note that $5.2 million for 12 drones works out to about $440,000 per drone.
“I think we can clearly see what a force-multiplier this is,” Larson told the Chronicle. “The number of tools that [the SF Police] have is quite small, and we know that [expanding them] will have an impact.”
The SF Police Commission will discuss accepting the gifts Wednesday, and the proposal will also need Board of Supervisors approval. Both approvals are expected.
So sure, Larsen is burnishing his “tough on crime” credentials, and with a generous gift at that. But Ripple Labs has had their own brushes with the law, having been accused of illegally selling more than $1 billion in unregistered securities (they settled that case for $50 million). And I’m sorry, but it is very difficult to see cryptocurrency types as fine upholders of the law, given the almost daily fraud scandals that come from that sector, and the lack of any internal industry calls against scams and fraud.
I’m sure cryptocurrency executives would prefer to see crackdowns on street crime, but less enforcement against white-collar crime. And maybe their patterns of gift-giving will help manifest that.
Image: Joe Kukura, SFist
