{"id":247019,"date":"2026-04-01T17:53:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/247019\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T17:53:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:53:20","slug":"sf-sheriffs-union-spent-30k-on-debunked-narrative-of-stabbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/247019\/","title":{"rendered":"SF sheriffs\u2019 union spent $30K on debunked narrative of stabbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days after social worker Alberto Rangel<\/a> was stabbed<\/a> to death at a San Francisco General Hospital clinic in December, the deputy sheriffs\u2019 union shelled out thousands to flood social media with posts that cast the deputy on site as a hero.<\/p>\n

The union spent $29,549 to promote one of those posts across Meta platforms, financial records reviewed by Mission Local show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lionizing of the deputy, however, turned out to be inaccurate, according to multiple eyewitnesses. They said that clinic staff intervened in the Dec. 4 stabbing<\/a> at Ward 86 and the deputy onsite was slow to react. The paid post went up days after these accounts<\/a> were reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week Department of Public Health director Daniel Tsai also debunked<\/a> the union\u2019s claims, saying the \u201cfirst responders to actually intervene and pull the assailant off Alberto was Ward 86 staff,\u201d which was confirmed by \u201cmultiple primary sources and not just interviews, but bodycam footage and detailed call timestamps.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a Dec. 10 paid post funded by the Deputy Sheriffs\u2019 Association and plastered across social media claimed a \u201cdeputy sheriff saved Ward 86 from a rapid mass casualty stabbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The possibly AI-generated photo in the post showed a building labeled \u201c86a,\u201d which does not exist, and a sign that said \u201cmask recumed,\u201d a nonsensical, non-grammatical phrase that hospital staff said meant nothing to them.<\/p>\n

After the union paid to boost the post, it had 1.4 million views as of March 2026. It is no longer being promoted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tsai, however, last week told<\/a> hospital staff that a \u201croot cause analysis\u201d confirmed it was staff at HIV\/AIDS clinic Ward 86<\/a> who stopped the attack, not the deputy on scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This contradicts the deputy sheriff\u2019s union\u2019s public messaging, viewed by more than a million people after it was funded by tens of thousands of advertising dollars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Witnesses also told Mission Local that it was the medical staff that intervened with Wilfredo Tortolero Arriechi<\/a> as he stabbed Rangel in the neck and shoulders with a five-inch knife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"FourAt Ward 86, staff and patients are left questioning what could have prevented the killing of Alberto Rangel. Illustration by Neil Ballard. <\/p>\n

The deputy \u201cdid not say a word or move toward the man that had the knife until at least 10 to 15 seconds after the man dropped the knife and put himself up against the wall,\u201d eyewitness Charles Adams said<\/a> in an interview. <\/p>\n

Adams remembered yelling \u201cGo!\u201d at the deputy, but did not recall seeing the deputy move until the attack had stopped. \u201cYou would think he would run, right?\u201d Adams remembered. \u201cHe didn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than a dozen other union Facebook posts between Dec. 6 and Dec. 24 blamed San Francisco General Hospital for Rangel\u2019s death. The Deputy Sheriffs\u2019 Association called out the Department of Public Health for being \u201canti-law enforcement,\u201d criticized the hospital\u2019s lack of weapons screening<\/a>, and said deputy staffing cuts<\/a> led to the security failure.<\/p>\n

One post<\/a> linked to a now-unavailable article<\/a> on the union\u2019s website about how the \u201cdeputy\u2019s rapid response\u201d at the hospital \u201clikely prevented\u201d more deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Records show the deputy sheriff\u2019s union spent an additional $7,892 to promote a Dec. 24 post saying that the hospital \u201chas documented safety failures.\u201d As of March, that post has almost 800,000 views. It is no longer being promoted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rangel\u2019s colleagues at San Francisco General<\/a> also criticized<\/a> the hospital\u2019s response. At the same time, they were outraged to see the sheriff\u2019s union take credit for their response to their colleague\u2019s attack even after reports said otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But according to the sheriff\u2019s union\u2019s current leadership, most deputies didn\u2019t know that this narrative was going to be advertised, let alone this extensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current Executive Board was not aware that spending at that level had occurred on this incident,\u201d said Danilo Quintanilla, the union president as of Jan. 1. \u201cBased on the information available to us, I believe most members were likely not aware either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quintanilla said he found out about the expense last week, after he gained access to the union\u2019s Facebook business profile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy initial reaction was, \u2018there has to be an error,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way that that much money could have been spent on a post.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Quintanilla was unsure who had access to the Facebook account at the time of Rangel\u2019s death. When Quintanilla was union secretary, from 2021 to 2024, he said, only the union\u2019s president had access. In December, that was Ken Lomba.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lomba did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s rules do not explicitly prevent the president from spending money on advertising without members\u2019 consent, and Quintanilla said there had not been \u201cany wrongdoing\u201d on the part of his predecessor. <\/p>\n

He said, however, he was concerned that recent reports of what happened the day Rangel was killed revealed that the union spent tens of thousands of dollars to promote a narrative that may be \u201cinaccurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quintanilla said the union\u2019s current leadership is focused on the \u201closs of life\u201d and \u201ctragic event that impacted the healthcare workers.\u201d To ignore their firsthand experiences, he said, is \u201cunfair and frankly insensitive to the Ward 86 staff.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think the work that the sheriff\u2019s deputies do day in and day out is really important to ensure that there\u2019s public safety in our communities,\u201d Quintanilla said. \u201cBut sometimes it\u2019s important to measure our words and our thoughts before we commit to flashy storylines.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days after social worker Alberto Rangel was stabbed to death at a San Francisco General Hospital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[723,4735,101,29839,103,102,9200,104,106,105,5476],"class_list":{"0":"post-247019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-department-of-public-health","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-general-hospital","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-san-francisco-sheriffs-office","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-unions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}