Keith Jackson, former S.F. education official, accused of murder-for-hire

03/27/2014

A 1997 file photo of former San Francisco school board president Keith Jackson. Photo: Lowell High School

Keith Jackson, accused by the FBI on Wednesday of being involved in a murder-for-hire scheme and a gun- and drug-trafficking conspiracy, was San Francisco's top elected educator during the late 1990s.

Jackson, 49, is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Education, having run for the board in 1994 on a pro-family slate.

But his tenure on the board was not trouble-free.

In 1997, The Chronicle revealed that Jackson owed more than $5,000 in child-support payments and that the courts were garnisheeing his wages. In an odd twist, Jackson blamed his child-support troubles on being fired from a job he'd held for just four days - as an investigator tracking down deadbeat dads for the San Francisco district attorney.

One of Jackson's sons, Brandon Jamell Jackson, 28, is also accused in the FBI complaint of conspiracies to commit murder for hire and trafficking in guns and drugs.

As an elected official in the 1990s, Keith Jackson declined to discuss his money problems with The Chronicle. The problems included five federal and state liens totaling $4,369 for tax debts between 1989 and 1994, and a missed payment to the University of Phoenix in San Jose that a court ordered him to pay up with interest.

Jackson called the inquiry a racially motivated attack. Jackson is black.

Today, Jackson runs the Jackson Consultancy business, according to the federal complaint, and he has been helping raise money for state Sen. Leland Yee's election campaigns since 2011. Yee was also arrested in the FBI sweep on Wednesday.

Jackson last made news in 2009 while working as a representative of Lennar Corp., which some in the black community have accused of exposing children to toxic dust during its development of the Hunters Point Shipyard.

Jackson took out a restraining order against one of his harshest critics, a Nation of Islam minister who barred him from leaving a community meeting, Jackson told SF Weekly at the time. He said the minister called him an "Uncle Tom" for representing the developers and asked how he could "kill the babies."

The Lennar job was one of many he'd had as a consultant over the years that hovered on the fringe of city politics.

Jackson resigned from the school board in 1998, but not before drawing national attention for co-authoring a resolution requiring students to read a certain number of books by nonwhite and transgender authors. (The board eliminated the quota and approved an amended resolution to diversify the high school reading list.)

Jackson then took a job with the city, working as a commercial recycling coordinator for the city's solid-waste program.

He has since worked at various jobs, including as a consultant for Sam Singer, the well-known spokesman for public officials in crisis.

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