San Francisco’s Urban Alchemy reiterates its mission after worker’s shooting death

By Lauren Toms

Joey Alexander spent 23 years behind bars before finding purpose and freedom as a practitioner for Urban Alchemy. For the past two years, he worked outside San Francisco’s Main Library, checking on unhoused neighbors, deterring violence, and watching for drug use.

Last Friday, Alexander was shot during an interaction with a man suspected of using drugs nearby. It was the first time in Urban Alchemy’s history that a practitioner has been killed on the job.

The shooting came just weeks before Alexander was scheduled to reunite with his son for the first time since his release from prison.

“We do go into every interaction thinking the worst can happen,” Dr. Lena Miller said, a co-founder and CEO of Urban Alchemy, who spoke exclusively to CBS News Bay Area for the first time publicly since the shooting. “I think almost everybody is ready to get back out there and recommit themselves to the work so that Joey’s death would not be in vain.”

The public safety nonprofit, operating in San Francisco since 2018, was built on second chances. More than 90% of its practitioners are formerly incarcerated, including Alexander, who served years at San Quentin.

“At first, it like hit me in the stomach, you know, shock and disbelief and not wanting to believe it… We’re under no illusions that we won’t lose our lives out there,” Miller said.

Miller said that the background of having lived experience, and often relatability to the most vulnerable people they interact with on the streets, including homelessness and drug use, makes them uniquely prepared for the work and gave Alexander a sense of purpose. 

“To people are looking at long-term sentences and lifetime and life sentences in prison, especially on level four yards, there’s a lot of things that you have to learn, right? You have to learn how to read people. You have to learn how to de-escalate. You have to learn how to how to have respect for people, because in many ways, it is the only currency,” she said. 

Miller said she believes Alexander was using those skills Friday, like every day, when he crossed paths with 42-year-old Edmund Bowen, who was suspected of using drugs in the area. Police say Alexander confronted Bowen, asking him to stop and move along. It’s a common request made by Urban Alchemy practitioners tasked with clearing troubled parts of San Francisco neighborhoods they patrol. 

Bowen proceeded to shout obscenities about Urban Alchemy, not Alexander specifically, then opened fire. Alexander was struck and died days later at a nearby hospital. Bowen was taken into custody.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins condemned the violence, saying Bowen is being charged with “murder, as well as assault with a firearm, and an enhancement for using a firearm during the commission of that murder.”

Jenkins’ office said it is moving to have Bowen detained pending trial due to the public safety risk he poses. 

While Urban Alchemy has won support for its work stabilizing troubled neighborhoods, critics have questioned whether the group, funded through city contracts, is being asked to take on policing responsibilities without the same oversight. Miller said her team offers something different: de-escalation through empathy, not force.

“Public safety is indeed relationships. It is eyes on the streets. It is knowing what the rhythms of a community are, knowing what the moods of the people are, the changes, and somebody checking in with everybody and other people, knowing that there is somebody who knows all of the people and the characters and the rhythms of what is going on in a community,” she said.

Practitioners like Alexander are unarmed, carrying little on their person other than “Narcan, and the gift of gab,” Miller said. It’s a practice Miller said will not change, adding there are no plans for the practitioners to carry defensive objects. 

In the wake of Alexander’s death, she said the organization is recommitting to its mission in his honor.

“You can be angry, angry, you can be aggressive, you can be all those things, but in the end, the only one thing that truly trumps all of that is love and respect. It’s the only thing that wins at the end of the day,” Miller said.

Bowen will be arraigned in a San Francisco court on Friday at 1:30 p.m.