A scandal has rocked an anti-police nonprofit, leaving its staff in disarray after the organization’s founder was accused of siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds to finance a lavish lifestyle.
Brandon D. Anderson, the 39-year-old founder of Raheem AI, a citizen app designed to replace traditional law enforcement with an alternative dispatch system, is now under intense scrutiny for his financial dealings. According to a damning report by the New York Times, Anderson is being questioned about $250,000 in questionable expenses he racked up in 2021 alone.
Raheem AI, named after Anderson’s late fiancé, was launched with a radical mission to abolish the police and create a network of “liberated dispatchers”—a mix of medics, social workers, and psychologists—who would handle emergencies typically managed by 911. The idea, Anderson, a U.S. Army veteran, said, was to provide an “alternative dispatching system to 911” that would eventually render traditional policing obsolete. When the initiative kicked off in 2021, Anderson drew a salary of $160,000—a figure that’s now dwarfed by the lavish spending he’s accused of.
The project had personal roots for Anderson, who frequently recounted the tragic story of his fiancé Raheem, who he claimed was killed by an abusive police officer. The app was initially intended to be a platform where citizens could report police misconduct, but after the initial version flopped, Anderson rebranded it with the broader mission of replacing the police entirely. This bold vision resonated with many, and over the course of the nonprofit’s operation, Raheem AI managed to pull in more than $4.4 million in donations.
But as the money flowed in, Anderson’s spending habits reportedly spiraled out of control. Jasmine Banks, 38, who was hired to help build the app, was the first to uncover the shocking misuse of funds. Banks, a mother of four with extensive experience in small liberal nonprofits, was appalled to discover that Anderson had charged thousands of dollars in designer clothing to the nonprofit. Records obtained by the New York Times show that Anderson spent over $11,000 on high-end fashion from stores like Bloomingdale’s, Bottega Veneta, Saks, Alexander McQueen, and Farfetch, all under the guise of an “executive director clothing allowance.”
The red flags first appeared when Banks stumbled upon a $1,536 credit card charge, prompting her to dig deeper into the nonprofit’s finances. What she found was staggering: Anderson had allegedly blown $46,000 on Uber and Lyft rides and another $80,000 on luxury vacations, including stays in mansions and resorts around the world. One particularly audacious expense was a trip to Cancun, where Anderson brazenly posted a photo of himself lounging in a pool, captioning it simply “Cancun” on Facebook.
Banks, shocked by the blatant misuse of funds, reached out to the nonprofit’s board of directors—two independent members who served alongside Anderson—alerting them to what she described as a “confidential issue that requires immediate attention.” The board members, however, were just as surprised as Banks, denying any knowledge of the extravagant “clothing allowance” Anderson had claimed. Phillip Agnew, a former board member and current head of the liberal political group Black Men Build, flatly denied ever approving such an expenditure, telling the New York Times, “No, no, no. Categorically, no. Not in a million years.”
While Anderson’s personal spending skyrocketed, the nonprofit’s mission floundered. Employees reported that Anderson became increasingly absent, offering little to no direction as the app struggled to gain traction. When questioned about the project’s progress, Anderson would reportedly dodge responsibility, telling his staff that he hired them to figure it out.
As the allegations of financial impropriety came to light, Anderson was placed on administrative leave, and the nonprofit quickly became defunct as donors pulled their support. In a statement to the New York Times, Anderson denied the accusations, claiming that many were “rife with untruths.” He argued that individual expenses were “easy to mischaracterize without the burden of context” and acknowledged that while the project ultimately failed, he bore much of the blame as its leader.
Raheem AI, named in memory of Anderson’s fiancé, was born out of his grief and anger over what he described as a senseless killing by an Oklahoma City police officer in 2007. Anderson often recounted how he and Raheem had run away from home as teenagers, surviving by squatting in abandoned buildings and selling drugs. In 2006, Raheem had proposed to Anderson, but their plans for a future together were cut short when Raheem was shot and killed while driving a car that the officer wrongly claimed was stolen.
The tragedy, Anderson said, sent him into a deep depression and fueled his determination to prevent similar incidents from happening to others. Raheem AI was initially conceived as a platform to allow citizens to file complaints against police from their phones, but the ambitious project quickly faltered due to its complexity. In 2021, Anderson revamped the initiative with the more radical goal of abolishing the police entirely, but now, with the nonprofit’s collapse and his credibility in tatters, that vision lies in ruins.
