Urban Alchemy workers gather in SF to honor colleague slain while doing outreach work

Hundreds of workers from Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that provides public safety services on the streets of San Francisco, gathered on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to honor one of their colleagues who was fatally shot last week.

In the early evening of Sept. 26, 60-year-old Joey Alexander was on shift when he was fatally shot outside San Francisco’s Main Library. Alexander, a street ambassador with Urban Alchemy, was shot after asking someone to refrain from allegedly using drugs out in the open, according to Urban Alchemy.

Urban Alchemy is an organization that contracts with the city to provide outreach services and crime deterrence, especially in areas with homelessness and open-air drug use such as the Tenderloin neighborhood.

Street ambassadors, who were mostly formerly incarcerated before joining the nonprofit, monitor the streets and provide crisis intervention for people struggling with mental illness or substance use disorders.