‘Ever seen a cheetah hunt?’ Twitter troll takes his beef to the streets

Kevin Jones was leaning against his minivan and scrolling on his phone Saturday outside Oakland’s Thee Stork Club when a friend texted him a peculiar video. 

The video was of Jones, leaning against his Toyota Sienna, and had been taken just moments earlier. That alone was enough to alarm Jones. 

Then he saw who had posted it: JJ Smith (real name Omar Ward), an online provocateur with whom he frequently argues about civic issues like policing and addiction. 

“He started threatening me, so I blocked him on X and put him out of my memory,” Jones said, “but apparently he posted a video of me just leaning on my van, looking at my phone for 19 seconds.”

Jones shrugged it off and entered the club. Around midnight, he said, he returned to his van and found all of his tires slashed, a threatening note on his windshield, and a sock stuffed into the gas tank. The sock appeared burned, as if someone had tried to light it on fire. 

“Have you ever seen a cheetah hunt it’s prey a cheetah is camouflage by there spots so there prey don’t see them then they move in at the right time,” the note said.

Ward has amassed 35,000 followers on X through years of posting grotesque Tenderloin street scenes, interviews with homeless drug users, digs at progressive activists, and even being first on the scene during apartment building fires. But his activities have been taking a darker turn. Left-wing activists and journalists accuse him of engaging in a campaign of harassment, threats, and vandalism against his critics and advocates of causes he opposes, such as police reform. At least one victim of Ward’s alleged harassment has filed a police report; another has sought a restraining order. There are also questions — which Ward himself has invited — about the nature of his relationship with the San Francisco Police Department. 

Dimitry Yakoushkin, who lives in San Francisco and works as a sex therapist, described a similar act of car vandalism and said Ward claimed credit.

Yakoushkin said while he was protesting conservative firebrand Jordan Peterson’s Feb. 3 show at the Masonic, Ward harassed him and appeared to admit to smashing a window at his house and slashing his BMW’s tires on March 2, 2024. Yakoushin recorded the admission and posted the video to X. 

In the video, Ward appears to say he came to the protest to “protest this asshole,” gesturing at Yakoushkin. In a phone interview, Ward denied vandalizing Yakoushkin’s house or car, saying he knew about the incident only from social media posts. 

Ward maintains that his critics provoke him online but “play victim” when confronted in person. He attributes his aggressive response to his upbringing in the Potrero Hill housing projects.

“I live by a different street code,” Ward said. “If I have an issue with you, I’m gonna confront you about it.”

He admitted to writing the note Jones found on his windshield but denied slashing his tires. 

“My issue was with him. A car can’t fight back,” Ward said. “It wouldn’t benefit me to hurt his car.”

He said the note was not meant to be threatening.

“I was just telling him about cheetahs,” Ward said. “I could talk to him about all kinds of animals.” 

The interplay between Ward’s social media persona and offline behavior reminds some of Ricci Wynne, a convicted drug dealer who gained support from local politicians and Fox News for his videos detailing SoMa street conditions and was later charged with pimping. 

Like Wynne, Ward became popular with a cohort of tough-on-crime social media commentators. Among them is Tom Wolf, a recovery activist whom Ward credits with inspiring him to post videos online. Assemblymember Matt Haney posted a photo with Ward, calling him “my guy,” when he was a city supervisor. 

In January 2024, Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator and a vocal supporter of centrist policies in San Francisco, donated $1,000 to a GoFundMe campaign to cover medical expenses for Ward, who was hospitalized for congestive heart failure.

When he’s not posting urban-decay videos on social media and confronting left-wing activists, Ward is a small-business proprietor. He owns a cafe, the Tenderloin Deli and Connect on Ellis Street, according to a December 2024 health inspector report. (The deli was cited for cockroaches.) “I have comfort food that’s very affordable for anyone’s budget I bring a cool atmosphere in my establishment where everyone is welcome,” reads the “About the business” section of its Yelp page. 

He’s also a felon, convicted in a 2006 federal case for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Although some two dozen documents pertaining to the case have been sealed, his criminal record earned him the designation of “career offender,” according to records that remain public. The court determined that Ward fell into “Criminal History Category VI,” the highest category, and had an offense level of 34 (the highest possible is 43), indicating that he had numerous prior convictions. Ward was also arrested in 1998 during a domestic disturbance call, according to court records, and was convicted of possession of a controlled substance. 

Court documents from the 2006 case show that Ward took a plea deal and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison — far less than the 15 to 20 years recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who leads a criminal justice center at UC Berkeley’s law school, reviewed Ward’s court records at The Standard’s request.

“I’m not sure what I can conclude from this other than that he received a very substantial discount in his sentence for (presumably) very substantial government assistance of some kind,” Boudin said via email.

Ward pushed back on that interpretation and disputed the facts in the court records.

“I never took a plea deal,” he said. “I just pled guilty.”

More recently, Ward has been eager to cast himself as a collaborator with local law enforcement. In an X Spaces conversation Sunday with The Voice of San Francisco, he said he had aided in SFPD drug investigations. This prompted people on X to call him a cop.

SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said Ward is not employed by the department. When asked if Ward is an informant, Sernoffsky said he did not know and would not be able to find out due to informant protections. He did not say whether police are investigating Smith for any alleged offenses, saying the department does not disclose such information.

Ward told The Standard he did not mean to imply that he was an SFPD informant, paid or otherwise, only that he had let the police use his videos for a purpose he didn’t know. “That was misinterpreted,” he said. 

Still, Yakoushkin cited concerns about Ward’s closeness with the SFPD as a factor in his decision not to file a police report over the March 2, 2024, incident. 

The online fighting between Ward and progressives has ramped up in recent weeks. 

On Feb. 25, Ward filmed confrontations with two local activists who were attending a Police Commission meeting to express support for ousted commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone. 

One of them, Lea McGeever, a San Francisco resident and trans rights advocate, on Monday filed a restraining order against Ward in San Francisco Superior Court in connection with the incident. McGeever, who is known for a viral minute-long scream at a 2023 Board of Supervisors, said recent escalations in Ward’s behavior in public, including at the commission meeting, and his social media trolling have made them feel unsafe. 

During the meeting, Ward posted a video of McGeever addressing the commission, writing, “(He She It) wants to defund the police because there cleaning the neighborhood up and protecting It’s property.”

Progressive pundit Christopher M., who posts on X under the name SRO Martha Stewart, said Ward followed him along a City Hall corridor, filming him with Meta Smart Glasses. Ward posted a video of the encounter on X.

“I’m just wondering why you don’t want to talk now,” Ward says in the video. “You be talking all that shit to me.”

Christopher, who eventually fled into Supervisor Jackie Fielder’s office, said he wanted to prevent the situation from escalating.

“I was just like, ‘I don’t have time for this,’ and I turned around, and I started walking down the hallway while he was taking video and kind of screaming at me about how I just want to talk shit. I didn’t know what he was referring to,” Christopher said. “He was very, very, very close to me, like up on my body, right? It really caught me off guard.”

Ward said he did nothing wrong.

“Meta glasses are not against the law,” he said.

Ward claims that Jones, Christopher, and other progressives have harassed him online by posting his criminal history and medical records, as well as his deli’s health inspection report. 

Jones has previously accused Ward of stalking and threatening behavior. He claimed Ward has used a separate X account to post videos outside his home at night, including one Feb. 22 with the caption: “Come out and play.” A follow-up post from the same account tags Jones’ X account and addresses him by name. Ward denies controlling the account that made the posts. 

Jones was sentenced to five days in jail after a car crash that killed his passenger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam, in 2008.

On Sunday, after another progressive, Lucky G, posted his Wordle score for the day, Ward replied with a threatening message. 

“I swear on my dead father I’m going to find you and do you worse make a joke out this if you want but trust and believe I’m going to make you want to change yo mind about defunding the police because after I’m finished your going to want to call the police you’ll want to keep playing with me but you’ll forget I’m a motherfucking criminal. I don’t give a fuck about going to jail.”

Ward said he does not remember sending the message to Lucky G, who, he said made an insulting post about the deli. (The Standard reviewed a screenshot of the post, which appears to have been deleted.) 

In response to Ward’s video of Christopher at City Hall, Darcie Bell, who posts on X as Jerque Cousteau, wrote Tuesday that Ward “needs to get popped for recording people without permission.” Ward said he believed it meant she wanted him shot, but Bell said she just wanted him to get arrested or caught for the behavior. 

A chorus of Ward’s supporters weighed in on X in response to Bell’s post. 

“Openly calling for someone to be ‘popped’ (to be shot) is very indicative of how low San Francisco politics is getting,” notorious dandy and one-time supervisor candidate JConr B. Ortega wrote. “These are the same people who try to paint their opponents as morally bankrupt while advocating for their murder. Truly sickening.”

“In all the stupid things I’ve ever seen on this clown site, that’s among the most ridiculous,” Bell said.

Online conflicts between local commentators on opposite ends of the political spectrum are nothing new. But now, the beef is escaping X, leaking out into the streets, the courts, and City Hall.

Journalist Gil Duran said Ward posted his and his relative’s addresses online in June and December last year, following several online spats.

“He’s basically going around harassing anyone who criticizes him,” Duran said. “But now he finally went too far.”