Fact Check: Understanding Martha Abraham’s Interactions with Police  

This story has been updated.

The fight for southeastern San Diego’s City Council seat has been one of the most intense of this election season. Martha Abraham, a nurse and housing activist, is running against incumbent Henry Foster. Abraham finished just 12 votes behind Foster in the primary. 

Among all the mud that’s been slung, one accusation has surfaced again and again on social media: Abraham has weaponized cops and the justice system against her neighbors. 

One post distorted her slogan of “People first, always.” It read, “Calling the cops on people first, always.” 

A Voice of San Diego analysis of available evidence shows that Abraham did have disputes with neighbors on both sides of her home. In both cases, she made some calls to police and in one case she tried to get a restraining order that was rejected by a judge. 

But both cases are messy. In neither case is there any clear evidence that Abraham used the police to “terrorize” her neighbors, as one social media post put it.

Related to the restraining order, multiple other neighbors said the man Abraham tried to get the restraining order against had been a bad neighbor. One person called him “mean.” His former landlord called him “petty.” 

The former landlord said none of the blame lies with Abraham and that his previous tenant had instigated the confrontations. 

Abraham and her campaign consultant initially responded to questions about the incidents and said she would be willing to provide video evidence related to them. After partially explaining her side of the story, she stopped responding to requests for comment and never provided the evidence she said she would make available.

In the restraining order case, Abraham said she accepted the court’s decision, but fully stood by the facts she presented to a judge. In the other case, which ended with several community members in handcuffs, she said she did not call police to the scene. A report obtained by Voice, however, does show a woman at Abraham’s house called the police later that day. 

“We suspect the claim against Martha [that she made a call to police, which led to arrests] is an intentional lie and not merely a misguided suspicion,” wrote Abraham’s campaign consultant Jared Sclar. 

Sept. 4, 2025

The most recent, and frequently cited, dispute took place on Sept. 4, 2025. 

In that case, cops detained and charged a mother and daughter at a house next door to Abraham’s. The mother Ayisha Williams says she and her daughter were both quietly studying under a pop-up canopy in the front yard. Police showed up and told her the canopy was encroaching on the public sidewalk. The event escalated and cops arrested Williams’ daughter. They charged Williams herself with resisting arrest. Williams says they also handcuffed her son and girlfriend.

Williams says she and Abraham never got along. She adamantly believes Abraham made a complaint to police, which ultimately led them to show up that day. 

Williams says she saw Abraham talking to an officer for a long time near the edge of her yard earlier in the day. She also says she saw Abraham point in her direction while talking to the officer. (A picture on social media does indeed show Abraham talking to an officer. Abraham did not comment on whether she spoke to an officer that day.) 

In her statement to Voice, Abraham was adamant she didn’t call the police.

“As for the allegation that Martha called the police on her neighbors on September 4, 2025, that is completely false,” Sclar wrote in a statement. 

Abraham didn’t respond to requests for comment about the accusation that she made a face-to-face complaint to an officer.  

What the Evidence Shows

The police record for Sept. 4 begins at 4:23 p.m. with an officer logging a “field event.” Three minutes later the record shows a call for “cover now,” which is essentially a call for backup. 

Let’s break down what that means. When an officer logs a field event that means they are responding to something or having an interaction in the field. 

Williams says the officers first approached some other nearby neighbors and then approached her. She says they had received a call that her canopy was blocking the sidewalk. She says that she offered to take down the canopy, but that the event quickly escalated. That escalation is likely what led to the call for back up. 

Since the police department doesn’t comment on specific cases, it’s impossible to know what led to the field event being logged. 

Abraham’s consultant Sclar wrote that the call log suggests the event “was entirely police-initiated.” 

We asked department spokesperson Ashley Nicholes if that’s the right way to interpret a field event in a call for service log. Nicholes, per department policy, declined to comment on the specific case. But field events, in which no reporting party is listed, aren’t necessarily officer initiated, she said.

Generally speaking, field events can be initiated by officers after the officer witnesses something — or after a community member has made a call to an officer they know, she said. 

That means a neighbor might have made a call or officers might have simply been driving by and decided to stop. 

“Martha was asleep when these events began and only learned that police were outside after officers were already on scene. Martha often works evenings and that day had returned home the prior morning, and she was sleeping before her next night shift. A neighbor woke her and told her what was occurring,” Sclar wrote. 

Abraham’s neighbor Kymberlee Reels verified this version of events. She said she could tell something was going on outside on the street, but couldn’t see from her window. She called Abraham to get her to take a look. She says she had to call multiple times and eventually was able to wake up Abraham. 

About that earlier conversation with police: Reels said it is her understanding that Abraham did speak with an officer in the morning, long before the dust-up with police started around 4:23 p.m. She said she understood that to be a getting-to-know-you conversation with an officer that was new in the neighborhood. Here Reels’ recollection conflicts with Williams. 

Williams says that Abraham spoke to the officer in the morning. The officer then sat in his car for a long time and as soon as he drove away in one direction, another police car drove up from the other direction. Williams acknowledges the conversation happened relatively early in the morning. If so, the officer would have had to sit there for many hours before driving off and the other officers pulling up around 4:23 p.m. 

Reels says she remembers very clearly that she came home around 1:15 p.m. The original officer was already gone at that point and Williams and her daughter were hanging out by the canopy. All was quiet, she said.  

A Later Call to Police

The record shows no evidence at all that Abraham made the initial complaint to police. But another call for service at 5:46 p.m. did come from Abraham’s residence. 

Abraham did not comment on that call. The call notes indicate the caller was a woman. The caller reported that people were outside her door acting menacing. 

“Approximately 10 subjects outside reporting party’s door yelling profanity into front camera,” the call log reads. “Subjects believe reporting party was the one that called PD earlier… Reporting party advises officers detained some of the subjects that are shown on her camera.”

Williams says that she does not know of anyone approaching Abraham’s residence after the incident with police. She says it certainly was no one connected to her. Williams said it’s impossible to reach Abraham’s front door, because she has a gate. 

“No one could go into Martha’s yard,” Williams said. “If someone was in her yard it wasn’t us that day. I have never been in her yard at all.” 

The Restraining Order

In the restraining order case, two community members came to Abraham’s defense. Abraham applied for the restraining order against her next-door neighbor Juan Cunningham in May 2021. 

Abraham’s neighbor Reels says Cunningham was “mean” and “not a good neighbor.” 

Cunningham’s former landlord — who asked not to be named — said that Cunningham was petty and had instigated the run-ins with Abraham. The former landlord said Abraham was not to blame. 

In her court filing, Abraham alleged that her neighbor Cunningham and his family committed “acts of verbal threats, aggressiveness, threats of physical violence [and] damage to personal property,” in a court filing requesting the restraining order. 

In Cunningham and his wife’s filings to the court, however, they accuse Abraham of harassment, calling the police on them and using her cameras as a “spy tool.” Abraham wrote in her court filing that she flagged down a deputy once after Juan threatened her and that police “were called” in other cases — though she does not say by whom. 

In a restraining order case, the requester must meet a “clear and convincing” standard of proof. A judge ultimately ruled that Abraham didn’t meet the bar. 

“I respected the court’s decision then and I respect it now,” Abraham wrote in her initial response to Voice. 

The tension between Cunningham and Abraham seems to at least partially have been fueled by a disagreement over a wall that separated their properties. 

Cunningham’s former landlord said the wall ran through both properties. The wall was short and Cunningham’s family frequently hung out and sat on it, he said. 

The court records show that the neighbors clearly had multiple run-ins with each other. The court filings are full of competing narratives about who made what threatening comment when. 

Reels, the neighbor, said that people want to tear down Abraham to keep her out of office. Reels is an elementary school teacher at Johnson Elementary, which is in the neighborhood. Abraham attended the school as a child, at the same time Reels worked there.

She just wants the truth to come out. 

“The truth doesn’t have versions,” Reels said.

Correction: Abraham attended Johnson Elementary at the same time Reels worked there; Reels was not Abraham’s teacher. Reels witnessed Williams and her daughter quietly hanging out by the canopy around 1:15 p.m. on Sept. 4, 2025. She could not tell if they were studying.

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