68 months for felon caught red-handed with loaded gun in since-banned SFPD traffic stop

A violent felon caught red-handed with a loaded gun and drugs thanks to SFPD officers’ use of a since-banned traffic stop was sentenced to 68 months’ imprisonment at San Francisco federal courthouse this morning.

Elmo Daniels, 49, was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm at a December 2025 bench trial.

“We need to ensure you don’t have a gun,” said U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley today.

“Thank God you haven’t killed anyone, but it could happen with that anger,” she added.

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On No­vem­ber 11 2023 SFPD of­fi­cers Prasadi and Parkin pulled over an SUV dri­ving through San Fran­cis­co’s Ten­der­loin with a ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tion five months ex­pired.

Af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing the dri­ver, Elmo Daniels, Of­fi­cer Prasadi re­turned to his pa­trol car and searched the Cal­i­for­nia Law En­force­ment Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Sys­tem (CLETS) which re­vealed him to have had 91 prior felony con­tacts, 49 prior mis­de­meanor con­tacts and 9 prior in­frac­tion con­tacts with po­lice.

The search also showed him to have an open mis­de­meanor war­rant and listed “ADW” [as­sault with a deadly weapon] and “mur­der” in the cat­e­gory of “dan­ger po­ten­tial”.

Nonethe­less the of­fi­cers ap­peared in­clined to let Daniels go un­til they no­ticed a small bag con­tain­ing sus­pected metham­phet­a­mine in a cup holder. This, pros­e­cu­tors said, gave them prob­a­ble cause to search the ve­hi­cle which led to the dis­cov­ery of a loaded Hi-Point 9mm hand­gun wedged be­tween the dri­ver’s seat and the cen­ter con­sole, sus­pected co­caine and mar­i­juana.

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Daniels has mul­ti­ple con­vic­tions for firearms pos­ses­sion. In 2018 he re­peat­edly punched a woman in the head, who was sleep­ing next to her in­fant daugh­ter, be­fore threat­en­ing her with a gun and pep­per-spray­ing her. In 2022 he kicked, punched and bit a woman be­fore stran­gling her to un­con­scious­ness.

Pros­e­cu­tors ear­lier told the court that the de­fen­dant has “re­peat­edly shown that he is a dan­ger to the com­mu­nity and that he re­fuses to com­ply with the law.”

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This morning in courtroom 8 of San Francisco federal courthouse Judge Corley imposed a 68-month sentence – somewhat closer to the defense recommendation of 60 months than prosecutors’ request for a 105-month term.

She was unsympathetic to Daniels’ claim that he armed himself for protection after the mother of one of his 12 children was shot and believed that he too was a target.

“You can’t defend yourself that way,” said Judge Corley. “You just can’t – and if you are in an area where you think your life is in danger, you have to leave the area.”

“You’ve just got to be a victim as opposed to victimizing other people,” she added.

“I understand that what I did was against the law,” Daniels told the judge, “and I’m sorry for every thing about trying to protect myself in that type of way because I don’t have the right to.”

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Thanks to a pol­icy change in July 2024 SFPD of­fi­cers are now for­bid­den from mak­ing traf­fic stops in sev­eral cir­cum­stances in­clud­ing one – ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tion ex­pired for less than a year – that re­sulted in Daniels’ ar­rest in this case and the dis­cov­ery of the loaded hand­gun hid­den close to his right hand.

In December last year a legal challenge to the ban by the San Francisco Police Officers Association was thrown out by a superior court judge on procedural grounds.

Traf­fic stops in the city reg­u­larly turn up firearms, con­tra­band and wanted felons.

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