tv Police Commission SFGTV February 22, 2024 7:00am-10:01am PST
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something if he had lived. he was murdered when he was 16 years old, so how long am i going to do this? when is this presentation going to come out? finding other ways. and not only that, let my let the, uh, thank you, miss brown. okay i'll come back up. commissioners, that is the end of public comment line item three dpa director's report discussion report on recent dpa activities and announcements. commission discussion will be limited to determining whether to calendar any of the issues raised for a future commission meeting. executive director henderson. good evening. uh, so currently we. uh, so currently we have, uh, 89 cases that have
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been opened. so far this year, and we've closed 96 cases. uh, there are currently 305 cases that are pending and open on the docket. uh, that is up this time last year, there were 263 cases that had opened because there are more cases that are coming into dpa right now. uh, we've sustained 12 cases so far this year. we've mediated one case, and we currently have 32 cases whose investigation has continued past the 270 day period. and of those, uh, 32 cases, 22 of the cases are told cases, meaning that time isn't being, uh, measured while there is ongoing litigation and legal action, either criminal or civil , in terms of cases that are awaiting disposition, there are ten cases waiting disposition on from the commission, and there are 96 cases, uh, awaiting disposed action from the chief's office. in terms of the cases that have come into the office and the allegations we've
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received 15 cases this week from last week. uh, the highest percentage of those allegations. again, these are allegations are . for 26% of those allegations were for conduct unbecoming of an officer. uh, in terms of the locations from the allegations, um, the highest number of allegations were from southern station and from mission station. uh, and those details, as well as the details from the allegations as of the weekly trends, uh, are on the website again, i won't read through the entire list of them to zero, but 100% of those allegations are in there. uh, as a reminder, these are the allegations, not the actual investigations, merely the allegations that are coming into the office for dpa. uh, in terms of outreach this week, uh, we've restocked all of our outreach material with each of the sfpd station. uh, we'll
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continue to do that so that when folks come into the district stations, uh, the information is there on how to contact and reach dpa, as well as how the process works for making complaints. uh, in terms of the audit, i don't have a report for you on audit tonight because it's part of the agenda on our update for officer misconduct. and we'll address it there when it comes up. we have nothing in closed session this evening. uh, but we have a couple of folks in the audience today, including senior investigator steve ball, in case there are issues that come up during tonight's meeting . also present, we have two of our new interns runs, uh, sla chacon and rohan cleethorpes. thermos uh, who are here as well as natalie, who is helping direct them. and my chief of staff, sara hawkins. uh, if folks, uh, would like to contact
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dpa, uh, they can contact contact us directly at sf gov. org forward slash, dpa or you can contact us. at (415) 241-7711. uh, i will reserve my remaining comments until the agenda items are called in the subsequent schedule for the rest of the hearing. that concludes my report for the week. thank you. seeing no, uh, individuals on the queue, sergeant, for any members of the public that would like to make public comment regarding line item three dpa director's report, please approach the podium. and there is no public comment. line item four commission reports discussion and possible action. commission president's report, commissioner's reports and commission announcements and schedule of items identified for consideration at a future commission meeting. commissioner walker. uh, thank you, president elias. um, i would like to
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update about the patrol specials issue. um, i know it's come up today. it's, um, it's been being discussed for quite a while. um, it's a complicated issue. um, back in 2010, the controller wrote a report that was pretty scathing about the program itself. um, the inconsistencies citywide. and we've been just discussing, trying to figure out , um, how it will fit in, how it might fit in with our needs today. um, the, the rules and the program as you all know, who are familiar with it is very old. it predates the police. um, and, you know, we are really in a hefty conversation to try and make sure that it we use it as a tool that will help today to fill in some gaps. um, i realize that there is a challenge with, um, officer beyer retiring. um,
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i the chief and the controller's office and the city attorney are all discussing the possibility of it going forward. um it is like i said, and i don't mean this as an excuse. it's a complicated issue. and trying to , um, make recommendations to the commission. so we can have a discussion about it. is really sort of where we're at. so i put a request in to president elias to share, schedule a meeting out in district two. actually, next that we're going to start meeting out in the public, um, in the different districts once a month. i mean, that was the goal is to try and make that the first, uh, meeting in march. um, so we're trying to work that we're trying to make sure we have something cohesive as a presentation and a recommendation about going forward. so the commission can discuss it, and we can do it in the right way. i mean, there's a lot of interest and support for the concept of it, because it
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does fill some gaps. and we are, you know, trying i have heard from the public and especially the folks who are using the services of the patrol specials, that it really is important. i'm very familiar with how it worked in the castro, and i think we can do this right. so i'm i'm committed to bringing it to public sometime in march. um, the commission president has agreed to that. so we're just working out the details and you'll be aware of it and post it. so, um, just know that that's happening. i appreciate the input. great. thank you. uh, just one thing for me, i wanted to request to re agendize the issue of sf safe. um, at either i guess next month or the month after, whenever the 45 day period would elapse. um, that d.r. jenkins set out for when her investigation is ongoing. i think that there is a lot of
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questions that couldn't be asked at the time because of that investigation. um, and, and i watched the board hearing on this issue and i was i was interested because i feel like there has been some shifting in terms of the department's representations about what happened just in the one week period between our hearing and the board's hearing, there are some pretty divergent responses given. so i think that we need to follow up both to ask the questions that didn't get asked the first time and to ask why the department's um, representations have been an evolving on this issue in such a short amount of time. sergeant for members of the public who would like to make public comment regarding line item for the commission reports, please approach the podium. hi michael petrelis again. um i want to speak about miss brown and her murdered son and my
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disappointment that, um, the commissioner are not putting, um, her case on your agenda to and indeed, um, you're not putting any unsolved cases on your agenda. you are now being aired on sf gov tv. many people are watching us live. many people will see the archived versions of this. you could be using your time when you're making director's reports to say these are the top three unsolved murders. unsolved robberies. unser solved cases here in the city and explain to people that there is a monetary reward award being offered and i don't like that we come here week after week. we hear what you are most interested in, and that is all good and fine. i'm asking you to expand what what you say and how
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you use sf gov tv of you could be better using this time to get the message out there that information is needed about the people who have murdered mrs. brown's son. you could give an update on anything that has happened in the case that she keeps bringing before you, week after week. is her pain not enough to inspire you to give us an update on anything that is happening with her case? how about telling us what monetary reward is being offered for any information given to solve the murder of her son, please use your time better. better. thank you. uh, mr. petrelis, thank you for reminding me. i actually meant to give an update on that in my report. we reached out to
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sfpd and dpa recently and heard back that april and april they anticipate being able to provide a presentation. miss brown, on, uh, the issue of monetary rewards. so i just wanted to provide that update. i didn't i don't think i spoke on that either. um, when that presentation comes out. uh, it as i read before that it excludes, uh uh uh, murderers and uh, gang members, you know, that needs to be fixed, because if they're not going to be able to testify, how are the cases going to get solved? i saw the, uh, the case. i don't have my glasses on, but neither city officials nor their families are allowed to refer to. thank you. are allowed. are allowed to receive rewards. neither are those who who help in cases as a
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plea bargain. our settlement people with people wanted by the law are who turns over information so their criminal rivals go to jail. so that needs to be fixed because there's a lot of people out there that are criminals that might have some information on my son's case. so we should be able to take that law and turn it around and pay them or find some way to pay them instead of this article being right here saying that who you're not going to pay, you know, it's not fair to me. it's definitely not fair to me. i need that fixed. you know, you can pay other people to do other things. uh, what do you what did i call them? informal rights to. and protect them. what about me? what about my son? last week,
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last month. this month was my birthday. the 14th. i came here crying. i'm still hurt. i came here in tears because i was really feeling bad. because the 14th was when my son was murdered. and on the 14th. so that wasn't a good day for me. and i came here on my birthday. there's no further public comment at line. item five sfpd's firearm discharge review board report and in-custody death review report, fourth quarter 2023 discussion on. good evening, commissioners. president elias, vice president carter, commissioners. uh paul henderson and uh, chief scott.
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uh, tonight i am introducing lieutenant lisa springer from the internal affairs division, who will be doing the presentation, uh, on the fourth quarter, firearms discharge review board. um, there is a slide packet. and just for note, we won't go into the very end, which lists all the previous cases, but for your, uh, for you to review and then we can take any questions after that. good evening, president elias. vice president carter oberstein, director henderson, commissioners and chief scott, um, as dc walsh said, i am lisa springer and i am the officer in charge of the internal affairs division. and i'm just here to talk about the firearm discharge review board. um, summary for the fourth quarter of 2023. so there's two cases we're going to
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talk about tonight. the first one involves officer shooting 17 dash 007. this actually occurred in 2017. on december 1st when officers from bayview responded to a report of a carjacking. uh the vehicle that was carjacked was reported as a white lottery van sfpd's units located the van and initiated a pursuit. it was that go back to the main screen. sorry about that. that's like the memo to also continue on with our slide. unless do you have the actual slides? stacy.
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they have it in their packets. okay. you guys have it. uh, so as sfpd units located the lottery van and initiated a vehicle pursuit, the officer involved member was the front passenger at the time of the incident. the officer involved member was on his fourth day of field training, and he was writing. uh, they were writing with their field training officer. who was the driver during the pursuit. the lottery van stopped suddenly. um, the driver, uh, exited the van quickly and ran towards the officer. also reached behind his back. uh the driver was running towards the patrol vehicle and the officer involved members was still seated inside the patrol vehicle. so because he was running at him and he believed he was drawing a weapon, the officer involved member drew his firearm from the holster and fired one shot through the passenger side window, striking
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the suspect, and the suspect was later pronounced deceased. during an interview, the officer involved member stated that based on their training and due to the carjacking being a violent felony in which he believed the suspect was running towards him, opposed to away from him, he believed the suspect was attempting to ambush him. the recommendation to the chief of police at the internal firearm discharge review board regarding the here it is, uh, use of force, uh, was proper conduct in all the categories, only um category, which was unfounded, was, uh, shooting from moving vehicles because it was determined from body worn camera footage and the officer's statement that the patrol vehicle was not moving at the time of the shooting. um the investigations of officer involved shootings was deemed proper conduct and the use of seat belts was improper conduct
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as they were not wearing their seat belts at the time of the incident. um and the body worn camera policy, proper conduct. the second incident. um, i'm here to talk about was an officer involved discharge that occurred in 2023 and, uh, july. it occurred at approximately 430 in the morning, uh, when an sfpd officer who was off duty inside their residence in santa rosa, california, was attempting to unload their personally owned firearm, which was a nine millimeter handgun. the officer pressed the magazine release button when the firearm slipped from their hand, and when the officer attempted to grab the firearm, he accidentally pressed the trigger, which released one round from the barrel. the officer observed that the bullet went through the top portion of their bedroom window, creating a small hole, and the bullet followed a trajectory in an
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unknown direction. the officer did conduct a search to see if anybody might have been shot or injured, and, uh, nobody was injured. the officer did contact the local jurisdiction. sonoma county sheriff's office, who declined to respond to the scene. um, based on the fact that nobody was injured, the recommendation to the chief of police, um, regarding that incident was, uh, improper conduct, not in policy for use of force, uh, specifically manipulating firearms in a safe manner for the fourth quarter of 2023, there were no in-custody deaths presented to the board. and then, uh, what follows is just open. um, officer involved shootings and in-custody death investigations. and the only update i have for you guys on that one we actually received today, uh, from the district attorney that the criminal investigation is being closed, um, due to insufficient evidence
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. um, which one? which case? uh the officer involved, um. or. excuse me? the in-custody death. um, number 20 2-002 from waller street. boats like slide 12 on your, uh, in your packet. fourth one down. i don't know if there's any questions, but i'd like to go back to the first incident that was, uh, spoken about. um, prior to. so during this time, uh, the field tactics , um, and force option. option unit did not exist. the state law changed in 2018, where we need to examine everything leading up to that event. we did have, um, the unit go back and
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look at this particular, uh, case, even though, again, they were not even in existence at the time. um, and we obviously found under today's training, which was not the training at the time that, you know, several issues did occur that should not have, um, and that we have obviously tried to correct the best that we could. so just for some of several of the high level, um, the failure to conduct that traffic that, um, fell stop in the appropriate way if, um, the car was too close, it was a single vehicle as opposed to having two units. uh, the fact that a sergeant was also at one point, the lead vehicle in that pursuit versus once the other vehicle, uh, took over to come back, uh, the fact that the original unit was supposed to go and take the report for training purposes and not actually be involved in
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that, and also having, uh, somebody who had four days on the job, uh, in a passenger seat, be put in that position. so that's a very high level look . um, and that was a very, uh, um, hot event for not only the victim's family, but for the officer involved. um, and so just to make sure we kind of get that scope of where we are now versus at that time, um, and taking these reviews, uh, very deep and, um, adding them in training and adding them to hopefully not make these types of incidents or situations reoccur. i just had a question on the open ois and icd investigation from 2017 to 2023. on i see on all of them. well, i see on the list. it indicates, um, that they're on ones that have pending criminal investigations. the
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investigation status indicates active criminal and administrative investigations. that's ia crim and iad. is that correct? yes. okay okay okay. and the admin administration is the disciplinary portion of ia, right. um they're doing their criminal investigations at toll. so we don't aren't necessarily working on it until they're done. and then when they're done, we take it over. okay. all right. thank you. thank you. no names on the queue, sergeant. for members of the public would like to make public comment regarding line item five. the firearm discharge review board. please approach the podium and there is no public comment. line item six presentation on equipment and fixed assets including automated license plate recognition. um alp cameras included in the
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organized retail theft prevention grant discussion. hi good evening commissioners. president elias, vice president carter overstone. commissioners. chief scott, director henderson. members of the public. members of the department. i'm assistant chief david lazar, chief of operations. this evening i'm going to talk about expenditures related to organized retail theft prevention. grant specifically about automated license plate reader cameras. okay so i have a brief presentation and then i look forward to answering any questions you may have. so what are alpr cameras? they are cameras that read license plates and vehicle descriptors. for example, the make and the model and the color of a vehicle while they're installed at high traffic intersections to detect stolen or wanted vehicles. our cameras funded well through our bsc organized retail theft grant. and you may remember, we
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received thankfully, $15.3 million to our department for organized retail theft. part of that will be to fund 400 cameras. all throughout the city. and that's a three year grant, which includes installation, maintenance and repair and operation and data storage. so we're thankful for the governor's office for supplying this grant. the cost structure is the installation costs are 335,000, and the operating costs are 1.2 million per year. so that's for three years. and that could go up a small percentage, uh, thereafter. and the total cost over a three year period is 3,935,000. what i must note is that during this period of time, we won't we don't own the cameras. the flock company that we're going with owns the cameras. this is just to maintain the subscription and maintenance costs and everything that comes with that. so camera placement will be distributed throughout the city and plan in consultation with engineers. subject matters, experts and crime data reports. uh, we
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actually and i'll get to this in a moment, but we went through throughout the entire city. we got input from the district captains and we our plan is to distribute the cameras equally through the ten district stations. so in terms of the grant, the sfpd will have discretionary options to extend at fixed pricing for up to five additional years. some of the things to consider for us moving forward fiscally is the option. years will have to be funded either by a new grant opportunities we hope to get that the sfpd operating budget or any new funding sources that may come up. we will review it at the end of the grant terms for contract renewal. so even though we go with a particular company, we it's not set in stone that we're with them forever. we'll have to just evaluate when the time comes. so how will the cameras be utilized? well they'll be utilized in compliance with 19 b of the san francisco administrative code. falls into four categories, the first being stolen vehicles. the plates are compared to the list of stolen
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cars and plates that are entered in the california department of justice. stolen vehicles system. next item will be amber alerts, so search sf camera network and connected camera networks for missing or kidnaped people. as a matter of fact, there's 3700 agencies across the country and they've been able to locate up to 250 missing people and kidnaped people using this data, using this technology. the third item is criminal investigations to identify and track vehicles used in crimes and organized crimes, especially retail crimes, but also crimes like burglary, robbery crews and organized retail theft. but the list goes on. violent criminals and homicide suspects, catholic converter suspects, etc. and then the fourth, other emergencies locate vehicles in emergencies like during critical incidences or terrorist attacks or other life threatening situations. i was looking at some data from other agencies. san bruno police has been very successful in using this data to catch smash and grab. uh,
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burglars. san mateo police using it for violent crime suspects and things like that. and there's 270 agencies in california now using this technology, um, in south san francisco. so the first six months of having alpr, they reduced their auto burglaries by 80% and their motor vehicle thefts by 50. right now in san francisco, we're the only county in the bay area that doesn't have this technology. we not using the technology currently. okay, so what else can the cameras be used for? that was a question asked. nothing basically, if it's not one of those for authorized uses, it's prohibited. we have to follow the rules. we have to follow 19 be we have to have our policies in place and be very strict about it. so who will use this technology? who will have access? police officers, investigators, sergeants, crime analysts, the lieutenant of special investigations or their designee, the deputy chief of investigation, assistant chiefs, and the chief of police. users
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will have a unique login for audit purposes. so the question also was, could this are we very close now to cameras tracking all movements in the city? and so we did a little bit of math and determined that we're nowhere close. this is just 400 cameras. so what we did is we went to for ten stations. we figured out, uh, ten locations that we came up with, basically from the ten stations, ten intersections and four cameras per intersection, so that we would be equally distributed cameras all throughout the city. that equals 400. um, but just doing some basic math, which i didn't realize there are 6399 intersections in san francisco. so when you do the math, we're only covering about 1.5, 1.57% of the area in terms of retention. the system retains retains images for one year. this is our 19 be policy. the longer there is longer retention
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. if the if it's used for evidence in the 19 be policy, it talks about five years retention. if we actually download this information use it in one of our cases. um, the data is strictly owned by the sfpd and it can't be shared or sold by flock. so this is our data. and then we decide whether we share it. don't share it. um, we haven't even got to that point as far as determining who who we would be sharing it with. but at this point we could we once we get online, we could receive data from other jurisdictions. and then this last slide is really key. the thought about balancing public safety and privacy. so these are these are stationary cameras. and a couple of things we've considered. one is consistent with community policing. if we talk about a guardian mindset and really trying to be vigilant and visible and have the technology be able to detect when crime occurs, that's a part of that. uh, it's distributed throughout the city, not in specific areas. it's focused on
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vehicles, not people very specific as to how it works. it focuses on public places with high traffic. it's compliant with 19 be, including the prohibit of facial recognition. uh, there's no selling of data or sharing for immigration or health related enforcement. it's not utilized for traffic enforcement, for issuing citations. it's not a red light camera or anything like that. and then we have an audit capability to prevent the misuse of that data. if the data is misused, what bullet point number eight, that's not on there, but without stating the obvious, having 500 police officers short, it's really using technology to help us detect crime. and to do our enforcement okay. uh, that concludes my presentation. and be more than happy to answer questions that i may have information on. thank you. ac lazard i just had a couple questions on page three. you indicate subject matter experts. who does that entail? in terms
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of where the camera placement will be. oh subject matter experts are really, you know, internal. well the first main subject matter experts are the people internal that have ideas about where crime occurs. uh, our investigators, our investigations bureau that talks about what, um, where things are happening, our crime analysts that say, here's where here's where crime occurs, here's where people flee, here's the avenues that they take and just really trying to consider what are the most heavily traveled corridors that we could place these cameras in. um, and we rely on others for that information. will that be the same data set from the crime data reports? because doesn't that have the same information? yeah, the crime data report, uh, the information we probably have online that when we dig deep for the crime analysis unit, where robbery is taking place, where it's organized retail theft taking place, where do we suspect that when crime occurs,
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where do they flee from? and really, we're being as thoughtful as possible as to where we can strategic place cameras to capture the information that we need. so we're relying on a lot of people and a lot of input. and where does the where's the infrastructure for going to happen in terms of, um, the live feeds, like meaning who's going to be able to take the data from the cameras instantaneously or how what's how fast is the turnaround in terms of getting the data and then disseminating it to officers or to other individuals? so there's a couple of things that we're working on currently. one is to identify exactly that question. the answer to that question, where do we want to house this? and then what are going to be what it's going to be? the internal protocols for making a request for information. i can say preliminarily, it's most likely going to be in the investigations bureau that maintains it, and that will have these formal requests that are made. so that's that's what we'll do there. we also have to have training for all of our officers on the use of this,
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because what we suspect is because of the amount of stolen vehicles, the alerts are going to continually go off all the time. so in other agencies, it says they've told us that it creates a lot more work for us. so we have to come up with some protocols on what what we want to do with regard to notifications. but we're having those conversations now. we haven't landed on anything. how long do you anticipate the training will be in order to get the full department trained on this 90 days, 60 days? i would say, um, a reasonable time would be between 60 and about 60 to 90 days, depending on what method we use. we could do a vimeo video. we could have roll call training. um, there's all different types of options, but but we'll start with patrol and we'll work our way out from there. but it's going to take a little while to make sure that everybody is feeling comfortable. they know the protocols, they've signed off on the training and then we'll be ready to go and then how does, um, the question i had is how do the cameras, um, help when the
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vehicle is stolen and it's just reading a stolen license plate. how does that help you in terms of solving crimes or apprehending suspects? yes so once the camera detects that the vehicle is stolen, it's going to send an alert and say on the 300 block of geary or on the 100 block of font avenue or what have you, that there's a vehicle that's stolen. and so that will detect that detection will come through. and then officers will be able to respond to the area and then institute our policies on whether to pursue not to pursue, to arrest, etc. so it will alert us as to where the vehicle is. and but it's not only stolen vehicles though, there will be vehicles that are entered that are wanted for other crimes. violent crime, more serious crime. there'll be vehicles entered from other jurisdictions that will come to our city and will alert us when they when they hit one of the cameras. so is it a software that provides this alert, meaning how do you get the
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immediate alert? that's what i'm i it's the it's the technology that lets us know that that a stolen vehicle just crossed an intersection where our, um, where we have a camera posted and that as soon as they cross that intersection, we'll get an alert in real time that there's a car that's stolen, that that location or, um, i guess so. i'm trying to understand. so the camera goes off, takes a copy of the license plate. that number is then put into, like automatically through the software put into the d.o.j. and every law enforcement system automatically. and then this alert pops up just the opposite. so if a vehicle is reported stolen and is in the system, then the cameras have the technology as such that when the car goes through the intersection and there's an alert or the car reads the plate automatically, that plate is connected with the stolen vehicle listing that's already in the system. and then we get that alert. so it's dependent on
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the car being reported stolen or an alert being made about the car first. yes if it's in fact a stolen vehicle, because we get also enter information on vehicles that are wanted for other types of crimes. so it may not necessarily be stolen and it may not come out of the department of justice stolen vehicle system. it may be we're on. we're all looking for a certain vehicle that committed crime x, we enter it and we wait for that camera to hit that. thank you, president elias. thank you for the presentation. i just wanted to pick up where president elias left. left off. and you did touch on this, but just want to be clear about how a hit is disseminated. um, you know, because you did raise the issue of possibly getting a lot of hits and having to decide how to marshal our resources. so once there is a hit, i assume it doesn't instantaneously go out to every patrol officer. there's a someone who has to make a decision about who to send the
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alert out to. can can you just say a little bit about that? yeah. so we are going to work with the company and we're going to work internally to figure out when the notifications come through, who should receive those notifications, and then what actions do we need to take. and that will have a whole different tier system stolen vehicles. one area wanted vehicles, felony want vehicles, etc. um we've put some alpr technology out in in a certain area downtown. there were dozens of hits in one day going through there. so you can imagine the volume. and if you look at how many cars are stolen in san francisco. so we have to be very strategic and thoughtful and really think through comparing the workload load and the whether it's worth going and pursuing. right. um, and that's helpful. and then you mentioned that generally we will place for
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alpers at in intersection. is that is that true in every case or are there some intersections where we would assuming it's a four way intersection, um, are there some four way intersections where we would not place four cameras? well yeah, because we only have, uh, we only have 400 cameras, so we our goal is to put four cameras at each intersection to cover all the four ways. there there may be areas where we put just one camera depending, but for the most part, the overwhelming majority of the intersections will have the four cameras right . and so you mentioned that one of the criteria for camera placement will be the major intersections, major thoroughfares. right. so you at one point in your presentation highlighted that assuming four cameras per intersection, that this would only cover a small percentage of the overall number of intersections. but i would imagine it's also true that because you're prioritizing high traffic intersections, that this
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will actually we be able to pick up that if you're a car, this is a question. if you are a car, it would be difficult to systematically evade the alpers because they are placed strategically at high traffic intersections. well, i think that's we're making a lot of assumptions because one of the things i'm thinking about as you speak is sometimes they take the back roads and they go through the neighborhoods and they and they go through all these different areas. was looking to rob someone or break into a car or something. and they don't hit the major thoroughfare thoroughfares, uh, or they do a lot of commit a lot of crimes and then eventually hit the major thoroughfare on their way out of the city. so that's the problem. like, we don't even with 400, we feel like we don't have enough. okay. because 100 cameras in a city that's roughly 50ft!s and you're prioritizing the major intersections, that to me, we you said you were doing
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some quick math. i was i'm also just doing some quick math that does seem to cover the lion's share of, you know, the city, right? or it covers a big swath of the city, especially when you're prioritizing, you know, based on traffic patterns. right well, i think the most prudent thing to do is with, given the resources, sources, and everything is to figure out the best location for the cameras to capture the most vehicles. i mean, it just would make it wouldn't make sense for the department to do it any other way. so that's what we're doing. but we're also not. we're also realistic about the fact that they'll be individuals and vehicles committing crimes that won't be captured by this technology because 400 is not a lot for a 49 square mile city. and so you mentioned the four for purpose passes of the alps. so what information does an officer have to have before
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running a license plate through the system? um, retroactively. so you mentioned that the uh, data will be retained for one year in the ordinary course and perhaps longer if it's linked to a crime. um if an officer wanted to run a license plate through the system and look at all the hits for that license plate for the last year, um, does the officer have to have any particular level of suspicion that this license plate is involved in a crime or not? yeah. the officers will have to be justified and explain why why they are looking into the system for a license plate. and we're going to be pretty strict, very strict about it. it has to be for law enforcement purposes related to an investigation related to a crime. and the officers will be very clear as to when they can and cannot look at the database and that will be spelled out in a policy that
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officers will have to be held accountable to. gotcha. so that this was another question i had. so what will the form of this policy take? there's obviously some guardrail rules in the 19 b process, but it doesn't get into the weeds. so what will be the mechanism for implementing that policy? i'm going to say we haven't settled on it yet, but preliminarily it could be in the form of a department. notice that just explains to the officers we'll try to keep it as brief as possible, but it'll explain how to use app. what is alpr the purpose, the why, and then the elements of it, and then what we expect and so the officers will be very clear, right. that's that's helpful. and then just one question. you mentioned it would not be used for traffic enforcement. um, is that just because it doesn't have the capabilities, for example, to be used as a red light to double as a red light camera, or is that a decision on
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our part or. yeah, it's not it's not structured to be a red light camera or to issue citations or anything like that. it's structured really basic purposes description of vehicle, license plate. and then we use that for the purposes that that i've outlined. you mentioned that there will be an audit, uh, routine, an audit, uh, to ensure that the system is being used the way it's intended to be used . do you have any details on the form that that audit will take? yeah i don't have the specific details, but what i do know that's really important is that the grantor is required, that there is an audit because with this sum of money, they want to make sure that the system is being used uh properly. it's being useful that we have good results. so it's beyond the sfpd . it will be an outside entity that audits this work. and our work to make sure everything is being done right and just last question. you know how will we you did touch on privacy concerns. how will we ensure
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that it um that that we are acting in accordance with constitutional requirements under the fourth amendment right . um, if we do have data that's stored for over a year and it is at the, you know, 100 most highly frequent and intersections, as you could imagine, a situation where you do have, um, you can track a car's movement throughout the city in a pretty at a pretty high level of detail over a very long period of time. and it sounds like we don't know in advance exactly how detailed we'll be able to track. but has there been any thought about, um, how we're going to make sure we're complying with the fourth amendment? okay, i'm going to say three areas. area one is that if we have a department notice, all members have to comply with the department notice and make sure that they're following everything that we've outlined. and number
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two is that it's a need to know and right to know. and it's password protected. and it's no one can log on without anonymous like a member would have to log on and we would know who logged on and when, when. and then the third element is when we do audit and we do random audits, we will make sure that that every person who every police officer who logged into the system had a justifiable reason to look at this information. great. thank you. a laser that's helpful. appreciate it. thank you. thank you, president elias. thank you for that presentation. uh, a couple of questions. um, this is relating to a question that the vice president asked when this was discussed in the chief's report. i think, last week. so looking at it, let me pull up the slides here looking at, um, purpose three, the criminal investigations. i understand the real time aspect of it, but, um, as long as it's within the retention period is
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there capability to look back retroactively? so i'll give a specific example. if an arrest is made for an organized retail thefts, um, suspects and, and the investigation didn't require the use of the lp's and you've, you've now made an arrest in the context of building the investigation for, for, uh, for prosecution. now that you have this person's car and you have a license plate, can you go back within 12 months and see if that car popped up in the vicinity of the organized retail theft to build that evidence for prosecution? yes okay. so for, uh, within that 12 month function, there's both a real time aspect of the lpr and the ability to search back within an, uh, within that 12 month archive period. yes and it's a good investigative tool, and we'll have to do it within the 12 months. as you mentioned. okay um, i know that when we the, um, process to request the use of private cameras went to the 19 be process, uh, when the
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department is rolling out its training, they sort of tiered it to be, uh, certain specialized units and kind of worked outward. what would the training plan be, uh, for this policy? would it also sort of be sort of tiered in order of priority, you think using it or how would you anticipate that training? yeah, the preliminary plan would be for patrol because the first the first responders, the officers at the district stations, the ones that are patrolling the sectors that are responding to the 911 calls, they would be the first first tier, but we would also though, want to in a parallel way, train investigators because they're the ones that are going to be, um, conducting investigations and then, of course, if we land in the investigations bureau, they know they need to know how to handle all these requests. but it's really that officer who's out on the patrol that needs to know what to do with the information. ryan, thank you for that. i know that, uh, again , comparing to the when the private surveillance went through 19 be in 2023, um, the commission department also worked along with the board of supervisors on a reporting
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mechanism for regular reports, both to the board of supervisors and to the commission. do you envision something similar being i understand there's an audit function, but like, will there be a reporting function similar to what we have for some of our other. yeah we're going to follow 19 b to the letter. so if 19 b is requires all technology and there's a report on that, then we're going to make sure that we incorporate it. whatever 19 b says to do. that's what we'll do. is there uh, an estimate as to when you hope to have this program launched in terms of timing? well, i think we're we're still a few months away. uh, so we have two things going. we're working on just contracts and acquisition, but then also that parallel track of training. so we have a lot of work to do to get up to speed. but you're hoping the first half of 2024. yes. okay will, i know that, uh, the city of london is famous for having the most cameras per capita of any sort of large city, and they have zones where they'll mark. so the public are aware when you're entering sort of a high
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surveillance zone, what what efforts are underway to ensure that members of the public are aware of when they'll be. will there be signs at intersections? will there be like i'm curious as to how the public will know that a lpr is are deployed. yeah. there will be no signs at intersections and nothing that, um, indicate where the cameras are located. um, if you're at an intersection, you look up, you most likely will be able to see them. but other than that, they'll be there'll be no warning signs or anything like that. okay um, those are all my questions. thank you. chief, thank you. thank you very much. there. uh president cindy elias. um, assistant chief, um, lozar, i thank you for pretty much, uh, pushing forward this, uh, automatic license plate recognition. um i guess my question is it's going to be run 24 over seven. is that my understanding? yes and then, um, the storage of data, will that be in the cloud based or is it pretty much, uh, in, in a
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centralized location or maybe what they call data cloud and local storage? you won't. you know, i don't know the answer to that. the good news is we'll be able to retrieve that data when we need it. but i don't know if it's in the cloud or in a i don't know. yeah, yeah. um, be good to know. okay. we'll find out and get and get back to you on that. uh, i guess it's a real time deal. uh, real time, um, interaction with the cameras that you have. so somebody will be on the end of that as a i. guess, comment throughout the days and stuff like that. so is there a manpower or a manpower assigned to that? how many staff , if one, two, three? yeah so as far as the number, i mean, we're going to assign it most likely in the investigations bureau. and then the lieutenants and captains there will decide who will be responsive, able. it may be some sort of collateral duty
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that someone has and it may be rotated. and we just don't know at this point. but it with critical staffing shortages, we have to think that through. but at the end of the day, we realize how important this is and we're going to have to make those sacrifices. yeah, because it's 24 over seven. so it's three shifts and then, uh, you know, you figure out the man hours per year and then where are you going to use also psa to assist on this. or is it strictly be, uh, officers on there. no. we may we may do that or eventually if we hire the professional staff and others so we don't take investigators and officers away from their duties, then we that's always an option. and we need to be open minded about that. uh, i have a question on this call structure installation costs of $335,000. is that per camera? uh, no, that that is that's a total total. that is the total. if i'm not. wait. let me think for a second.
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okay i don't know. now i'm thrown off on the math. it's 1,535,000 to get the program up and running. so yes, that's the total cost okay. and then it's $1.2 million a year for three years. and then there may be a small percentage increase thereafter. and we're hoping that we get another grant to help us. okay. and then, um, this is over a three year period that you have, um, going past that. uh, is there any additional fundings that will come through this way? yeah, we're hoping we're hoping we can get some grant funding. funding so we don't have to use our budget moving forward. um, we like the fact that we won't own the cameras because technology is always upgraded and then we're stuck with 400 cameras that are way back in 2024. so we're hoping that, uh, we can upgrade and do the things we need to do. but this is just really for the subscription and for the maintenance. thank you
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very much there. assistant chief david lazar, looking forward to these 400 cameras out in the city of san francisco. thank you, commissioner. i had canceled, but i'll ask the question now. so um, so the math, uh, 335,000 to install 400 cameras, huh? 335,000. so that's pretty cheap. well, well, well, 1.535 is really the final price tag. so that's. oh, okay. that's i'm sorry. that's the expensive part of that. so it's an installation. costs are 335,000. in your presentation. it does that. that's for installed. um again we don't own the cameras. it's not like we're buying it i understand that, but when you divide that by 400, uh, you get just, you know, something like 800 and some odd dollars per camera to install. not bad. it's a pretty good job. yeah so. yes.
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thank you. yeah. thank you. commissioner i wanted to say last briefly. i just want to thank director ryan cao of the crime strategies division, who wasn't here tonight. who's done so much work to get the $15.3 million grant to work on this project? um, he's traveling, so i just want to give him a shout out and thank him for all this great work. great. i yeah, i actually have a couple more questions, chief. um, i thought you were getting off so. prize. it'll be fast. when was this? $15 million grant received by the department. what would you say, chief? six months ago. um it. mike's not on, chief. oh, can you hear me? september or october, i believe of 2023. yeah and so, uh, would it be fair to say then you entered that 19 b process sometime after the grant was received? yeah, the 19 b process. yes. i chief may have more information on that when we
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apply for the grant, which was last summer, we started working with the d through the 19 b process as well because it was everything really had to be accelerated because we didn't have a whole lot of time after we applied for the grant, but we did start working through that 19 b process at that time. so the grant was applied for in the summer, and you started working your way through the 19 b process. at that time. the grant was received in october, the 19 b process continued and you're presenting here and as you said, hope to have this implemented. um, the first half of this year. is that accurate, chief? yes. okay. and so the department was able to get this through the 19 b process pretty quickly. um, i was fairly quickly. yes. and um, i'm trying to i don't remember the exact date when we actually, when the grant application was due, but i know we worked through this through the summer. okay. so the 19 b process didn't, uh, clearly, since we're here today, the 19 b process didn't provide an insurmountable
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hurdle to the department to get this underway. would you say no? okay. were there any major problems encountered in the 19 b process? uh not that i'm aware, chief. was there any. i don't know if there's any if there's been any problems. but i will say this. we're following 19 b to the letter. as i mentioned before, and we're not going to jump ahead or or do anything that, uh, violates the rules of the city. we just even if it takes us more time, we're going to do what we need to do. yeah. um, yeah. i mean, it's a process. i mean, there's a lot of work that goes into the 19 b process, but, you know, we work, we work through it like we have to do on any 19 b policies. and since the grant was received and you've got the 19 b process, uh, the commission hasn't taken any action that would have slowed the process. is that right? we haven't taken any votes or anything like that that you can recall. not that i'm aware of. okay thank you. sergeant members of the public would like to make
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public comment regarding line item six. please approach the podium. thank you. am i actually just allowed to ask a question about the presentation? i uh, i'm just curious. well, there's a bunch of us that were wondering, did the cameras pick up if there's an accident in the middle of the road or someone's hit like a pedestrian would the cameras pick that up? and if so, would someone be able to retrospectively look at that? no so. so the answer is, is just these are just quick photos of license plates and description description of vehicles. we'd have to use the other cameras that are there privately owned cameras. hopefully there would be privately owned cameras for us to view to capture the collisions. ian, thank you. as someone whose car was stolen, actually, i would appreciate if would have appreciated having those a while ago. um, and, and i just wanted to say you were asking questions about how this was going to play out, and please just don't put it in a dgo. and if you do put it in a dgo, please work with the police
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department and subject matter experts to make sure that it is representative of something that is realistic for the police to be able to do. thanks. and there is no further public comment. line item seven presentation on the department of police accountability. audit of fs. excuse me of sfpd handling of officer misconduct data and policies. discussion. yeah, so this is our award winning audit vision. we're making this presentation happen. and it looks like it looks like we've expanded. uh staff here too. so natalie's going to join two all hands on deck. all right. good evening, president elias. vice president, stone commissioners chief scott and members of the public. i'm steve flaherty, director of audits for the
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department of police accountability. tonight, i'm presenting on dpa's final audit on sfpd handling of officer misconduct. the report is titled the san francisco police department needs to improve policies, processes, and data tracking to ensure the timely, consistent, and transparent handling of officer misconduct. dpa issued the full report to the police commission and made the report available to the public on our website in december 2023. we performed this audit to fulfill the san francisco charter requirements for dpa to conduct regular performance audits on sfpd handling of officer misconduct. as part of the audit, we set out with three objectives one to determine whether sfpd ensures that complaints of officer misconduct are investigated within the statute of limitations contained in california government code section 33 042 to determine how efficiently and effectively sfpd handles allegations of officer bias, and three to determine how effectively sfpd complies with misconduct reporting requirements. the audit considered data from and processes in place between the
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periods of 2019 and 2021. prior to the issuance of the full report, dpa issued three interim reports addressing key issues as they were identified during the audit. the goal of these interim reports was to provide the police commissioner and sfpd with timely awareness on critical findings for potential action. the full report is a roll up of the information contained in these three key issue reports, plus new information touching on the timeliness of the misconduct investigations and sfpd handling of bias related misconduct, but focusing on the three objectives from the prior slide, we identified three finding areas and developed 31 recommendations. the report also contains five additional observations related to the audit's objectives and six appendices, one of which includes a survey of sworn members assigned to iad. so this slide provides an overview of the report's three main finding areas. finding one focuses on the timeliness of sfpd misconduct and disciplinary processes. finding two concerns
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the effectiveness of sfpd handling of allegations of officer bias, and finding three concerns sfpd's compliance with misconduct and discipline reporting requirements. each of the finding areas contains multiple sub findings, which i will discuss in greater detail on the next slides. so finding area one highlights areas where sfpd can improve to ensure the timely resolution of misconduct. i note that sub findings 1.3 and 1.4 were previously presented at the commission as part of dpa's may 2023 key issue report on sfpd handling of discipline sub findings 1.1, 1.2 and 1.5 are newly introduced in the full report. s in finding 1.1, we found that sfpd does not track key dates necessary to show that it completes the misconduct investigations within the one year statute of limitations contained in california government code section 3304. notably sfpd did not track the dates it notifies officers of proposed disciplinary action,
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nor the date of any extensions that told the 33.4 deadline in iid's case management and sorry in internal affairs case management system, these gaps could lead to missed 33.4 deadlines, which could cause sfpd to miss opportunities to impose necessary discipline. guidance published by the united states department of justice states that agencies should track events that show investigative due diligence and calls for capturing this information in separate data fields for case tracking purposes, as quickly touching on findings 1.2 and 1.5. these findings deal with tracking of internal affairs investigation, referrals to district stations and require training courses for internal affairs officers, both findings call for clearer policies and improved tracking to ensure operational consistency and investigative quality. finding two addresses sfpd s handling of allegations of officer bias finding 2.2 was previously presented at the
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commission as part of dpa's march 2023. key issue report on sfpd monitoring of department communications for bias. tonight, i'll focus on findings 2.1 and 2.3 and 2.1. we found that internal affairs does not have a consistent or comprehensive approach for handling bias related misconduct , that, as a result of the inconsistent identification practices, sfpd data on bias related misconduct may be incomplete or inaccurate, impacting the department's ability to assess the effectiveness of its bias free policing efforts. further, internal affairs investigation guidelines may hinder the department's ability to address bias allegations, as these bias investigation guidelines do not apply to all matters under the police department's jurisdiction , including matters brought forward by other sfpd members under the not on my watch pledge. they also do not provide investigators with guidance on when the conduct is evidence of bias, and these gaps could result in missed opportunities to effectively address bias related misconduct. finding 2.3 presents opportunities for the
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department to clarify department wide policy is to ensure consistent identifying of bias conduct. for example, we found ambiguities in the current bias free policing policy that may lead to different interpretations among officers and stakeholders about what officer behavior violates the policy. further, the department's social media policies do not prohibit bias related conduct posting racial comments or other material offensive to persons of protected classes. even if done well, officers are off duty, constrained community relations, adding prohibitions to these policies can help sfpd consistently identify and address bias related conduct by members on social media platforms. lastly under finding two sfpd guidance on handling misconduct involving implicit bias is limited. while the department's bias free policing policy defines implicit bias, the department does not have a clear methodology for handling these allegations involving unconscious attitudes. developing a clear methodology for handling implicit bias can help ensure that that the department's policies and procedures are consistently
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applied. finding three focuses on the department's compliance with reporting requirements, set by san francisco administrative code, police commission resolutions, department and department policies. findings 3.1 and 3.2 were previously presented at the commission as part of our november 2022 key issue report on sfpd public reporting on officer misconduct and discipline. so for tonight, i'm going to focus on findings 3.3 and 3.4 in finding 3.3, we found that sfpd data recording and tracking tracking practices can create additional barriers to improving compliance with reporting requirements and can impact the analysis of misconduct and discipline data. raw data produced from internal affairs case management system can produce inflated discipline counts that can lead to unreliable reports and analyzes. also the police department and id combines distinct data points and does not track others, which limits its ability to efficiently generate required reports and provide information requested by the police
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commission. and finding 3.4 we found that station captains did not fully follow a policy requiring them to identify dpa allegation trends and develop plans to prevent similar allegations from occurring in the future. sfpd implemented this policy and in response to a united states department of justice collaborative reform recommendation on these issues of noncompliance may hinder the department's ability to address causes of complaints and to assess the effectiveness of actions taken at district stations to prevent misconduct allegations in the future. our. so the report also includes another observation section. this section presents opportunities for improvement in matters related to the audits scope and objectives. these issues may warrant further evaluation by the police commission and police department, and could be included in the scope of a future dpa audit. for now, we're providing them as observations so that they may, uh, inform potential corrective actions. we previously noted to the commission the high rate of
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false positives in sfpd biased communications auditing platform . some new observations include the need for sfpd to strengthen internal affairs guidelines on conflicts of interest for misconduct investigations, and to update procedures related to the disqualification of field training officers based on their misconduct history, to align with current discipline guidelines. uh, one other observation was for the department. there's opportunities to strengthen its guidance for addressing bias by proxy. so the report includes 31 recommendations to help the department ensure the timely, consistent and transparent handling of officer misconduct. the police department concurred to partially concurred with 26 of these recommendations, including those related to improved data tracking, the identification and tracking of bias allegations, and made recommendations regarding reporting requirements. sfpd did not concur with recommendations on setting time frames for chief's hearings or setting criteria on abeyance and clarifying its approach to
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handling implicit bias. the police department's full responses to all 31 recommendations, including expected dates of implementation, are included in the full report. i'm happy to answer any questions, director henderson, thank you so much. uh, mr. flaherty, um, is your mic on? yeah, i keep turning it away so people don't hear me if i cough or clear my throat. thank you. uh, you know, i've said before, and i think it's really important, especially with the discipline stuff. um i think we have to prioritize to make sure that discipline across the board is timely, consistent, and transparent. a lot of the focus from the presentation and the audit, specifically, uh, is a reflection of best practices that actually help the department. um, from my perspective, i think it's really important, uh, that from the report, uh, some of the biggest
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things that i think can be helped are the reporting obligations, both internal and external, internally for the department as it relates to like 33 or 4 deadlines. and externally as well, because those reporting requirements address dpa's reporting requirement as well. my request and understanding the report. and i know many of these issues have been present in part and some of the other audits, but i think what would be helpful in after the recommendations are made from the audit is if we had either a specific commission assigned to the recommendations that have been made and or specific reporting periods that come back to the commission, just so that, you know, what are we doing and how are we following up on a 30 day, 60 day or 90 day period just to make sure that once they've been presented that people agree upon or not, a lot of these are issues that have been agreed upon from the department while the audit is being made, that just that we have follow up. so that we're not readdressing the same issues six months out a
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year out on the same things that we all agree on that haven't been done for whatever reason. so those are just my comments on the report. and thank you again, uh, to the staff for putting this together. beautifully done. it's award winning team. i just want to thank them for their time and attention. thank you. director henderson. i don't see anyone raising their hand to volunteer to be the commissioner assigned to ushering this through, but i saw everyone blink in agreement. and that means that. so i think people want to do it on a rolling basis on assignment. we'll do it one of two ways. we'll hound them privately, and then they'll come forward next meeting, or we'll just give it to kevin. since he is currently working on other things with bpa. i just didn't want to dump it all on him since he's already helping with audit that he's the one responsible each time, but we're happy to help coordinate that. uh, if we have like a regular presentation on these things. and as a rolling basis, i'm happy to be flexible. i just think it's important that the public knows. let me just say that i think that, you know, i want to
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commend you and your team for the audit and just the quality of work that you're producing. when i joined the commission back in 2018, it the audits were nowhere near, um, this extensive . well, most of them didn't exist. number one, uh, number two, the reporting wasn't this extensive, and the quality of work wasn't great. um, as it is today. um, and i think that over the years you've really taken the suggestion and comments by commissioners and the department and have really, i think, upped your game. so i do want to commend you and your staff, mr. flaherty, i'm very impressed with your work. um, for this i have a couple questions on page seven of your report. you indicate 3.1, which is sfpd did not publish required information on officer misconduct investigations. um, and maybe the question is goes to the chief as to why or unless you want to take a crack at it. i'm sorry, what page was that? seven. page seven, 3.1. and because i believe we had this issue back a couple years ago
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about, uh, dpa, not receiving the report reports from the department when it comes to discipline. and i thought that it had been resolved or the department had indicated that it was going to provide this. and that's i think, was the springboard for that. mou to or not mou. what was it? the letter of agreement that miss wu worked on with correct, with the department addressing? uh, i think the incident that you were talking to was, again, what i was referencing in the 3304 deadlines, because they're both internal and external, and if the notification doesn't come to our agency, we have some of those same restrictions and we have to scramble. so what happened? i mean, i'll i guess i'll turn it over to the chief, mr. flaherty. and then if you find an answer, you'd jump in which which, uh, recommendation is that? 3.1 on page seven on the slides. page seven. yeah, yeah. so there was, um, three different types of reports that we focused on during the audit. uh, the full table of those
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reports is found in the full report on page 25. so we looked um, at reports that are required administrative code, chapter 96 reports required under police commission resolution 90 7-04 and reports required by internal affairs division. unit order 1802. with regard to the reports required by administrative code, chapter 96. so. right. but my question is why? why isn't sfpd, um, publishing required information on officer misconduct investigation to the public that and correct me if i'm wrong that that if that, um, recommendation dealt with the nature of west reported, for instance, the neglect of duty was very broad rather than, um, i think what was written in the report rather than more specific
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information about what the actual neglect of duty was. we have not updated our systems yet in terms of that reporting. the way, um, the way our systems are , when officers from ia, when our people from ia actually run a q, the neglect of duty will come up. but it doesn't. right, right. have all the details. so that's one of the things that we're hoping with the build out from benchmark that we can fix and correct that build out has not started yet, although we do have the contract with benchmark, they have not started the work to build a system yet. when do when do you anticipate the start date? we don't. we have not been able to pin down an exact timeline, but why not? is it money? well, it's their working on, uh, other projects. for instance, the dashboard is a priority right now that they've been working on spending a lot of their time on working on the dashboard, but dashboard for the use of force data? well, dashboard for use of force and dashboard for the cri recommendation for bias. and
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we're are pretty close to getting that off the ground. but we do have a laundry list of things that benchmark has been contracted to do. they just have not gotten to this one yet. is that your understanding? that's a part of it also comes down to awareness. so with the reports required by administrative code chapter 96, we were told that it was being internally tracked, but but uh, you know, we made the department aware that there's also a public reporting requirement around that as well. and that's the same for the reports required by the police commission. resolution 90 7-04. uh, we do note that during the audit, we did encounter some datas with the police department's data, particularly around the ability of the department to extract a complete data set for the system that's discussed in the full report. um under finding. 3.3 and also gets into issues of how they're tracking the data that don't easily allow for generation of the required reports. there's a
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section of the report in the appendix if anyone's interested in it. i put it back there because it's pretty, uh, detailed, but it goes into some of the challenges in appendix d around the misconduct investigation. data points, particularly as generated from the system. uh, for example, when we were trying to piece together an investigation from receipt to disciplinary action, final action taken. um, it required us matching three different data sets, and there wasn't a unique identifier that allowed us to match the data through all three data sets. so it also might come down to technical capacity as well. and the speaking to the challenges of the investigative management system, if i may, this is actually something that we discussed earlier when we were talking about the benchmark stuff. and i if my memory serves me correctly, one of the things that i had asked for, i think this may be the issue that commissioner benedicto volunteered for by not being present where, uh, when we were discussing the benchmark profile and the issue was the policy
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approach and decision about what kind of data could be shared that this was one of the issues that was covered under that. i just i'm just reminding us that this was one of the things that i think we're referencing in terms of what what information specifically from benchmark may be made available specifically, at least in externally for dpa, for audit purposes and to address these these specific mandates that are identified on page 25, this is one one of those subject matters that maybe could be addressed specifically. and those ongoing conversations that i'll say again, has been assigned to commissioner benedicto. thank benchmark. is commissioner janez just to be clear. okay. well, whatever. he's not here again. so for sure it's him. well, my question is, chief, that since we don't have an eta, um, with respect to benchmark, um, what is the department going to do? because the department is legally required to provide this information to the public. um, it's the law, and the
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department's not complying with it. so what's the interim solution on? because i don't think the answer is let's just wait for benchmark when we don't have an eta. yeah, it's not available. i mean, through our current system is problematic for us to pull that data. um, we have not come up with how we're going to tackle this based on this audit. um our best bet is to try to get expedited the work from benchmark so we can actually correct and fix this system through the new system that we we're trying to get through benchmark, but we don't have an answer as of right now. how we're going to tackle this. i mean, it's going to probably take manual going through cases to pull this data, which is but you've had since 2016, the year that the 96, uh 96 b requirement passed, requiring the department to provide this information by law. um, yeah, that is true. that is true. i mean, the audit brought forward the need to do
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it. and we don't have an answer as of today in terms of how we're going to tackle this other than trying to upgrade the system through the contract with benchmark, if i may. one of the things that we've done in internal for dpa with the mirror from this, uh, on the dpa side is this is the in part, the henderson report, the information that we compile, collected daily. is it daily. often is the henderson report weekly. of all of the cases i just i don't want to misspeak. of all of the cases, just to make sure that we're in compliance and then the department uses it as it may for their purposes in order to match what the obligation is. it's again, it's a little cumbersome and burdensome, but i feel very strongly about the 3304 records it's in my reporting and publishing to make sure i'd
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rather have the information given rather than not. and again, there was not an easy way because this was before we had our cms system. but that's that's just how we do it. that's dpa, meaning we. my other question was on page eight, you indicated sfp, pds procedures for disqualifying field training officers based on their misconduct. history was outdated. didn't we just pass the dgo on field training officers and i had asked this question, so that might come down to a timing issue. i think depending on the publication date of the report. okay. yeah. this the dgo and fto was just passed a couple of months ago. so yeah, exactly. okay. i think it was this month. uh, okay. commissioner benedicto, didn't you have your. yes okay. you cleared me. um. thank you very much for that audit from our award winning audit team. um i, i will echo what president elias said in the consistent improvement of the quality of dpa's audits. and, frankly, just the existence of dpa's audit function was not was not in
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place under its predecessor agency. when i first started. and, um, sitting on the other side of the dais working with the commission 2015 and the creation of the audit function and the restructuring of dpa was one of many, i think, critical safeguards that san francisco voters put in place as part of its oversight of the department and it's good to see that continue to work well, um, i will, uh, volunteer for that. director henderson, as as i'm already serving as audit liaison. happy to continue as i meet with mr. flaherty regularly. i think we have a standing quarterly meeting, and, uh, usually meetings in the lead up to an audit release. so i'm happy to, to keep pushing. uh so we have consistent responses on that. i also do think that getting these validated reports from dpa is, is only half the picture. i think we need to i'm going to both put a request on purple folder for now. but i think in general we should have i think it should be like the sparks report where we have the dpa present and then the department have someone ready to comprehensively respond to all the all the responses. and so i ask sometime in march or april
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to have someone from the department, particularly for the ones that are partial, concur or not concur. i think those deserve their own agenda item and their own discussion. i do encourage members of the public to read the audit report. it's quite readable, it's lengthy, it's got a lot of appendices, but it's readable and informative. uh, and particularly that appendix in the back that has is that appendix f the, the dpa recommendations, sfpd responses, which started page 62 of the report. um, and so i think most of my questions are for the department in sort of a subsequent presentation, i do want to ask, chief, what are the status of the efforts to streamline the chief's hearings? i know that's been a consistent thing that's been raised in the key issue reports and in this final report. so we have we have, um, incorporated the commanders and, and the chief's hearings. so the commanders are also doing chief's hearings now. so that has expanded our capacity. um, it's still challenging. we still have, i think, 172 chief's hearings that are on the, on the calendar. and
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we have basically three people who do those hearings. so they are working very hard to get caught up. um, we've tightened up on some of the protocols in terms of the scheduling of the chief's hearings. but even with that, you know, sometimes things come up, sicknesses and deaths and things like that. so um, i can just say that the people doing those hearings, the attorneys that are doing those hearings, are three of them are they're taxed. but they're doing what they can. i know a lot of them are flowing in and really, it's we just got to get caught up, you know, we never got really over the covid period. and then the aftermath of the covid period. and we're still reeling from that. and then the addition of hearings are being requests on new cases. so it's just a combination of staying at it really. um thank you for that. i want to look, um, doctor
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flaherty looking at, at, uh, some of the recommendations that were not concurred with. so starting with recommendation seven, working with the commission to set time frames for resolving chief's hearings. uh are you aware and if these, if any of these questions are ones you'd rather get back to me separately after i ask them, that's fine. um and i'll ask the department the same questions when they get agendized. uh, for other departments that i know, you look at other departments as models. when you do, your audit is it general best practice for other departments to have in sort of their equivalent of dgos? uh time frames for the equivalent of chief's hearings? so in the report, we did include examples of a couple of other departments that did incorporate time frames for chief's hearings. i think in general, the best practice is just that the disciplinary and misconduct process needs to have and set completion dates and is the same true for um written criteria and holding discipline in abeyance. so for that we did highlight the
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risks pointed out in that department of justice publication about abeyance and other forms of alternative discipline. um that being and we also did cite examples from other departments that seem to have criteria in place for framing that. thank you. that's all for me. chief, can i follow up on a quick question before i turn it over to commissioner walker? yes. um, we had the sparks report. i think it was last, uh, commission meeting, and djo 2.07 is in the queue. um, and that one that djo pertains to the chief's hearings, and i think there are recommendations in that dgo that would help alleviate some of the backlog in these chief's hearings. so where are we in terms of getting that before the commission to pass that dgo has gone to concurrence? i don't know. there are still some hanging issues. one of the issues on the guidelines and to your question and commissioner benedicto's, as far as setting due dates, we have, like i said,
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172 hearings with with three people. um the preferences that the department continues to manage through this and get caught up. i mean, this is really a matter of getting caught up, um, to set, you know, 30 or 60 day due date and talking to our staff, that's not going to really help the situation. we have to get these cases heard, get a number of people, find a way to serve. that's why the commanders were added to the mix in terms of handling these cases. but really for us and for me, i think this is something that the department has to really figure out a way to manage through and get caught up. i mean, this is it. a due date is not going to necessarily catch us up. we have to have the people to do these cases, because those three investigators, these three um members of the department that actually do those cases also have all the other disciplinary cases, the evidentiary hearings, the. but it's not just the department's attorneys, it's also dpa. they're also in that mix, too. they're in yes, they're in the mix as far as
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presenting the cases. but all the administrative work falls under the department. so even when dpa presents a case, everything after that presentation is done falls under department. so we have our staff, you know, writing up the summaries, writing up the recommendations and that work takes time and, and, um, we have not tasked that with dpa. so i guess that could be a possibility. but it's not just the cases, it's all the other stuff that goes into the cases, the scheduling, the writing up of the cases, and then all the other work that they have to do on top of that. so we're really juggling, and i think for us, for the department, it's really our responsibility to manage this and get out of this hole. i think it's being compounded. i mean, we've raised this issue, i think, since last year, the backlog and i think that, you know, one of the things that we i even agendize was to have you provide solutions to this problem. so it doesn't seem like we have very many solutions to
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resolve this. well, i think expanding the capacity with the commanders is a step in the right direction, because now we have of basically double the amount of people that can hear these cases. so we they still have to be scheduled, they still have to be written up. and all the administrative work that goes along to that. but at least we have people that are assigned to them. so so, um. some of these cases are years old and it's not fair to the officer who has a hanging discipline case out there and doesn't know the outcome of the discipline case. i mean, it prevents them from, you know, promotion. it can it can prevent them from promotions or doing transfers or certain things in their career because they have this case hanging over their head and they have to wait 2 to 3 years to get it resolved, or even longer. it doesn't seem fair to the officers that, yeah, that is true. i mean, we do need to get these cases done. covid again, i think covid really put us behind the curve on these on these cases and trying to get
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caught up from from that period. if you go before that, we didn't have this type of backlog. i mean, we just didn't have this type of backlog. so so, um, it's a matter of getting caught up and with the people we have, we have expanded the capacity with that, the addition of the commanders. but there's still, uh, we're still juggling cases with the people that we have. you said you were also going to tighten up the request for continuances. i think that was a big issue. and was creating a lot of the backlog where, um, individuals were asking for the continuances were coming from the hearing officers themselves. yes, some some of them, some of them were. and we have done that. we have put in protocols to tighten up, um, some things just hard to account for. for instance, you know, apd for, you know, that six weeks leading up to apd, we had to suspend a lot of these hearings. so um, there are always things that come up, particularly when sworn officers are having to deal with issues that that come up. and sometimes
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require, you know, these things to be postponed. but that's just a part of that's a part of it. we have to account for that. but those things do come up. i'd like to get your, um, your promise that you'll prioritize 2.07 to get this moving, because, again, i just don't think it's fair to officers as an employee, if you have an open discipline case or some personnel issue hanging over your head, it's not fair to have it lingering because your employer isn't doing, you know, time adjudicating the issue. yes and 2.07 is, uh, it is coming. so i will do that. we're going to prioritize it. yeah. it's already it's already prioritized. so it should be to the commission soon. okay. i just point out to that, that one of the things that's contemplated in 2.07 that i think is actually a benefit for the department is an expansion of the command staff. so it goes beyond just having the personnel that's assigned so that more people, at the chief's discretion, can do some of the work. it's not just a matter of
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let's hurry up and do more. there's contemplation, which is how we got to 2.07 in the first place. that was coordinated with the department to make sure that there's personnel available to do, not just an expansion of the pipeline and more deadlines to follow, but people to do the actual work, too. i just anyway, commissioner walker, thank you. um, thank you for this big report. it's very extensive and it's really detailed, but one of the things i was looking at as i was reading through it is there does seem to be a lot of, um, a lot of the issues that stem from, um, inefficient technology and the data tracking especially. so, um, i mean, one of the things i, i know that commissioner, um, elias was already talking about needing to know when the benchmark process is done, but is benchmark rate only going to be the solution to
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a lot of these? the data tracking. and i mean, there's some of this stuff that the evaluate waiting data, i mean that can be done with technology. i mean there's we've advanced so far in technology. do you need more technology be i mean, is benchmark really sufficient to these issues? we believe so. uh, commissioner, benchmark a couple of things that advantages to their platform is they tie a lot of the different databases together and so that. yeah can be integrated and then we do have the ability with them to upgrade some of what we need to address some of these issues that have been raised. for instance, more descriptive on on types of discipline in more detail. i mean, that's part of what some of the findings were. so we do feel like we have an opportunity to do that. um, with, with benchmark. and they have basically told us that, yeah,
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they think that their platform can be very helpful to addressing some of these issues. can i answer that question as well? because a lot of it from the pn, from dps perspective is this is why we're at a very crucial point now, which is why we asked for a commission's input where dpa is requesting permissive access. that alone will address a lot of the notification issues that we're having challenges and problems with. and once there's permissive access granted on on many of the things that are already mandated in these third party rules that have been presented, it will address and eliminate the notification requirement so that it is a solution that i'm trying to push as much as i'm trying to push all of these other yeah. and i feel that i mean, because most of what we're talking about, the publishing of data is the, the numbers. it's not specifics. correct and so having a system that can separate that out from,
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um, the cases themselves so that we aren't revealing things, we're not going to want to reveal, but we actually have the total numbers. um are is just a question. are you is dpa involved in some of the benchmark conversations? we are awaiting? we have been and we know what the technology is, which is why we're at the stage now where we're waiting. permissive access. we want the access we have the ability to receive the access. it's an internal issue that's with the department right now, which is why i had suggest that maybe we have a commissioner be able to drill down, because when we had the presentation and i think the department was saying they're developing a policy approach in terms of how they will use the information. part of that conversation is, is what information will they share? will that system share with dpa specifically, we're ready to receive it. we're able to
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receive it. we just need the permission to receive it. gotcha i mean, it it it also would take some of the load off of the department at a time when, um, yeah, there's an obligation that exists that isn't being met. i mean, technology is, is lacking in every department, but it's, you know, it's really it can do a lot of the drudge work of data management and funding. yeah. right. like things are expensive to do. these hand reports and yes, you know what i mean. it's all of this is an obligation. that's an obligation for our department as well. technology is one of the solutions. but solution the technology is only as effective as you use it. exactly. precise precisely. great. move it along. thank you. you didn't hear? you didn't hear
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you. oh, sorry. do we clap? commissioner yanez? thank you, president elias. and thank you for that thorough report. um it was a lot to read through, and it was very, very well organized. i do just, uh, have a couple of questions for you, chief. um with regard to the, uh, tracking bias and having, you know, uh, forms that indicate when there's an allegation of bias. um, i mean, some of these recommendations as president elias, uh, mentioned, were made by the doj over eight years ago, almost. um, what what do we need to do now to activate and effectively capture this information so that it informs how we move forward, considering the fact that we have such grave, uh, discrepancies and disproportionate use of force when it comes to, uh, people of color and ongoing issue, that
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has not necessarily been addressed. and yet, these recommendations have been in place for some time. it's so as far as tracking bias, i know one of the recommendations dealt with implicit bias and we currently i don't know if anybody really has a method to do that to identify definitively what's implicit bias and track it. um, if that was your question in terms of some of the other work, um, that we've been working on, and this goes to the d.o.j. recommendations in terms of tracking, um, by the use of the dashboard, the dashboard that i mentioned earlier, tracking some of these disparities that may indicate that bias exists. so that is, well under way. that's what benchmark has been working with us on that we're very close to implementing. um, and that is part of the doj recommendations, one of the 272. so that piece is underway. but you know, the
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reason for disagreement with the implicit bias piece is we know of, at least as we sit here tonight, i don't know. and we're not aware of anybody that actually has that type of expertise that can track and identify explicit implicit i'm sorry, implicit bias and then be able to track it. um, you know, it's i think that's a very, uh, difficult thing to try to capture and particularly to try to capture within the expertise that we have in this police department. so, um, so that's where we are on that. and i do understand it is a, you know, nebulous kind of concept. and it would be a challenge to, to really, uh, uh, ascertain definitively, right when these allegations come up. but there are some very clear examples, whether they're, uh, cases that come through dpa that have specific language in them. um, um, and yet even in those areas,
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we're not capturing that in any of our reports. and as it was indicated earlier, some of the reports are just not even being generated in a timely fashion. one of the other recommendations from doj was to make sure that those folks captains or whatever level they're at, are, are being held accountable when this information isn't being generated. what is the current status and what is the current action that the department takes when this information that's required by law isn't provided to this commission or to dpa in a timely fashion? well, that i think that's part of commissioner elias, the president elias questions of what do we doing about it? we don't have we have not put in place a system both either manually or through the technology. we have to pull that information in. so this is kind of a work in progress. and the hope was to get this new vendor to work on these systems. so to improve our systems, to be able
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to do this work, i know i can just speak for the 96 a the report since during my time here , um, six years ago, it took an inordinate amount of staff time to just, you know, manually pull all all of the data that we pull for this report, which over time we've been able to transition to better technology to help us do that. so it's a lot less staff time now. um, we're kind of in the same place with this internal affairs data, where we put an analyst recently, a new analyst in internal affairs and although she does a great job, we just have not gotten to the answer to this question. our answer is through technology. but that technology has not been developed yet through the vendor . uh i understand that there is also still a challenge with enrolled, uh, phones that are assigned by the department to officers into the system that tracks, uh, you know, for texture or words for bias. what?
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why hasn't that happened? i mean, this this is something that came up over a year ago. i remember, and we're still relying on the vendor to do this on our behalf. i just some of these, uh, obstacles that i should be easily removed. continue to burden and create challenges for us. uh, that seems to be something that that should be prioritized. is there a reason why we're not requiring all cell phones to be, uh, monitored in this fashion? we do have, um, i actually have the unit order here that was on the cell phone technology. there has been some movement on the cell phone technology to see here. give me one second.
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so there was a unit order put in place by our technology director on software. that was, um, purchased to better track the cell phone technology. the text messages and all that. so there has been some work done in that area to, um, if does that speak to your question in terms of what's being done with the cell phones, is there a timeline for ensuring that this is going to happen as soon as the cell phone is assigned and that it will be tracked and captured somewhere for us to be, you know, 100% sure that these phones are being registered in that fashion. and what is the timeline for that to
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happen if there's already been one decided as far as the audits are concerned, the cell phone audits are done by, well, all equipment audits are done by internal affairs, but the software will be the software that i just mentioned will be used to make that process more efficient. so those audits are the same audits that we've been doing for several years now, many years now. but the technology enhances our ability to do the work and to actually audit, particularly text messages on cell phones. and are we also also, um, registering department laptops or any other technology that's assigned to officers? the laptops are all department electronic devices are subject to audits, right. um, my last question. uh, there's a statement here. i'm finding 3.4. um that indicates
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that, you know, they're supposed to be some form of an analysis. analysis and a memo generated by station captains based on the, uh, information that's being sent by dpa so that they can identify, train, uh, train trends and then, you know, generate action plans. some of, uh, the responses were really, you know, unacceptable in my eyes. you know, there were quarters where captains were preparing memos, uh, without remedies, uh, you know, kind of copy and pasting them, providing these, even though they're supposed to be done on a quarterly basis, i believe, or on a monthly basis, finishing them for finishing for quarterly memos and for calendar year 21 and one week in april 22nd. to me, that feels like warrant taking this issue very seriously. chief. uh, what is
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the corrective action plan to ensure that we're gonna, um, adhere to these memos and to these orders that basically we, um, have been adopted by the department, have been distributed and disseminated for years and are supposed to help us improve our our outcomes when it comes to disproportionate contact. but when they're not actually taking place in real time, it makes it really challenging to make an improvement in this area. what what are we going to do differently moving forward, chief? well first of all, you know, appreciate the audit. and that's what the audits are for. i mean, we've uncovered issues that we need to correct and correct immediately. so now it's up to us to make those corrections. you know, the that particular section we agree with. we agree with what needs to be done in terms of the oversight of checking these reports to make sure they're done in a timely manner, to make sure that we don't have, you
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know, cut and paste language in them. and that's really up to our department and the command staff to make sure that those things get done. so we have to hold ourselves accountable to doing those things that we're supposed to do. and, you know, the audit is uncovered a number of issues that we need to correct. but that's what audits are for. so you know, again, we appreciate we do appreciate the fact that these things were uncovered. and now we have to fix them. thank you. and, um, i am, uh, assigned to the bench marks, um, or the management system. biggio. and uh, director henderson, i will be in contact with you to push for a little bit more alignment, a lot more information sharing. and i know that, you know, as a result of this audit, there is a lot of concurrence in, in as far as what we intend to do to address some of the concerns you raised. and i definitely want to sit
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down and figure out, uh, what is feasible with this benchmark systems, even though it has taken quite some time, a lot longer than we expected for it to ramp up, there has been progress made and so i'm i do expect that we will launch this soon and that we will be able to improve our data tracking. um so that officers can use it, uh, in the best fashion possible to improve our outcomes. thank you very much, chief, for your time. and thank you for that wonderful , um, audit presentation. those are my questions, sergeant, for members of the public that have public comment regarding line item seven, please approach the podium. thank you. and there is no public comment. line item eight discussion and possible action to adopt department general order 9.07. restricting the use of pretext stops discussion and possible action. vice president carter. uh,
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colleagues, this policy has been before us many times. hasn't been before us in some time. however um, during general public comment this evening, frank noto from stop crime action said something he said that stop crime action supports banning pretext stops, but it just doesn't support ending enforcement of common sense traffic laws and i'm finding myself right now in the uncharted territory of actually agreeing with frank noto, because that's actually what this policy does, is, in fact, it doesn't go quite as far as what frank would like, because it doesn't outright ban pretext stops as the title would suggest. it just restricts them. so so what is the heart of what this policy does? it identifies nine nine vehicle code infractions that have been proven to have no public safety benefit, and it deprioritizes
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stops, but not enforcement. as frank would like. of those nine infractions and when i say proven, it's because the data could not be more clear. the two infractions on this list that make up the lion's share of the stops for the department are license plate related stops and registration tags. those are around 4000 each, and for each type of stop, arrests are made in less than 1% of cases. guns are discovered in less than 1% of cases. so in the 99 plus percent of the time, those stops are not yielding any benefit to the public. and at a time of critically low staffing, it is incumbent upon us to marshal our scarce law enforcement resources intelligently and effectively. these stops are wasting time and money at a time at a moment when
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we need to be focusing on the core duties of the police department that actually improve people's lives. so the other part that i would just highlight is that this policy development process went through the most robust public input process, probably in the modern history of the police commission, the human rights commission hosted well over a dozen town hall meetings in all across the city. after 5:00, when people could come after work and express their views. we had a working group that was comprised of officers, community members, other subject matter experts, business owners who went over the policy over the course of four meetings, line by line. um officer crispin jones is here tonight who was a member of that working group and offered invaluable advice and counsel
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throughout. and we received hundreds, if not over a thousand letters and emails each of which was posted to our website publicly so that everybody could see what the public was saying about the policy. and it's suggested changes. the other thing is, we're not the first city or jurisdiction to take up a traffic enforcement policy. in fact, there's been dozens of jurisdictions that have done this. and so we're not in unchartered territory. we now have data from other cities and states that have done this, and the results have been unequivocally positive. and it is not just as some of my friends might be quick to say, in blue states or blue cities. it's in places like the commonwealth of virginia. it's in places like nashville, it's in places like fayetteville, north carolina, where we had the former chief of police tell defying before this commission talking about the incredible benefits that curtailing pretext
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stops had, including spending more resources, focusing on arresting high level drug dealers, which he was able to do with the resources his officers were wasting on pretext stops. the last thing i'll say is that there there has been incredibly robust debate on this issue from all sides. but now that we're reaching the conclusion of it, one thing just has to be called out, which is that the folks who have opposed this policy have not been able to point to one shred of actual evidence to support their position. the side in favor of this has has put forth reams and mountains of evidence. studies from every corner of this country showing how effective this policy is. and the other side, at best, is able to put forward a few anecdotes. so so, um. i'll stop
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there for now and defer to my colleagues. but before i will make a motion on to adopt. dgo 9.07 only as to the poa and no other bargaining units, um and give the department 90 days to train. if after 75 days the department feels that it needs additional time, it may ask for a maximum of an additional 30 days. so 120 days total as a maximum. one thing before commissioner benedicto, i think vice president carter was done, you forgot to mention two other things. one is that the chief, i think, was very involved in this process as well, um, that we had conversations, um, and before we presented, um, this policy before the commission twice for a vote, um, it was vetted by chief scott, who added his language, and we adopted his suggestions. um, i think on the
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final draft and the other was the different agencies throughout the city that we met with. um i think it was the agency of disability and, and on aging as well. and, and aging, all at the request of the mayor's office, which was done. and we addressed those concerns as well. um, but i think that one thing that is very, um, important to point out because i keep hearing this fallacy that these dgos that we pass here are not vetted or or not don't involve subject matter experts, when in fact that 90, 99% of the dgos that we get are drafted by the department. um, they they are drafted by the department. they presented to dpa, they presented to the commission or working group or what have you. um, and then input is added. then once the input is added, it goes back to the department through the concurrence process for the department to review all all changes, all edits, all additions. and with respect to
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this dgo, there were officers like crispin jones and others that were the training division. i had them review it. they gave me their suggestion. um, several other high ranking, uh, officers within the department that don't normally view dgos or are in this process also reviewed this dgo and added their input, which we included. so i'm going to commissioner benedicto, thank you very much. president elias and vice president carter stone. um, you know, i echo and agree with a lot of what you said. it's i'll avoid repeating anything to just kind of supplement, you know, you talked about the hr, the human rights commission and director cheryl davis's tremendous work in the public listening sessions, as well as the comprehensive report she gathered in addition, the human rights commission also had an ongoing survey that was up for, uh, the entire period. and we solicited responses to that one as well. uh, in addition to the human rights commission, um, listening sessions, in addition
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to, uh, having the item open at commission and the working group, a number of individual commissioners, myself included, went to numerous, um, neighbor associations, merchant associations and other organizations to answer questions about this policy. i said it before that i, i, uh, and i'll say it again that i didn't say no to any invite. i spoke to large groups and small groups to answer questions as we went through this process. uh, as well. um, and additionally, commissioners conducted, uh, town halls with officers. uh, patrol officers outside the presence of command staff to solicit feedback on this policy. and specific changes were made in response to those very helpful suggestions from talking to patrol officers. uh, i want to reiterate a point that the vice president made that what that this policy is not, uh, what this policy is not. and this policy is not the commission changing the traffic code. it is not the commission stopping enforcement of traffic laws. it's a question of prioritization. it's that's a point that's been made from the
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very beginning of this process and has been consistently made and repeated. we made specific edits to the request of the chief late last year to ensure that it was clear that it was about prioritization, and confirmed with him that that was his understanding of the current policy, which was critical to his, um, accepting his edits was critical to our second vote on this policy. um additionally, we received and implemented specific edits from the mayor's office, which also reiterated this is a matter of prioritization and not a matter of stopping enforcement or changing or changing any laws. uh, and i also can't emphasize enough the number of very talented and hardworking people that contributed to this policy, including a huge number of department personnel. uh, the vice president called that officer crispin jones. but, uh, representatives from the police officer association were at every working group meeting. i see lieutenant mcrae, the president of the police officers association back there. she was at the working group meetings. i had one of them. she shared a story of her own experience with the traffic stop. um we had representatives from the other
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officer employee groups. um asian peace officers association, other organizations at all of these working groups as well. um and uh, had that input as well. when we had one of the experts here, they noted that a study in, i believe it was san diego or one of the departments in san diego showed that officers were spending 25% of their time on what that expert considered low value stops with low investigate value. 20% of that time. if you think of our patrol officers getting back a huge, significant amount of their time for other needs of policing, that's an ambiguous win for public safety. when we hear every day that we need to be reducing officer's time on tasks that don't contribute and don't have high public safety value, the data shows this is one of those tasks and so, uh, i, i was very proud to work on this process. i echoed what the vice president says. i've been working on issues with the commission. um
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since for almost ten years. and had not seen a process this transparent, um, and, um, it was a privilege to work on this process, to vote for it. uh, and i was very glad that when this vote came up last april, that, uh, thanks in part to the chief's edits, that this commission unanimously, um, adopted, uh, approved this policy to go into meet and confer in april of 2023. and i'm hoping that those my fellow commissioners will join us again . um, i think this was a good idea when it was proposed and supported by the majority of the commission and the chief and the mayor. i think it was a good idea when we voted for it unanimously, uh, in april. and i think it's a good idea today. and it's time to adopt this policy. so i will second the vice presidents motion. commissioner walker, thank you, president elias. um, i want to thank everybody who worked on this, um, over the long period of time. i know that there was a
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lot of back and forth, um, within the department, um, and the leadership of commissioner carter over stone on this, um, this was when i first came on the commission. this was up for discussion. and i made a point because there was we got a lot of, um, input from the public via emails. and, um, there was a lot of, you know, differing opinion on, you know, where people, um, rested on this. um, but what was heartening to me is that in the discussion with folks about the particulars of what was being presented, um, all almost universally people really support reforming our system and understand and agree that there are problems with racial bias and policing. um, that's heartening. what's not heartening is the fact that we seem to be losing the support in some ways because of how we are.
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our strategy of putting this out there and, um, i will say that a lot of the issues that came up initially were resolved. i think that the initial list was like 83, 83 different, um, traffic stops to and it was it was verbed. it was it was actually texted to ban stops instead of, um, restricting stops. um, one of the things that has come up in the interim, because at that time, the state, the state legislature was actually deciding bussing this very proposal of limiting traffic stops as a way to achieve racial better, uh, results around racial bias and the state decided not to do that in the interim. so the issues that are brought up by the poa, and i just want to express them here, is that what what we're doing is
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. restricting our officers, is enforcing a law that is in violation of state law. um, and i it's not consistent with what the state law says about enforcing traffic. and, you know, i brought this up in the beginning of, you know, first of all, does the does our commission have the ability to tell the officers what to enforce and what not to enforce? that's number one. and the second one is because of the action taken by the state. does this put the officers in an awkward position of having to enforce our law when it's not, when it's in violation of state law? and these are these are questions to the attorney because i feel like we need to be advised by our city attorney sort of what the status of this
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is. i, i also think, you know, there's we have been doing meet and confer even though we say we don't need to do meet and confer and the position we're in now is that impasse has been declared and the next step would be having arbitrators discuss with each other what the solution is. and apparently we're ignoring that that saying that we don't it doesn't apply. but it feels to me like we are getting engaged in telling officers what to do. and so there's a lot of inconsistencies here. and if i'm confused by it, then i'm worried that officers will be when they're trying to enforce our laws as, um, part of what the issues are around dgos is there's confusion about what what an officer is supposed to do in situations. and, you know, i, i'm fully in agreement that the public needs to understand what our process is and what
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we're talking about in all of these rules. um, the police have the expertise in how to be law enforcement officers and what to do in specific cases. so, um, one of the one of the things i asked for, too, as we were reviewing this initially is, is there data that proves that shows that just not not enforcing some traffic rules actually affects racial bias numbers? i understand that it affects traffic stop numbers, but there wasn't any data provider at that point. there wasn't data that actually presents. add that the racial bias percentages were were brought down by not enforcing some of these traffic laws. and so what what is true is that what le is doing, which is what
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the state has actually adopted, is when you're pulling somebody over, you have to record why you're pulling them over on camera. so it brings a consciousness to this process that seems to be working because their actual racial bias numbers are down as a result of a year of that. but so i just still am kind of confused about why we're doing something that doesn't really it seems like we're doing a lot, but in fact, la's process does a lot better about bringing down racial bias numbers. so i don't know who can answer that question, but but these are the concerns i still have with what was the question? well, there's some to the city attorney about, you know, are we so the question is can the commission actually tell the officers what to enforce and what not to enforce?
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number one and number? okay stop. um, good evening, commissioner. um, as there is a closed session item given that giving advice in public would obviously there's threatened litigation. so it would be prudent to give the advice in closed session. okay. or in writing. either way. um, but just to clarify, um, the dgo reads as a deprioritization of, uh, use use of officers resources and a use of personnel. um, so, so i happy to answer those questions either offline in writing. um under attorney client privilege with the understanding that there is probably litigation that will happen. we also have a closed session item. yeah, it would be great if we could vote on this after we get advised by our attorney. second, you had a second question. the second question is, um, in that we are actually be making
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recommendations and have engaged in that conversation with the union. um, it seems like we're getting involved in day to day stuff that does affect the union agreement. so there their position of us needing to, um, appoint, um, excuse us. hold on a second. and i'm going to get the exact language because they're waiting for our. um appointing arbitrators from both sides to resolve the issues between us. is that another thing that we need in private session? absolutely. so that would be giving direction to your labor negotiator. and that is absolutely on for closed session tonight. so i prefer if we discuss that which by the way this this has been on closed session for the last several weeks. and not only has the labor negotiator been here, but
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also the city attorney who deals with these issues and at no time were any questions ever posed of those two individuals. um, but commissioner byrne. i thank you, president elias, in the agenda tonight, um, 9.07 was on in closed session as well as in open session and given the threatened litigation from the police officers association and the idea that if we pass something that it has meaning that it's not going to be held, uh, be brought to a halt with a, uh, a court injunction or something like that. and given the recent, the recent joint declaration of the impending litigation, i was hoping that we would go into closed session so that so that any vote we make tonight is a more informed vote, as opposed to, um, where we were last week because things have
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changed from closed session last week. and then after we come out of closed session, i think it would be, um, uh, it would be, um, easier for, uh, some members of this commission to, to, um, uh, to, to vote on the issue. um . what i think all well, clearly all the commission has gone on the record that we want to end, um, by stops in san francisco. the difference of opinion is how we get there. uh, one of the most important things isn't isn't a dgo. it's changing the culture. if the rank and file of the police department, um, cannot be brought along, um, to the importance of this issue.
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and the only way that the commission thinks that they can be brought around is by punishing them. if they don't, then we have a problem. we may have a valid dgo that we can enforce. uh uh, through punishing the officers for violating it. but have we accomplished what we really want to do, which is limit and end bias stops and, um, for those two reasons, i respectfully request to the president that we go in closed session. um we do have, uh, uh, legal advice here as what the result or what the chances of, um, of the litigation would be. and um, i mean, if indeed the chances of litigation are that it's going to be that we're not going to be able to implement it as the
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motion indicates, then then then what? what ultimately have we accomplished? we've made a statement of principle, which is wonderful. but have we accomplished much more? uh, if we can somehow come to some compromise, some sort of way of, of more important, changing the culture here and, um, any way, that's where i'm at. thank you. thank you. president elias. i just wanted to respond to some of the concerns that my colleagues just raised. the first thing i'll just remind everyone, which commissioner benedicto also pointed out is that everyone sitting up here voted for this policy. it was a unanimous vote last time. it was before the commission in april. and since that time, um, the policy is such attentively the
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same. there are some important changes made to address concerns around clarity and the commission accommodated those concerns. but the bones of the policy is the same. and all of the concerns we're hearing now could have just as well been said in april, when my colleagues voted for it. and so the question is, what's changed? and part of what i'm hearing is what's changed is there is a threat of legal action. um, and there was a call to have the city attorney advise us in open session on that. what i'll say is, you know, i'm not going to violate the attorney client privilege in this case, but what i'll say is the concern lines that are being raised, the legal concern is that i've just heard raised now have been exhaustively addressed by the city attorney in closed session. the city attorney has addressed innumerable times its view on the legality of this policy, including the any preemption concerns as the ones that have
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been raised tonight and by others. and in fact, you know, it would be pretty surprising if, as commissioner walker suggested, that somehow this policy would be preempted by state law since it's been the case in this state for well over a century, that local governments are fully empowered to set their own enforcement priorities as it relates to policing. if the answer were somehow not if that were somehow not the case, it would unsettle over a century of expectations in this state. um, that that is, it is never that that view of preemption has never been endorsed by any court. it has never been the law of california. it is not the law of california today, and it will never be the law of california. um, and so these newfound concerns that could have been expressed just a long time ago, i think are, are. frankly i think i call into question whether whether those concerns are truly genuine in this case,
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the last thing i'll say, though, is that, uh, commissioner walker asked about, uh, i guess commissioner walker was concerned about whether this would actually help raise disparities. i take it commissioner walker is satisfied that, um, we've demonstrate through the data that these stops are ineffective at prevent or solving crime. but as to the racial disparities piece, i mean , i we've had a lot of evidence before this commission that it would reduce race disparities. i would invite the commissioner to read frank bumgarner's, um, suspect race, which looked at 20 million traffic stops in north carolina. and that same work was implemented by the former chief of north carolina. and he came before this commission, and he talked about the reduction in race disparities as a result of implementing that policy. and just just to be sure, after he left, when the policy was pulled back, racial disparities went back up in fayetteville, north carolina. so those are just a
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couple examples among many. there commissioner yanez, thank you, president elias. and thank you for that. um summary. uh, vice president carter stone, uh, i mean, i think that we have, um, taken a very deliberate approach to doing something that seems pretty common sense from the, uh, jurisdictions that have implemented this. uh, there's already been an impact. um we're not changing any laws. i think that the language is very clear, restricting the prioritizing and , uh, focusing our resources on violent crime and not pretext stops or not, uh, stops that are based in bias is a common sense approach that will actually impact and change the culture of the department store standing and not doing anything about it and continuing to deliberate. uh
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pros and cons, uh, will ensure that the culture continues to be what it is right now and will continue to limit our ability to improve our outcomes. and so the fact that we have data collection an embedded in to this, that that allows us or that makes sure that officers think twice about the types of stops that they're making so that there are legal, lawful, uh, stops that then will lead to , uh, some type of outcome that is beneficial for our public safety. it's the sole reason why we are doing this, and it is the reason why a lot of us chose to be on this commission. so i really do believe that this is the best step that we can be taking. uh, those questions that have been raised today have been answered at different points, both in public and private sessions. and i really, uh, commend the leadership of, uh,
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commissioner carter stone and commissioner elias and the chief who was very involved in, in, um, making sure that we put together a policy that will represent 21st century policing principles and will help us get to that ideal space that we hope to get to someday, where we do not have to pull people over for , um, things that do not lead to public safety, uh, improvements. i'll use one example of a deprioritize, uh, traffic stop that i've noticed in on mission street. as i drive up and down the street, you know, hundreds of times a week, uh, there is this space where you're supposed to be forced to make a right turn on 21st on 20th street. and when you make that right turn on 20th street, uh, you are then on capp street where you cannot make a left turn or a right turn
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, because then you are now in that zone that is closed off because there are barriers now that are, uh, that were set up to, to divert or interfere or intervene in the, uh, the sex work that was happening on capp street. i have seen police officers for the last few years completely ignore, uh, or or address, uh, people while driving straight on mission street instead of making that right. that is a good use of our resources because there is absolutely no need to use our limited police resources on things that really do not produce public safety improvements. so i really am happy to be at this point where we can take a vote on this and, uh, begin to implement as is. thank you very much. commissioner yee. thank you very
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much. there. uh, president cindy elias, um, uh, just for the record, uh, you know, i'm supportive of the bias. stop uh, making sure that it, uh, it's being administered to our community and making sure that it's fair. but being said that i also want to say, for all the residents in the city of san francisco, making sure that they are treated fair and equal to making sure that their safety are accounted for, too. and i, you know, i, i guess we all got those texts, uh, or email over 100 thereabouts. fled my email. some of them, some of the people that text me, uh, regards to the police commissioner today too. so um, my question is, uh, you're having this vote before the closed session. my question is why? right? is there something that we don't know that is coming up before the closed session that you want to say, like, yes, this is you guys
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voted for it and support it. now you don't support it in the closed session. so meaning that there's some negotiation that's happened already that you know, that you want our vote to be on on the record. so you know, i would prefer that we go finish the closed session and then come back on this similar to what burns said to, uh, i don't wait. i don't think we're that far apart. but, you know, again, uh, we want to work together with the police commission as well. so um, that's that's my position on on there. so, commissioner, you you know why it was on in closed session today? we talked about it. we agendized this in closed session last week to put it on again for this week. so all of the commission was present in closed session. and at that time we said we were having it in closed session and open session this week. right. so there's no this your comment that you don't know why it's on in closed session. yes. you do.
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you were there. no no no no. hear me out. president. uh, sidney elias it is in closed session. i know, but we're having a vote in open session before the closed session, so i'm just asking why? because we were if we anticipated any response from the po, which we didn't get. so then closed session. are you saying that we didn't get a response? we got no . if we would have, there would have been we would have been provided the commission office would have provided it like every other correspondence. so every letter, every email, miss preston, our labor negotiator, provides us the city attorney provides us the commission secretary provides us. and i know that we've been inundated with emails, but this, this, this for the record, i will oppose this motion on item number eight. uh, until i hear the rest of the closed session, that is that that is the way i will vote commissioner walker. yeah. thank you. um, just one
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one clarification, chief. my understanding is that as of january 1st, we are now officers are now required when they make traffic stops to explain why they're making a traffic stop on on their, um, camera. yeah. correct. they have to explain it to the person being stopped. yeah. yes. recorded. explain the reason for the stop and record it. yes yeah. and i again i asked for this last year when we were discussing it, that it would be great to have someone from los angeles come up and tell us how their program is doing, because that's kind of the extent of their program. they may be there may be more, um, qualifications in what they are required to do, but it primarily rests on having an officer do that. and it seems to work because their bias numbers are down, not the total number of traffic stops, but actual
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bias numbers are down. is it possible to get someone from los angeles to talk about their program and what's working? um i'm. you did that. we haven't done that. the chief spoke with the los angeles police chief and the commission down there regarding their efforts for this and vetted their policy and vetted their policy. we haven't had a presentation. he they presented their policy to the commission, and we actually spoke at it, spoke about it at one of the commission meetings. it was distributed to all of the commissioners. yeah, we had um, we reached out, i spoke to the chief and, uh, there director of constitutional policing, and we had our members from our command staff also speak with their command staff about their implementation of the policy. so i mean, it would really be great to have a presentation on the results of it, because i think a year and a half has passed since they've done it. and i, i read
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an article basically saying that there the racial bias numbers are really down comparatively, even in the traffic stops are down. but the racial bias numbers are down even further. so i'm just i'm saying that you know, we are doing that now. that is what we're doing without changing a thing, because that's what the state actually enacted in the past year. in the course of all this discussion, what has changed is the state actually rejected a proposal to restrict traffic stops as a way of solution, and instead asked for more consciousness and information when officer is actually pulling them over? um, i think that to the point of burns, it's important that we do this together. it's really not going to change the culture at all. it's my opinion. and i'm i'm also if we're going to vote on this before going into closed sessions, i'm going to vote no. uh there's a motion and a second
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on the floor for sergeant, for members of the public that would like to make public comment regarding line item 809.07, please approach the podium. firstly, i want to make the correction that san francisco and calif haven't been around for centuries, but but the problem is we develop policy and then something happens that could have been avoided. and a common mistake. officials tried to compare a major metropolitan city to another location that is different to us. like north carolina of all places. now, the commissioner said that guns are found or around a less to or at least equal to 1, and that's good. now, commissioners, the place that the commission hasn't mentioned doesn't border one of the most gun violent cities that
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exists in the bay area, which is oakland, can you imagine if we restricted these stops and someone with a gun got through and shot people? the nine categories i was able to go through have so many ways where a low level offense can turn into a horrendous mistake. for example, number 1 in 3 can't operate until we get cameras that read license plates like we discussed this evening. so that's a problem. numbers four, five, six, and seven is a situation where if they're not, a car is not pulled over because of anything happening to their brakes, a person can get hit or they could be totaled. that's a problem. now, personally, i have no problem passing this with the restrictions, but if we do and someone gets killed or seriously injured by someone who could have been prevented, well, you better believe it that we are going to tie you guys to this very thing. so vote how you may. but do understand that every
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vote has consequences and whatever those are, you'll be held accountable to them. thank you. hi. good evening, commissioners and chief scott. uh, my name is carolyn gibson, and i've lived in san francisco for 20 years and have raised two children here over the last two years. i've been proud to be part of the coalition to end racially biased police stops, a coalition made up of diverse san franciscans from across the city. over 100 organizations, and including the most knowledgeable, uh, traffic safety organizations. we have walk sf and the bicycle coalition as has been mentioned, this policy has gone through one of the most robust community outreach and engagement processes i've seen in 20 years in san francisco. for a local policy through the hard work of all of you on the police commission, the sfpd staff, the human rights commission, and community organizations like glide, dozens of meetings have taken place, have taken place to
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discuss the policy, including the sharing of robust data analysis and research by spur the data is clear, unequivocal pretext stops that are included in this dgo do not increase public safety and in fact have caused generations of harm and trauma for too many, including many of my dear close friends, families, neighbors and friends of my children. a friend of mine just told me she has been harassed again and again over the years for doing nothing, just being a latino woman in a particular neighborhood when her own mother was killed and was never the case, is a cold case. the police never found what happened to her mother. so these are the types of traumas that people are going through. they see police not focused on the actual violent incidents that are happening in our city. and so now what we are asking is that you vote yes today on this common sense, reasonable, amended proposal that will help us end decades of bias and stop
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wasting taxpayer resources and allow police to focus on the driving behaviors that actually cause accidents and injury, including the five traffic behaviors that the city has been focused on for a decade. as part of vision zero. please vote yes. thank you. good evening, commissioners. my name is angela chan and i'm a former member of the police commission. i'm here tonight in 2024 to urge you to vote in support of implementing dgo 9.07, that would this commission unanimously voted to adopt last year in 2023 to deprioritize these racially biased pretext stops in 2022. the commission collaborated with the human rights commission to carry out a rigorous process of gathering input from diverse community members. sfpd officers and the poa to craft this well thought out policy. it's been frustrating to watch the poa stall implementation of this
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urgently needed reform for the past year, through the nebulous and never ending meet and confer process, which frankly, was not this bad was when i was on the commission about a decade ago. it's important to emphasize that the people harmed by this delay are black and brown community members, who continue to be pulled over for simply driving, walking, and biking while black or brown. this is not just my assertion, it is borne out by state ripa data and sfpd's own data that has shown the gross racial disparities that police stops continue to have in san francisco. we waited long enough. this policy is legally sound, and it's urgently needed. the excuses that we've heard tonight, this last minute dance and shuffle to try to stall this policy is shameful. please be on the right side of history. vote tonight to implement dgo 9.07. hello, my name is samina usman
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and i am with secure justice as their government relations consultant. i'm dante right? christian cobain, philando castile and many of the people on the back of my shirt were killed by police officers after pretextual stops, which disproportionately harm black and latinx community members due to racial bias and biased pretext, stops to prevent deaths like these in our community. hanging an air freshener or prayer beads from your rear view mirror or a broken tail light should not be a pretext for police stop to search and potentially harass you. one out of eight black drivers are stopped in california, likely to fish for evidence of a crime, illustrating that often used the often used phrase driving while black is not a feeling, but a measurable occurrence. sfpd officers stopped black individuals at a rate of six
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times the rate of white individuals. search black individuals at more than ten times the rate of white individuals, and use force on black individuals at more than 21 times the rate of white individuals. these disparities remain unacceptable and have sadly remained consistent as long as sfpd has been collecting data. pass this item and racially biased pretext stops now. thank you so much. good evening commissioners. my name is isabella hutchinson. i'm a longtime resident of san francisco and i'm here tonight to urge you to adopt dgo 9.02 for several reasons. this body voted unanimous nearly over a year ago, but did so after an incredibly robust public input process. the commission has held over a dozen or so public meetings, listening sessions and
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presentations throughout the community. that's in addition to the public working groups that sought feedback from officers. the chief, the poa president and community members, the commission website has a dedicated link placed prominently on the home page that contains a draft of each policy. notes from the human rights commission. listening session. research from experts, and comments from the community. in short, what the commission did in respect to dgo 9.02 was unprecedent and represents what our best practices. so the notion that the commission has hasn't reached enough organizations or solicited enough public feedback isn't supported by the facts. but here are the facts. so san francisco mirrors the state and the nation in its overpolicing of communities of color via pretext stops the unacceptable racial
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disparities used by sfpd, stops, searches, and uses of force hasn't changed to address this reoccurring problem, i urge you once again to adopt this policy and implement it without delay. thank you. hello and karina velasquez and a member of a stop safe and our president, frank noto, is against bias stops, but he is 100% against stopping enforcement of our traffic laws. so we oppose the commission majority's plan to reduce traffic or any other enforcement by our police. you need to let them do their jobs. the commission has refused to
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acknowledge that current staff has significantly and consistently decreased from 100 to thousand in 2019 to 40,000 in 2020, to just over. 17,000 in 2022. how much lower can we go before enforcement no longer matters? also, there are other ways to address potential economic reasons for lower income people being able to address, like broken tail lights, expiring registration, etc. the city or the dmv can provide resources for that. let me remind you that sb50 fail to pass in sacramento, a bill aimed at doing the same thing. this
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commission is proposing. so you are not a state legislators and you don't have the authority to make our own, make california's law. don't like the law? then go through the proper legislative process to get a change. thank you. hello my name is emanuele dawson. i'm a san francisco resident, and i just want to say to vote yes on stopping pre text stops. i also just have a comment. i'm not sure if i could say this, but like while listening i was i heard about how we should implement the things that i guess la or the overall like system that they've created. we should try to like merge the same system, but i think we should focus on san francisco. i don't think we
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should compare our the city of la with san francisco, and i think we should try to like, create and implement our own systems instead of try to look at their racial bias rate. because it's different over there. the level of homelessness, i'm sure racism, it's different cities. and i think we should just focus on the issue at hand. thank you. contrary to what i heard from a couple of commissioners this evening, i would like to take this opportunity to address the critical issues surrounding law enforcement in our city. i want to express gratitude for the dedication of our police force and maintaining safety. however we must address concerns about the reduction in stops as fewer stops meet a potential increase in illicit activity. as the commission's refusal to acknowledge the significant drop in stops from 2019 to 2022
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raises questions about the effective use of current enforcement levels. we must consider the impact on our streets, where fewer stops may embolden criminals to transport weapons and drugs without fear. moreover, the potential laxity in traffic enforcement poses risks to pedestrians and cyclists, impacting the overall safety and walkability of our neighborhoods. it is crucial to recognize that traffic stops for violations are legal under federal and state laws. we need to scrutinize the authority of an unelected body directing our police force to circumvent the enforcement of state and federal laws. the attempt to pass this into a dgo allowing punishment for enforcing the law, raises concerns about the balance of power. let us not forget that other avenues exist to address these challenges. in communities such as broken tail lights and expired registration laws, the dmv can provide resources, and the city attorney should rein in any overreach by the commission. it is essential to note that sb
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50, aimed at banning pretext stops, failed in sacramento. our focus should be on finding solutions that maintain the delicate balance between community needs and law enforcement effectiveness. in conclusion, searches, searches resulting from traffic stops play a crucial role in recovering drugs, guns, and contraband that could otherwise harm our city. we must navigate these challenges wisely, ensuring both safety and justice prevail. thank you. good evening, commissioners. i 100% echo the speaker before me. um, i think that kind of said it all. uh, concern being that there are more tailored ways to prevent and reduce the incidence of bias stops, as those are the ways that we should be considering to implement
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something like this. dgo to reduce bias stops when there is a more tailored way to do so is frankly, messy. it's sloppy. it also is in contravention of state and federal law. if you would like to change the law, there are ways to do that. but when we talk about not telling our police officers, not to enforce the law, you are essentially subverting the law. and for all practical purposes, changing the law. the fact that there was a robust process around this doesn't matter. it doesn't matter at all. unless it's the public process is around the legislature, unless it's around the state legislature or at the federal level, all seeking to change the
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law through the people who have the authority to do it, then it matters. but saying we had a robust process and a lot of community input to give this body the authority to change the law when it doesn't have the authority, and no matter how robust the public process is, doesn't change that fact. thank you. good evening, commissioners . my name is jan dimond and i've lived here for over 40 years. first of all, i have to say i was heartened to hear commissioner walker say that the bias stops had greatly reduced because of the system that they have in place where the police officers have to be on their camera, say that, you know what they're stopping them for that. that is a hopeful thing for me. um beyond that, i'm just saying that dgo 9.07 is basically the
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local version of california sb 50. that bill failed to be passed into law in sacramento, and it is a complete overreach overreach of this unelected body to try to force it into law. here in san francisco. if the reason for wanting to reduce traffic stops for violations that some people have broken tail lights or out of date registration and cannot afford to fix these things. as we all know, the department of motor vehicles does have resources to help with that. if the reason for wanting to reduce traffic stops for violations is because the police are making too many stops, first of all, great they're doing their job. second of all, this disregards the fact that current traffic stops have already significantly decreased. i know somebody brought up the numbers already, but they bear repeating. in 2019, there were 102,000 traffic stops for violations. it dropped to 40,000 stops in 2020, and in 2022, it
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went all the way down to 17,000. how much lower can we go before enforcement is no longer even matters? his final point, and this was brought up, but it also bears repeating the searches from these traffic stops for violations routinely yield recovery of guns, drugs and other nefarious stuff that, without the search would be freely disseminated throughout the city, making everybody less safe. we do not want that, and we do not want the police punished for doing their jobs. please do not pass d.o.j. hello, commissioner. hello. um, chief of police. scott. and thank you, commissioner walker, for your point that i think i agree with and i hope everyone here agrees with that. we all want to end bias. police stops the entire thing we're debating is how and what's going to be the most appropriate way of doing it. i'd
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like to ensure that we explore options that have already been on tried in other areas, and then also continue our own. so let's picture of future san francisco, where 9.07 is in place once basic vehicle safety codes are no longer fully enforced, they might as well not exist. this will lead to more more cars on the road with broken tail lights drivers being careless about signaling before turns, etc. in short, our streets will be less safe, but that's just the beginning of the problems with this regulation would introduce. if a police officer stops a vehicle for one of these reasons, the driver would know that the police officer is the one in the wrong, not the driver. and this would further erode respect for the law and further inhibit the ability for police officers to do their job. this will make san francisco less safe for all human beings. change your behavior based upon incentives. when chesa boudin declared that he would deprioritize prosecuting drug dealing, what happened? more drug dealing and
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less respect for the law and police. when prop 47 reduced shoplifting from felony to misdemeanor, what happened? more shoplifting and less respect for the law and police. the first sentence of 0907 reads san francisco police department's traffic enforcement efforts shall focus on enforcing safety of sidewalks and roadways. i agree with this first sentence, but not the remainder of the proposal. vote no on 007. let the police do their job. thank you. so i generally come here with a prepared statement and having watched this little farce tonight, i'm abandoning that in addition to what everyone here has said, in addition to listening to the arguments among yourselves, there's one thing that's very clear to me as the former family member of an sfpd officer, you people have no
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frickin idea what they do on the daily. you think the police officer does have the time to have a little debate in their head about which stops you deprioritize or didn't? and are they going to get disciplined or not? they're there first, but bias to action is supposed to be protecting public safety, and you continue early. most of you on this commission seem continually interested only in hindering and hamstringing them from doing, for doing their jobs. i would like to see any one of you pull one shift. have any of you been to the police academy? have you ever been on a ride along? have you ever gone through the civilian academy? because if you haven't, i have, which makes me more experienced than you. and since you serve on
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this commission, the least that you could do is show some respect to the people that you're supposedly helping by actually taking a second to get into their shoes before you pass ordinances like this. 9.07 is not noble. it's not progressive. it's an abuse of power. i can barely address the content because the process is so illegal. no court in the land has ever ruled that you can assume just from disproportionate numbers, that any stop for a traffic violation is necessarily racially motivated. if a disproportionate number of san franciscans were being pulled over for dui, would you feel authorized to ban our sfpd from enforcing state laws against drunk driving? i hope not, you should spend your time as private citizens lobbying legislators to change the law. but you cannot abuse your power as commissioners to ignore the law and worse, punish officers who rightly enforce it. what other state laws can san francisco residents expect? its
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unelected police commissioners to ignore domestic violence and murder in rennes versus the united states, the us supreme court held that a traffic stop is reasonable under the fourth amendment. if a police officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred, even if the stop is a pretext for the investigation of a more serious offense. california preemption law states that neither cities nor their commissions have legal authority to prevent enforcement of state law. this commission cannot believe it is authorized to override the supreme court of the united states, our own legislature, or even the limits of the city charter. from where are you deriving this absolute authority? this is not about pretext. stops this is about your circumventing our state and federal law for your own political purposes. i refuse to believe that you're willing to jeopardize the very existence of this commission that you purport to believe is the only thing keeping our sfpd in check, simply for the political gain of one member. i'm disgusted that the city attorney did not counsel this commission against crafting a dgo, which violates state and federal law and did not have any input from subject
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matter experts or the sfpd. please do not completely destroy the legacy and reputation of this commission. we need this commission. but like all government agencies, we need it to function within the boundaries of its legal authority. thank you. what a night. okay commissioners, did you 0907907 is for me yet another example of the commission's meddling on how the enforcement of the law in san francisco is prioritized? yes. meddlers restore officers to enforce traffic laws, corrodes traffic safety culture. okay the culture for example, discouraging traffic stops for failure to use a turn signal for 100ft or for broken brake lights makes a mockery of wheat drivers. code of communication to avoid collisions. okay. these
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traffic laws are meant to prevent collisions by disincentivizing bad driving habits. yeah these are individuals behind the wheel. this dgo has full potential to promote less traffic safety and disregard for drivers rules of communication. it's about our communication as drivers. we need this laws enforced, not restricted. okay, please don't adopt this pernicious dgo. please. uh, good evening. uh, alan berdahl i am, uh, i'll keep my comments brief because i think everything's been said that was on my mind. um, commissioner walker mentioned a few things. uh, she brought up that all that's happened since these restrictions were being discussed. there's so many things that have happened. we have data from la. we have a, um , uh, state legislature that's
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rejected sb 50, and they've taken up that policy in la right . and we are stuck in two years ago, though, here we're talking about a discussion that we began two years ago, and nobody's responding to what's happened since then. right we're not responding to what's happening around us. we're stuck and we're jamming this down. our throat. it's not right. we have to look at what's happening now. finally one other thing that commissioner walker mentioned was that it's important on a matter like this to vote together, and you guys are about to have a vote here tonight. i'm urging you to vote no. um, and vote no unanimously. this is too important of a matter to have such a split decision. so don't vote tonight, okay? uh, that's all i have to say. thank you.
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hello, president. elias vice president carter robeson, commissioners chief scott and director henderson. my name is zach dillon from the public defender's office. and also the coalition to end bias stops. i know you've received over the last couple of days, a little more than 120 ish letters of support from the coalition members. i'm sure you received many letters from the opposition as well, but the person i've been thinking a lot about, uh, uh, vice president carter roberson, you mentioned, uh, is chief harold medlock, who spoke to you all last year, and he deprioritized pretextual stops in fayetteville, north carolina, and racial disparities did go down and there was no uptick in or ill effects in traffic safety or crime. and commissioner byrne, you asked a question of him saying a decade after enacting that policy, why did the scorecard for fayetteville show that there were huge
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problems with killings by police , drug arrests and racial disparities in traffic stops? and the answer was that he retired and his successor undid that policy. the policy was working, and they undid it. i thought that was a very powerful call fairy tale about undoing something that is effective. um, in one of the coalition's letters that we sent recently, we cited to the la policy and specifically the head of the union there and also advocates for police reform. both wanted to expand it because it is working. this is the kind of thing that can work, and it can address an issue that this commission has admitted time and time again is a reoccurring problem. thank you. uh, good evening, commissioner. i'm deputy public defender brian cox . um, and i'm here as a proud member of the coalition to end bias stops. i think we start in, uh, end, uh, our discussion with
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the stark and unacceptable racial disparities and who gets stopped, who's searched and who gets forced used on them. it takes courage to acknowledge that. and i think it takes courage to address it. the easiest thing to do is to say there's no problem or that it's not a priority. that is, in fact, to say that you know what? black lives don't matter as much . rooting this policy in addressing racial disparities is appropriate. i think because it's black history month, and it comes on the heels of the board of supervisors apology to the black community for, in part, the harms this department has caused to the black community. our discussion indeed, the fight to end pretext stops is rooted in that trauma. we are here to emphatically state that black lives matter, and while sfpd has taken steps to address these harms, the racial disparities unfortunately remain in place. this policy offers the city a chance to reduce those disparities and begin to heal
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the harm. this policy is narrow, clear and matches what other jurisdictions are doing. so therefore, i urge you to be courageous and don't give in to fear mongering. adopt the policy. thank you. uh good evening commissioners. my name is eric arguello. i am the advocacy manager under the center for social justice for glide, and we have been working closely with the stop the bias coalition from the beginning. and we are in fully support of this policy. uh, it's common sense. um, and it's time for us to begin to heal so that we can all be safe. thank you. on the motion, commissioner walker, how do you vote? no. commissioner walker is no commissioner benedicto. yes commissioner
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benedicto is yes. commissioner young. yes yes, commissioner yanez is yes, commissioner. burn! no commissioner. burn is no. commissioner. yee no! commissioner yee is no vice president. carter. oberstar. yes vice president carter overstone is yes. and president elias, president elias is. yes. you have four yeses. next item. line item nine. public comment on all matters pertaining to item 11 below. closed session, including public comment on item ten. a vote whether to hold item 11 in closed session. can i get a motion if any member of the public would like to make public comment regarding closed session, please approach the podium. there is no public comment on line item ten. vote on whether to hold item 11 in closed session. san francisco administrative code section 67.10 action. motion to hold item 11 and closed session. i'll second. okay. sergeant on the motion. commissioner walker, how do you vote? yes, mr. walker is. yes, commissioner. benedicto.
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yes, commissioner benedicto is. yes. commissioner yanez. yes commissioner yanez is. yes. commissioner. burn yes, commissioner. burn is yes. commissioner yee. yes. commissioner yee is yes. vice president carter. yes vice president stone is. yes. president elias. president elias is. yes. you have seven yeses. we'll go into closed session online item 12 vote to elect whether to disclose any or all discussion on item 11 held in closed session. san francisco administrative code section 67.10 action a motion to not disclose. item 11, with the exception of factual information on item 11 a to be provided in the minutes, i'll second the motion. any members of the public like to make public comment regarding line item 12. please approach the podium. i'm seeing none on the motion. commissioner walker, how do you vote? yes. mr. walker is. yes. commissioner benedicto. yes, commissioner. benedicta was. yes. commissioner. janez. yes commissioner is. yes. commissioner byrne. yes, commissioner. burns. yes, commissioner. ye yes. commissioner yee is yes. vice president carter. overstone. yes. vice president wilson is. yes. and president elias.
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