tv Sheriffs Department Oversight Board SFGTV July 3, 2024 8:30pm-11:01pm PDT
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sfgovtv for providing technical assistance to broadcast and record this afternoon's meeting. you may view this afternoon's broadcast on cable channel 26. let's please stand and recite the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the united states of america. and he one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty. and. dan, please call the roll. member. mango present. mango is present. member. proctor. present proctor is present. vice president karen is running late. member. nguyen. president. wynn is present. member. palmer. present. palmer is present. president. sue.
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present. president. sue is present. member. wecter present. victor is present. there are six members present, and we have a quorum. thank you. i just want to make a couple of announcements, if the members of the public and some of our members have not yet seen the session where shamann walton, supervisor shamann walton called for a hearing on the sheriff's office, i think it really brought to light the lack of resources, and i hope people will take a view of that. and there was a good community showing as well. so i want to thank, supervisor walton for calling that hearing. also, just wanted to congratulate member brooker. again, another great graduation and another cohort, for the hunters point family and young community developers, inc, their environmental technician and job readiness training, that was very inspiring. i had a great chat with, one of the graduates who was a dad of four, and his youngest six year old was reading really well, great conversationalist. and so i
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think you should be really proud . and the new center is really beautiful. the southeast community center. and i'm reminded that, the bayview center was where kamala harris had her first headquarters when she was running for district attorney. now, vice president. so it really just takes the community. so thank you very much for all you do. member. thanks for coming out, with that, dan, do we have any additional announcements? yes, madam president, this is the regular in-person monthly public meeting of the sheriff's department oversight board. members of the sheriff's department oversight board will attend this meeting in person. members of the public are invited to observe the meeting in person, except for persons with disabilities requiring a reasonable, reasonable accommodation. only members of the public attending the meeting in person will have an opportunity to provide public comment. public comment is available in person, by email or by postal mail. to submit public comment by email, please email zdob at sf gov. org for public
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comment by postal mail, please mail it to the office of the inspector general, one south van ness avenue, eighth floor, san francisco, california 94 103. for those wishing to make public comment in person when public comment is called during each line item, the public is welcome to address the board for up to two minutes on that line item. there will be general comment at the end of the meeting for items that do not appear on this afternoon's agenda, but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the sheriff's department oversight board, comments or opportunity to speak during the public comment period are available for members of the public who are present in person by approaching the podium when it is free, you will have two minutes to provide public comment. the first tone will alert you that you have 30s to complete your public comment. the second tone will alert you that your two minutes are up. that is the end of announcements. thank you. please call the first agenda item. dan calling line item one approval of minutes. action item. approval of the may third, 2024
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board meeting minutes. a motion to approve the minutes from may 3rd. thank you. do i have a second? second? a motion second that. could you do a roll call? vote, please, do public comment first. oh, i'm sorry for members of the public who would like to make public comment on line item one approval of minutes. please approach the podium when it is free. there is no public comment calling the role on the approval of minutes member mango i mango is i member bruckner i bruckner is i member nguyen i win is i member palmer
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i palmer is i members president su i su is i member wechter. since i was not present at the meeting, i'm voting. i'll vote no. wechter is no. there are five ayes and one no. the minutes from the may third, 2024 meeting are approved. thank you. dan the next item. agenda. i'm sorry. item on the agenda. please colleen. line item two. inspector general report informational item. inspector general terry wiley will give a monthly report from the office of the inspector general. thank you for joining us at the dais. yes. it's great being up here. kind of a floppy microphone for you. no problem, well, good afternoon, everyone. so i will start off by, discussing, probably what has been the biggest news regarding the sheriff's department. and, and we're talking probably mid march through late april, that period
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in which, there were ten deputies assaulted and one civilian, an employee, assaulted at, at the jail in san bruno, in response, the sheriff ordered two jail lockdowns, the first being from april 12th through april 18th and the second being from april 28th through may 1st, and that was to investigate the cluster of assaults. over the past two months, i've been gathering input from numerous sources, about the recent jail lockdowns to better understand, the cause and contributing factors to the lockdowns, but also the impact of the lockdowns, and with the lockdown, the impact the lockdowns have had on inmates, families of the inmates, the jail staff and on programing services, his the attorney
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client, communications and visitation, and then we looked at ways to address, the underlying problems to avoid the lockdowns of the whole facility. and to reduce the length of the lockdowns and mitigate the collateral impacts of the lockdowns, as a result of all of this, on may 14th, the board of supervisors called a meeting in which they asked for, the inspector general, sheriff miyamoto, public defender, chief angela chan, and, oh, the deputy sheriff's association president, ken lamba to present on this issue. and basically give our perspectives of the assaults, the lockdowns and just the overall, situation. one board member, mike nguyen, was also present. and provided his thoughts during public comment, that entire, three hour event
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was on, sfgate, gtv, and as president su indicated, it's probably a worthwhile, view of kind of where we are with the situation with the sheriff's department. it ended up being a three hour, hearing, and so the what, what the inspector general provided were the following. first, we looked at and we let the board of supervisors know the complaints that we have been hearing, and one, of course, the complaints about the extended lockdowns, and the profound effects they were having on the daily routine of the inmates, specifically their ability to shower for, you know, hygiene, spend time outside the cell and just get some fresh air and sunlight, there was a reduction of programing opportunities,
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limited, limited access to commissary and service providers and really preventing them from visiting family and loved ones, it interfered in many cases with their ability to interact with their attorneys, and caused, and this was really the big one. the biggest complaint was, was from inmates who had nothing to do with the assaults. and yet they were suffering lockdowns. and so they felt like they were being punished for something that they did not do and had had nothing to do with. so we looked at, well, what is what is some of the under what are some of the underlying reasons that are causing, well, we understand what are causing the initial lockdowns, but what is causing the length of the lockdowns and the clearly understaffing was one of the big reasons, for the
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extended lockdowns. currently, the sheriff's department has 195, vacancies for sworn personnel, and that number may fluctuate from week to week, the custody operations in are the custody operations division is at about 78. staffing so they're at 386 deputies out of 494, so there are approximately 108 deputies short of their custody operations, when ken lamba of the deputy sheriff's association presented, he gave a snapshot of the staffing levels over the past six years. and in 2019, the sheriff's department was and this was pre-covid, the sheriff's department was down only 48 deputies. and so they were, at 766 deputies, 2020,
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they were down 76 deputies. in 2021, they were down 109 deputies. and between 2021 and 2024, they were down 175 deputies and currently today we're at that 175, what we also concluded that was that clearly they need to fill those positions. but what is created the situation that's currently created is an overreliance on overtime, and it's mandatory overtime of the deputies, and we found that the deputies are working an average of 28 hours overtime time per week. the mandatory overtime and long hours overtime tax fatigues and stresses, the staff causing morale problems and mood disorders. and clearly, this can lead to chronic health and mental problems so that the
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overtime is very taxing on the staff and the overtime is also very costly to the city and county of san francisco. so decreasing staff over the years has exacerbated, has been exacerbated by significant increases in the jail population in, probably the over the last two years, we have seen an increase from about 800 inmates to about 1200. today and we also see that in the future, continuing to rise, now the increase in the jail population has led to, of course, overcrowding in the jails. and required the sheriff to open up a new jail annex to address the overcrowding, it stressed it stretches staff, to cover more areas, the additional jail annex
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areas, well, additional jail annex areas are available, but will require more staff to open them up, if they keep moving at the pace they're moving in terms of the increase in the jail population, and all of it decreases the quality of life of both the deputies and the inmates. so the causes, as i said, that we heard of the lockdowns in april, were due to increase assaults on on deputies , the sheriff locks the jail down following the violent incidents to address first, the incident and investigate whether the incidents are isolated or or determining whether they're dealing with a more pervasive problem. is it something that's a more organized assault on the deputies, the sheriff's department may need to deploy staff. well, generally, what happens when you have an assault at, because they're already understaffed. they have to do a redeployment of staff so that they can conduct the investigation and that, in the
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end, results in the shutdown, because of the redeployment of staff, and collective bargaining agreements, require or specify a minimum staffing level in, in designated areas and shifts. and so the sheriff has to meet those , those specific minimum requirement s, which is the result. and as a result, he has to redeploy personnel in order to meet those requirements, now, the sheriff's department also onboarded nearly 300 new deputies over the past four years, many of those deputies started during during the covid lockdowns and do not have a lot of experience with in open setting of inmates, and that is has been a little bit of a problem in that the deputy, the new deputies just don't have as much experience, dealing with the inmates as, the or the
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deputies that were hired pre-covid, also, there's been a big change in the composition of the inmates, primarily due to bail reform as a result of bail reform, the concentrated inmate population in san bruno, coming out of the pandemic, pandemic era as a result of bail reform, tends to be those in those inmates that have that have, that are in there because of more serious and violent offenses, whereas the individuals that are, there for the lower level offenses that in the past may have been housed at santa at at san bruno are now they're staying an average of about seven days. and so the result is the long term, inmates are there for more serious and violent offenses. and a more
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difficult, population in, to manage. and, and as a result, they pose, a more serious consequences to the deputies if anything gets out of hand. and, as a result, we also saw, that because there are so because of there's been a ramp up, in the city of the arrest of drug offenders and, and, well, really drug offenders, what you find in the, the population has changed in that you see more individuals in custody who are detoxing or mentally unstable, because of that increase in, in the ramp up outside and the arrest of those individuals. and so that poses their own unique challenges in that now you're dealing with the
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population, as i said, they're detoxing, there are more individuals who have mental health issues. and the personnel and the jail is really not the best equipped, best place equipped to handle this kind of population, there's also funding issues with behavioral health in that behavioral health is not able to provide 24 hour services to those individuals who are detoxing or having mental health issues, and that is, problematic . so what are the recommendations that we discussed? well all the recommendations that we recommended to the board of supervisors to consider, one would be the redeployment of staff. you know, i know that there are quite a number of deputies that the sheriff has redeployed to assist with, the drug enforcement and the issues going on in the tenderloin. and
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that has taken individuals, out of the jail and onto the streets . but by being on the streets, they're not performing. those are non-core functions as, of deputy sheriffs, the core functions of deputy sheriffs are , to control the jail and manage the jail. and so in order to reduce the reliance on mandatory overtime, then our recommendation is to redeploy that staff that's currently on the streets, back to the jails and not for an extended period of time, but at least to give the sheriff an opportunity to, increase the staffing levels, the other is to increase the investment by the city and county into recruitment efforts of the deputy sheriffs or the sheriff's department, for example, currently, the san
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francisco sheriff's office has one dedicated employee to full time recruiting, while, the san francisco police department has 12, individuals who are exclusively dedicated to recruitment. the deputy sheriff's association association also recommended, some salary incentives, by having new deputies start at step two as opposed to step one, also, they could consider coordinating their efforts with the police department and do a national recruitment effort, help with relocation expenses, possibly, we saw another problem is that they need to speed up the hiring process. the sheriff's department has an insufficient number of individuals, of background
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staff, investigators to process applicants. so currently they have nine full time and two part time background investigators. but there were occasions where those background investigators were redeployed because of understaffing at the jail. so those, so the work that they should have been doing, doing background investigations that had to stop so that they could be a backfill, for the understaffing with the jail. and so we recommended that they consider outsourcing their background, investigations by either, giving handing over the background investigations to the department, to the department of human resources, san francisco's department of human resources, or consider outsourcing the background investigations. so, for example, san mateo sheriff's , outsource, their background
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investigators. so they have six full time deputy sheriffs doing backgrounds and then they have 15, individuals that they've outsourced doing their backgrounds. and so that's another, way to speed up the hiring process, but, you know, at the end of the day, they need an increased budget to add individuals to their recruitment team, we also looked at their operation in terms of, the programing that occurs inside of the jail. and we found that, they're also needs to be some budget increases to improve, the pretrial division services, diversion services as, to add more case managers to the pretrial diversion services, of course, jail behavioral health because of the change in the population with the inmates, there needs to be more, staffing of behavioral health, to deal
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with, you know, those individuals that are going through detox, mental health issues, but also reentry and discharge, and, finally, to upgrade the technology, to support the ability to better monitor the jails with less manpower. so that was our assessment to the board of supervisors, we also continue to meet with community based organizations. so we met with the san francisco jail justice coalition. we're trying to meet with them once a quarter because they're very involved with the inmates. and so we, met with them at and, we also found that they are able to provide, assistance with the assessment of, of real time what's going on with the inmates, so that that there we attended their meeting and, and got some pretty good
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feedback from them, we also met with sonny schwartz and eileen hurst, sonny sonny schwartz was was the program director of the jail under, sheriff's mike hennessy administration's. and eileen hurst was, a, upper management person in the sheriff's department during that era, they were absolutely, a wealth of knowledge in terms of really looking at the operation pre-covid. and, sonny schwartz was, was just had all kinds of information on the programing that was going on. so we were able to get a real good look at what the programing looked like, in past years, compared to what it looks like today. and eileen hurst was just, able to provide just such an in-depth history,
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lyrical perspective of the sheriff's department. so i find that they those two will continue to be really, really strong resources, that, you know, as we deal with, with and face problems that we have to assess, they're great resources to go to and kind of get an idea of how these issues were dealt with in the past, we also, participated in the california civilian oversight alliance conference that was hosted by the department of police accountability here in san francisco. so, it was a great conference. i was one of the panelists, along with the naco president, anthony fennell and the berkeley director of police accountability, hansel aguilar. and we focused on and had a conversation about racial equity in police oversight. and the importance of racial equity and police oversight.ught was
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very valuable. program that we participate in that day. and i want to thank president sue and board member palmer, who both attended and engaged in the discussion with everyone about these issues. and so it was really, really a valuable, program to participate in. and then i'll end by saying that, unfortunate. early on may 28th, we had a death in custody, while the inmate was constructively in the sheriff's department's custody, he was actually under the care of doctors in zuckerberg general hospital. so he died at the hospital, and, he had some severe medical conditions, and i can't publicly comment any further on that investigation, but we're continuing to follow the investigation. and i would note
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that within 20 minutes of his passing, we were notified by the sheriff's department of this incident, which bodes well for, that kind of communication going on between the inspector general and the sheriff's department. thank you. thank you, do we have any questions or comments from members? member. okay. thank you , mr. wiley. it was really i really appreciate the context. it was a very thorough lay of the land of all the things that are going on, a few questions for me. you spoke about the lockdowns. did they mention how long the length of the lockdowns is and how often it occurs? yeah weekly basis, monthly basis that that was well, it it varies because it's really incident. you know, if there's an incident that creates the lockdown and so there's no, specific time,
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although we did hear that there were daily lockdowns at 11 a.m. or 11. yeah, 11 a.m, but i wasn't we weren't able to confirm that there's a daily lockdown at 11 a.m, like, that really meets what we call a lockdown. and we consider a lockdown to be. you can't leave your cell. you can't even groom and shower. you're in your cell, now, we did find that the april 12th through the 18th was a six day lockdown. and so. so, which is pretty lengthy. six days of no programing, you know? and so we're, we're we're still trying to figure out why that was so long and, and, and april 28th through may 1st was a four day lockdown. and so those but i will saytqthe assaults on the deputies were serious
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assaults and did require some investigation by the sheriff, and, but we're still figuring out why so long. okay. i mean, i'm going to ask either from your team or the sheriff's department for a number, okay? because i want to know in context of how often that happens. and i know you mentioned, that there is a difference between long term clients versus short term clients, long term clients being that■c there was a finding that there were probably more serious cases. i do remember an angela chan from her, the public defender's office, that she mentioned that a lot of these cases are like, are also attributed to the backlog of court cases that does contribute to it. so part of it is, you know, with covid, it's the system slowed and these cases were not being adjudicated. but what we're really what we're
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seeing today is that because of bail reform, individuals that probably three years ago would be kept in custody are now being released. and so the result is the majority of the individuals that we've seen in custody are there for the more serious and violent offenses. yeah. okay. that's good to know. okay and then i know, you know, i mentioned this before and i agree that the understaffed is a huge issue for everyone is and i just wanted to mention that i think that in peril, i am of the belief that we also need to parallel path to bring that jail client population down. and whether it's like looking at the population that has less serious crimes or like, i don't know, missing minors to kind of help them to get out of the system, because i think it attributes to the overcrowding issue. you spoke about the understaffing
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issue, the backlog of cases. if we help bring that client population down, it's going to help everyone. right. and then, i also know, i know you mentioned the deputies, the shortage when you work when they were comparing, i don't know if that number is coming from you or from the sheriff's department, but what is that compared to? like you mentioned, 20 and 19, 48, under staffing, 2020 grew to 7621 to 2024, 175. what's the benchmark? well, first of all, these numbers were provided to the board of supervisors by the deputy sheriff's association. and the numbers appear to us to be consistent with what we also were finding, now, we did not have the month of the year by year breakdown like they, they had. but, we're we're seeing this pretty consistent, increase
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in the number of, of deputies that the sheriff's department is down and it's, and it's attributed to a combination of things. it's attributed to, there are individuals that are just up for retirement, and but there's also individuals who are choosing to leave. right, because of the, a lifestyle. i don't know if lifestyle is the right word, but, that, you know, it's a stressful environment. totally. and then even, like, working overtime, nobody wants to work overtime if they're stressed out. so i, i understand i guess i'm trying to understand, like what is it comparing it to. is it like, is it comparing to 20 1020 like i that's what. well we're not we're not really comparing it to anything. we're looking at really pre-covid like okay,
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pre-covid, when you look at those years like 2007, 2008, they were fully staffed and but you get to 2019 and you started seeing that the, the number of people that were leaving was far outpacing the number of new hires. and and from 2019, each year, that number continues to grow. now, it's a phenomenon that all departments across the country are suffering. so you go to any police department around the country and they are having a hard time filling the vacant the vacancies, and the sheriff's department is no different than than what's happening all over the country, which is why so many departments are investing in the recruitment, i mean, there's a department that was offering, new hires, 50,000, $50,000 bonus just to take the
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job, and so we're seeing the same thing happen with san francisco. i mean, they're really struggling trying to find candidates. yeah i don't know if that answers your question, but, but, i mean, i, i guess i remember with the sheriff's training that they were speaking to that about the like a lot of the like almost half the staff is going to be retired out. yes. and this is going to become a bigger problem. and i agree i understand the like the severity of this issue. right. like it impacts the jail population as well. yeah. i mean there's got to be a bigger investment in the recruitment. and one full time deputy is that that that's a you know, you need more people recruiting. thank you. any other questions or comments from. i have a few myself. palmer. what constitutes an assault that requires a lockdown? well i mean
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i think that when assaults a deputy and the, the deputy is, needs assistance. that's an assault. now, i know that the sheriff had a press conference in which they had photos of the results of some of the assaults, and one one assault, for example, the inmate knocked the deputy, down, and he fell flat down on the cement and had a softball type not on the back of his head, so that was a serious assault in another in another deputy, the inmate did him, through his uniform and broke the skin through the uniform. so it was a very serious bite, i mean, those would be typical of what we would consider a serious
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assault. and i don't want to minimize assaulting, law enforcement personnel, because that's a serious situation, and i didn't want the public to think that what they see in the movies and on tv, where people are getting shanked and killed. so i wanted to differentiate reality and fiction, and so if these are the, the nature of assaults where they're getting beat bit or pushed down, that seems to be again, i'm not minimizing the assault, but that seems to be a clear cut investigation. this person pushed this guy down, or this person got bit by this person, so that wouldn't require a six day lockdown, right? that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of. okay that, i think that that is the big question is that why does the jail have to
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be shut down for six days? and why? well, that that is, that's that's a question. yeah. so, so far in your reports, we haven't heard of any assaults to where a deputy got stabbed or choked out or his life, like, directly was in danger, not that we're aware of. no. okay are the assaults, the assailants, are they mentally ill or detoxing? are is there any evidence that shows that they may be a part of, street organizations, we don't have that specific information in terms of the specific individual assaults. and on the individuals that committed the assaults that that's, that's still part of an ongoing investigation. and also, can i just quickly jump in there?
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also, we should tread lightly on talking about the details, because it's still an open investigation. right? so there's certain questions. i don't think that the inspector general can answer because it's ongoing, and especially if it's personal information about the inmate. so i just wanted to know i just want that for all of us. right. and that's why i just wanted to characterize what things are, because people outside of what we do for a living are experienced in our personal lives. may their thoughts may run like, oh my god, the deputy is in there getting killed and we just want to make sure if they are, we want that action to be taken, to, to avoid that and to prosecute that, another question is the units because in the jail there are certain categories of people that are housed together. so, some are people who are sex offenders are housed together. some people who are murderers are very violent or house together. and then there are low level offenders that are housed together to, for their own safety, so the units
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that are not involved in any of the assaults that are taking place, how are they treated and are they put on lockdown as a, as a i don't want to say retaliation or just safety, but are they suffering the, the consequences of what some one, one other individual has done well that, that that was one of the major complaints by inmates that we spoke with. right. because they called me they called me to complain about that. so i wanted to just put on record for those who have reached out and said that, hey, we're not doing anything. why are we being put on lockdown, so there was a report that there was a protest in front of cj two, and it was reported that the jail went on lockdown because of it. that was relayed by someone who was a resident in the jail. so i don't know if that's the reason why it was on lockdown. so was the outcome of the engagement with the protesting citizens, that there complaints be heard? and what
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was their complaint? yeah, i, i have no information that the jail was ever locked down because of a protest outside the jail. okay. and i have just two more questions. i know i'm taking them a while, but just, one solution that i like to offer for the reduction of the jail population. because, yes, i too, am a part of the san francisco jail justice coalition. and one of the things that we suggested, especially for probation and parole matters , because they can get filled up with people being violated and just flashes where they're just being investigated are long-term, where they be sent back to prison, maybe asking the city to look into secure transitional housing facilities where these people can be diverted from our county resources, since it is a state, probation, parole at least is a state facility, or agency, maybe
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we can create secure, transitional housing facilities where those matters can take place there. and my last statement are as far as staffing. i think that staffing, based on what you have said and based on the word on the street, is the popularity of being in law enforcement, especially during the social justice movements that have been taking place, have giving law enforcement a bad rap in general, that could be pretty much, you know, agreed upon, so i think it is necessary that all of us, including this board, make very, intentional strides to promote what is going good in law enforcement. the changes that have occurred, that people concerns are being answered and not just falling on deaf ears or, just just knowing that, the people who had marched in
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protest for so many years, especially after george floyd and so on and so forth, that they see positive results, moving forward with our law enforcement. and that way, i think would garner more, more, desire to become law enforcement and to, to help with that popularity. well, you know it. i'll just add this one little piece, mr. palmer, along those last lines that you said, there's also two things we found. we also found that, since the inception of the inspector general's office, we have seen the number of reported assaults, by deputies dropped by at least 50. so we're seeing fewer reports of complaints against deputies. and what we also found , in our evaluations was that the sheriff's department has gone a very long way in terms of
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using de-escalation type approaches in managing the jail, so those were all very, very positives, positive developments that we saw. so, member palmer, i recall that at, the last meeting, you had mentioned that you, understood that there was a very positive culture change with the sheriff's office, particularly in custody services and that's consistent with a news article that came out where someone in custody is going to be transferred to another facility, he was happy about that. only because of the underlying population now more serious people who are have mental illness. as well as drug and drug issues. so i think that that's very attributable to, sort of the community kind of policing community input, the reforms that have been put in place, so i would like to
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encourage that. and i also think that recruitment is for all of us to do this is a beautiful city. we want to maintain a beautiful city. and that means that all of us, do the work that makes it positive. that's why we are all sitting here, as essentially volunteers to help, you know, make the city a better city, if others don't have questions, i'll jump in. okay. member wechter yes, i have a number of questions about this and some other things. okay. first of all, thank you for doing such a comprehensive review of this complex issue. i really appreciate the fact that you met with miss hurst and sonny schwartz to get a historical perspective, because having lived through the, michael hennessey years, which saw dramatic improvements in the sheriff's department that make it one of the most progressive in the country, i really appreciate the fact that you talked with them to get that important historical perspective. you mentioned that you recommended redeploying the staff. that's currently assigned
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to patrol duties. how many deputies potentially could be shifted on a, let's say, an emergency basis to relieve some of this mandatory overtime? how many of those who are on patrol could be shifted to the jail? well, that's another thing we're trying to figure out because there are 130 that are eligible for redeployment, but there's not 130 being deployed at any one time. and the sheriff is also taking them from four different divisions and not just the jail, but the, the core mission of the sheriff's department is the management of the jail, so we feel that if there is any redeployment that that's where the priorities should be. so do you have a sense of on any given day, how many deputies are assigned to patrol? could instead be at the jail helping to relieve this
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drastic reliance on overtime? those those were some of the questions that came out of the board of supervisors meeting that, we have requested, the sheriff provide us with those with that information and has that information been provided yet? not yet. okay and then you also mentioned us speeding up the hiring process. and i heard much part of that hearing. heard mr. lambda talk about potentially outsourcing background investigations. is there a sense of how long a background investigation takes, given the staff the sheriff's department has versus how long it would take if they outsource this? as san mateo county does, and what the cost for outsourcing would be for each, each applicant. yeah. i as i understand it, the outsourcing would be no more expensive than paying the salary of a of a of a deputy sheriff, so i don't think
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there would they would the sheriff's department needs is additional funding, so that they can either hire more people to do the background background investigation or outsource the investigations, but but i think that, for example, san mateo sheriff is outsourcing it because they've got manpower issues. and in order to fill those manpower issues, you've got to get the backgrounds done to get the candidates. and right now, i think that that's where the sheriff's department's hiring process is lacking, because you can go find the candidates all day long. but they've got to go through the backgrounds and those agencies that are able to, as fast as possible, get their candidates through the backgrounds. they can, hire them before somebody else can hire them, because most of these candidates are in were
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san francisco's in competitive situations with other departments. okay. and then could you give us an update on the status of your budget request? the mayor recently released her budget. well, we'll be making our budget presentation on june 14th to the board of supervisors. okay. can you brief us on what the status is? well, the mayor has basically cut the, inspector general's budget and basically did not provide us with a budget. okay. is looking at the budget, from the mayor's, budget. it shows they are allocating, 1.15 positions. is that correct? yes, but that's not that's not completely accurate because there was a, there was a mistake when the numbers were submitted and they put my position and dance
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positions in the wrong places. and so the numbers came out a little different. but at the end of the day, when you look at where all the numbers are supposed to be, their funding, the ig and dan lang's position for next year. so the mayor's budget, if i'm correct, is only funding two position yours and dan's. yes. no. support staff, no investigators, no attorneys, no auditors. is that correct? correct. then how would you be able to fulfill your charter mandated mission, well, that'll be difficult. so so i'm not clear how the charter mandates that there be one investigator in your office for every 100 deputies. how can the mayor not provide the funding when the charter says it must be provided? well, i'm. i'm honestly not going to get into the politics of it because as
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the inspector general, i'm tasked with building an agency that can conduct proper oversight of the sheriff's department and, and, you know, the charter, requires, that we be allowed, one investigator per 100 deputies, we anticipated that this was going to be a tough budget year. so we, we submitted a budget that, strategically, would allow the city and county to phase in our agency. so so instead of asking for all the investigators all at once, we asked for, funding for, i believe it was three investigators and, and so it was a really i think our total budget came out to 2.5 million, that would at least get us some
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administrative support investigators and a, one attorney. and that would allow us to get off the ground. and was your request for the attorney was that for an 81, 81 assistant chief attorney? yes and normally an assistant chief attorneys, supervisors, an entire division. the public defender's office has, i think, 4 or 5 of them, each of them supervising a division. yeah but what given what we have to do, you know, this is an agency that's just getting off the ground. you're, basically setting out an agency that's really existing, when you look at what that with that particular lawyer does, that's an that's in an existing agency. we're not in existing agency. we're trying to build an agency. okay as someone who worked on the campaign to establish oversight, right. i'm really shocked and outraged that you're
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not getting funding for the necessary positions of investigators, auditors and support staff. i think that's essential. the voters very clearly stated they wanted an office of inspector general to do independent investigations, systemic evaluations, audits of the sheriff's department. they did not want the department of police accountability to do it. so i'm surprised this has not been more in the public consciousness, more in the press , because it seems to be saying we're going to ignore the charter now. now, i do support your your the hiring of staff. i do not support the hiring of an 8181 assistant chief attorney. this is sort of going beyond just the inspector general's report right now. so i'd like to focus. i think i think i think this is very critical. this is critical for the entire operation of his office over the next year. and we've been following we've been following his budget presentations and we have been speaking with supervisors. so if you'd like to, you know, continue that, i would encourage you to also
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contact the supervisors and the mayor's office. i intend to and as i say, i will very strongly. i think i wanted to correct you that you said that the voters did not intend for the department of police accountability to also handle this. i just want to make it clear to the public there is a letter of agreement, and that particular voting did not weigh in on whether or not the department of police accountability should or should not be doing the job. so i don't want to disparage the department of police accountability because they have been doing a good job. they've won awards both for their auditing as well, right now, what what the inspector general's office should be doing is not only handling those complaints, but also what's with the sheriff's office. so it also continues to burden the sheriff's office when the inspector general can't take on and review particular complaints with independent investigators. correct? i understand, but the charter did say the inspector general would investigate all complaints right now. dpa is investigating a certain classification of complaints.
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certain number the charter said oig would investigate all complaints. right. but you're making but you're making a commentary on dpa, which is silent in that charter amendment. so i don't want to inject particular things or make it appear that we're disparaging the department of police accountability. no, but the mayor's current budget seems to intend to fund dpa to do the duties of the inspector general, rather than funding the inspector general to perform those. right now, the mayor has asked to share two investigators. so, and right now there are investigators that currently handle sheriff's complaints. so that is the status of it. now, we're hoping that it changes because the office of inspector general should be independent and separate. but going into this, we already knew that there of lf transition, 1 to 2 years. i mean, ideally it would have been one year if it were the kind of staffing that we were looking at, but it starting a brand new
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agency and also doing the hiring. we never expected it to be in in a short shrift that we would actually get the whole agency and independent investigators. so, we appreciate the transition time because we don't want to miss any of the complaints and we don't want to miss statutory deadlines. well, not funding for the next fiscal year won't even allow them to start the hiring process. it doesn't take this long in other agencies that have been newly established and people in the oversight community can testify to that, but not giving you anybody doesn't even let you start the process of recruitment, which i think is very necessary. and essentially saying that the ig won't even be operational investigating complaints for over a year, there's no possibility whatsoever. so i'm very disturbed by by this budget. and i think we should all be. and i think everyone who supported creation of sheriff's oversight should be very concerned and outraged by this. i did one of
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the questions your newsletter said that you made a trip to washington, dc, i did. can you tell us more about that? yes, so they had a day on the hill, where you are given an opportunity to meet with your local, legislators and, and my the whole purpose of the trip was to go back and, make a connection with our local legislators. so, for example, i, i, got all of the information of, miss pelosi's legislative director and, barbara lee's legislative director, congressman eric swalwell, although he's not in san francisco, is, a good friend. and so it was an opportunity to speak with his office, but really, the main purpose was to go out and find, get more
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information about, any grant funding that might be available to the inspector general's office, and things of that nature. and so it was it was very, very good trip, and just and just also connecting with, the, the legislators and, and a big surprise is we thought we were just going to go to the capitol and, and then a day before the meeting started, we were told we were starting off at the white house. and so we met with, a lot of the white house staff and, so, i mean, i, i, it was a great trip. who sponsored that, the national bar association sponsored the day on the hill. and what they did is, because i'm a member of the national bar association, they set up the trip and, set up the meetings with all of the legislators. and so we were able
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to go into the back halls of congress and meet with a lot of congressional staffers and who could not have been nicer. did did the national bar association pay for it, no, because i was going on behalf of san francisco. so san francisco paid for it. yes. okay. and was it focused on civilian oversight, the purpose of the trip was to go and talk. you know, i'm, i'm in a in the stage of trying to get an agency off the ground, and in terms of, of funding, you know, i'm looking at grant funding. i'm looking at all areas of funding. and clearly, that's going to be important to get an agency off the ground. and coming from a background and, with the district attorney's office, many of those
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offices operate by not only government funding, but grant funding and federal grant funding. and so i went back there to find out what kinds of grant funding programs are available for agencies like the inspector general and who else from san francisco went on that trip? no one. oh, okay. okay in the future, you might want to check in with folks at nicole who have gotten a grant from the us department of justice to do a study regarding oversight. and they may be able to give some information about grants that are available. and i think oversight works best when it works cohesively and works together. and, you know, there's a lot of knowledge there. and there's a very good long standing oversight agency in washington, dc with personnel who who have worked for the federal government, who probably could contribute to that effort. yeah. no, i sit down with, anthony fennel, the president of naco, and we had a long discussion about, grant funding and, possible opportunities for
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to seek grant funding and that it is about personal relationships. i think, vice president carrion can also attest it's really the unity bars and the different bar associations that have really ships with our electeds at the federal government. so it really is important for you to be present there and make the best. and i really appreciate the fact that you're thinking outside of the box and that you're seeking a very broad range of support. i think that's beneficial for us in so many ways. i also, i am also bothered, disturbed, disappointed to be frank, that we haven't gotten the funding that we need to do this important work. right, but you know what? our ancestors have fought through it. we will fight through this too, right, and we will get to the place that we need to get. so i appreciate all of the work that you and the team is doing. and it's unfortunate that in, in essence, not it's not that you were not
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funded. it's, it's you're kind of being underfunded because now you're taking away a position that you currently have. right? because if it's only going to be for you to youurrently have three people. so instead of giving you money, you've actually been taken. it's been taken from you. so that that to me is what is more, damaging and concerning because i think it's a pretty magnificent, and, you know, and as a past prosecutor myself and an attorney for 15 years and being in all these different leadership positions, the work that it takes to do this kind of detailed analysis and to learn from the mistakes and the strengths of others is not a two person job. no, it simply isn't, and we live in a very complex city with a lot of resources. so to see that the safety of the people who come here to do business, the people
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who live here, the people that build their families and, you know, their their communities here are not being adequately, listened to, right. like, i mean, this went for the vote. this this is the people's decision, and here we are. here we are after all of the work that is done to then actually be put in a deficit is incredibly problematic. and i ask all community, to go to that board of supervisors meeting because this is if you want to be safe, if you want inmates and different clients to be treated with respect, then in each of us needs to show up and each of us needs to be able to say, this is unacceptable. but this is also, you know, a holistic question as well. we've talked for years and years or the board of supervisors has talked years and years about forensic auditing.
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and it's not just words, because we had the auditor come speak at the last meeting of what entails an official audit. and we see a lot of waste in the city, which is very disappointing. and you know, i'm going to ask you further questions about behavioral health, about the detox situations. the budget should not be coming out directly from the sheriff's office. and the jails are not necessarily appropriate place to have those services. and there's an overall shortage of staff and the management. so but i'm going to go to member nguyen to see if he has any questions or comments. and then to you, vice president karen. and then down the line, just a comment. thank you for all the work you're doing. it sounds like you're really busy out there and i am showing up to multiple meetings going to washington and it's, it's admirable. so thank you for that. right and thank you, member. when for going through extra training and getting your toe certificate. so that's that's a whole nother thing. i mean, to demonstrate that there
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is a movement and career advancement within the sheriff's office, i think will help overall in the recruitment. thank you, vice president karen. nothing further. thank you. member buckner. no. thank you, and i definitely echo my colleagues. thank you for all that you've done, you know, thus far. and, you know, this is just the beginning. we got a long ways to go. i think one of the things that i did want to ask, i think that would be helpful for all board members. and i also think for the ig is if we could work on some sort of a template through the chair, in terms of information that we get from the ig, i think it's a it could be a little rough and tough when we're ripping off questions that you're not prepared to necessarily be able to answer. and i also think it would help us in formulating information that's going to be shared with members of the public. that's coming from from the ig, because i would like to hear more of the statistics and highlights around how we've already been able to make impact, with the shortage and under resources that we currently have, i just think about how, you know, we haveo st
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we're doing with the limited resources, with the limited manpower. this is what we're able to do. we can do more, should be doing more in the charter has called for us to do more. so i'm in total agreeance with everyone there. i did just want to state for the record, i was a little weary when i start thinking about how changing up, the recruitment process, just thinking about as an employer, not hiring people for the sake of hiring people or deputies, but actually the right deputies and the right people, because that also can alter the work that we're doing. if we're really just looking to have bodies, on the department could actually cause more detriment and more trauma and more harm to what it is that we're trying to do. so i just wanted to put those two things out there and also apologize for all the sniffling. but there is a high pollen count and, yeah, it's one of those days for me. just a quick question. who wrote the description of the department
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that's in the mayor's budget book? was that the mayor's office, yeah, i have to. i don't know exactly what you're, on page 297, 298 of the mayor's budget. i don't have it in front of me. i have to look at that to. but i'll look at it, and. yeah, if you if you could let me know. i'm curious where that because some of the text seems a little strange. okay. yeah, i'll let you know, so i guess, we had been talking about templates, one of my favorite words. and so i, i've been trying to not call the inspector general at seven at night or even ten at night, and we've had lots of conversations. so we are working on templates and also for the sheriff's office so that we have, consistent reporting. and this also gives an indication particularly we have the cfo here today about the kinds of technology that we need so that we don't take up more staff time to call numbers, you know, and so and we want to be consistent so people aren't guessing on particular reports, so i wanted
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to just drill down a little bit on, bail reform. and just for the record, i am an attorney. the department of insurance bail is a form of insurance. so i heard so much that bail was an unregulated industry. just want to make clear, under the 1937 bail bonds act, the department of insurance regulates bail agents. and although there isn't a whole lot of bail now. so you see a lot of the businesses kind of folding. but as a consequence, the bad part is there are these fly by night organizations, pretending to be nonprofits, acting as bail agents. and that is unlawful. so i just wanted to put that out there and actually, taking money and not actually bailing a person out. so that's disturbing. so i, i just want a little bit more clarification on that, because with bail reform, you're saying that the people who would have been previously held are being released, but and then you're left with the more serious crimes, but then
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wouldn't that have caused even more of a higher jail population. well, so what what i'm saying is that, yes, it it did cause a higher jail population, but it caused a population that was easier to manage and it's, even though there are, lower numbers than in the past, although there's been a significant increase in san francisco because of the ramp up of putting more police on the street and making more arrests, but those those individuals, that were in jail, in the past, it it made it the, the, the types of individuals that were in custody were a more manageable group of folks, and what i mean by that is somebody who committed a burglary, for
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example, might still be for bail reform, might still be in custody. and whereas now with bail reform, a lot of these individuals are now being let out and the only ones that are being left in custody are the ones that are committing the robberies, the carjackings, the, the felonies. we still would have had those that population and it's they still would have been in there. but it, it it makes for a different population when they're the majority that are in there. yeah. and are you saying that if, if there were the, the lesser, the quote unquote lesser, crimes that were committed by certain individuals , that it would have evened out the population, i don't know. no. what i, what we're saying is that now, now you have, and i think you have to really look, everyone speaks about the article that the one inmate wrote, and this was an individual who's been in and out
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of custody for the last ten years in san francisco, and he wrote an article in which he said that today, it's a much more difficult place to do time in, because because of the types of individuals that are in there now, in general population, you have more individuals who are detoxing, who have mental health issues, and although they have a wing that deals with those individuals who have mental health issues, you still have individuals that may not be housed in the mental health issue, but they have some instability, some mental instability, and they're being housed in general population. and so it makes it just a much more difficult place to do time in, which is why you had the one in the gentleman, i believe his name was jerry wilson wrote the article that he would rather go to state prison than stay in the san francisco, county jail. and
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a lot of it has to do with the population that's currently, the configuration of th■e population that's currently there. and i think it was sort of a balance, a risk analysis for him because he does enjoy the more positive environment of the sheriff's deputies. so as he's moving, he's expecting a better population, but he's unsure of how the deputies will be treating him in a new facility, so the other thing in terms of budget, maybe we can get a little bit more creative, we the city doesn't have or has a shortage of the health facilities, the substance abuse facilities, and some of that money is unused. if that money is unused, that should go to the inspector general's office as well as the sheriff's are monitoring those particular situations, so let's do a little hunting and line by line. i'm
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all game. i'm game for it wherever we can get some funding, and, and you know, and also advocate for zero based budgeting because unfortunately, the way government budgeting works is the bigger the more money you have in the pot, the more powerful you appear to be. but it's either use it or lose it. and, we have been very lean and mean, maybe much to our detriment, to be churning all this information out. and then i've purposely set out an agenda where we're actually getting additional training as members, because we don't even have a budget for our anticipated 80 hours of training that we want. we had 20 hours compressed from the get go, and i think we all really benefit from the training. and not to disparage the police commission, but they're not required to go through any training, which is a little bit shocking when you are creating policy and i know member bruckner was an esteemed member of the police commission, but i think it makes a big difference when we have training and we and we when we are checking in with the union and
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to demonstrate that we are trying to understand their position because our oversight is not just about the incarcerated population and the affected families, but also the well-being, the physical and mental well-being of our deputies and the working conditions, i also wanted to just point out to the public, we knew this from training, and we kind of take it for granted, the sheriff's deputies in the jails are not, they don't have weapons. so their best tool is actually their voice. how to de-escalate. unless you de-escalate population, you know, any kind of arguments before they escalate. and so one of the benefits of them being in patrol in the tenderloin, that makes a difference is that they're able to talk to the individuals, because some of these people have been incarcerated before. so they're kind of known entities, whereas they might not have a relationship with a police officer. they'd rather talk to a sheriff. and sometimes that can
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avoid, a more serious issue or, you know, even an arrest if someone is compliant. so i just wanted to make it clear to the public, people are thinking, well, why are these deputies being assaulted? and why can't they defend themselves? and they really, that is like the absolute last resort, but they do not have weapons with them when they're in the jails. and in fact, any of the deputies who are visiting the jails have to check in their weapons before they enter the jails. so and we look forward to i think, we are going to have more regular visits among the members. i know because we were all so busy, it was a little bit difficult to calendar year. so i'd like to do that more, and then, so and then also member palmer, i'd like to make sure that we hear more from the jail justice coalition on, and i really appreciate the families also having come in february to talk about the effects of the lockdowns, i personally signed up on the visits to see what kind of information i would get ahead of
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time, notifications if there was a lockdown and if there was a visit interrupted. so i think the notices have gone out more efficiently, we're also looking at possible text messages. we understand a lot of families live, you know, two, two hour drive away. so it's a it's, you know, disappointing to say the least. as they're on the road and then they get a lockdown message. so thank you so much for that, and so with that i'm going to open it to public comment. thank you, madam president. and for the record, vice president carrion is present and arrived after the call. the roll we have a full board for members of the public who would like to make the public comment on line. item two, inspector general, report. please approach the podium when it is free. we have no public comment. thank you. let's move on to the next agenda item. calling line item three. san francisco sheriff's office presentation informational item patrick lerm, chief financial
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officer for the san francisco sheriff's office, will present on sfsu budget and priorities. thank you for being here, and welcome. good afternoon, inspector general wiley, president sue, vice president karen. commissioners, members of the public. my name is patrick leung. i'm the chief financial officer for the police. our sheriff's office. today, i will be how much? how the difference is how the police department got more money. the most pleasant changes. the commission meetings start at 2:00 here versus 530 for the police, today i will be presenting our information technology needs. i want to pull up the. thank you. first, i want to begin by saying that the sheriff's office. we're still a very heavy, heavily paper based organization, one example of
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that is our time sheets, we don't have any electronic system. there isn't anything that interfaces with the city's payroll. we do it the old school way, pen and paper. and that does cause some inefficiencies. but at the same time, it is a very cheap way of doing business at the expense of additional staff time, what i'm going to present today depicts opportunities for us to gain some operational efficiencies. and that in turn, will help us alleviate some of the, at least reduce some of the staffing shortfalls that we have by increasing, some of the, increasing the efficiency of the work that we're able to do. so some of the information technology priority projects that we have, the first one on our list is the new jail management system. we started this several years ago, and
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we're beginning in phase two, the second item is hiring professional staff to replace some of the sworn personnel that we've transferred out to other units. the next one that we have is replacing our aging networking infrastructure and hardware, next in line is also the funding for a national incident based reporting system, compliant ms. system, record management system. and then the last category is the expansion on the use of, body worn cameras . i want to start out with our jms project, the jail management system. we started this project a couple years ago, and we've so far we've completed phase one. phase one includes analyzing our business processes and documenting the functional requirements. it's, simulating the functional requirements of
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the test environment and then also defining the scope of work for phase two. and there's four components of that, the business analysis requirements, all of the data migration of shifting from the old system into the new system, some of the interface analysis to work with all the other subsystems that exist throughout the city. and also within our department, and then also the training framework and training plan, since we're going into a new system, it's going to be a very different process than what deputies are used to. and so a lot of that having a successful implementation requires adequate training. and one thing to note is that we did have some delays because the old vendor for the jms was acquired by a new company and it took almost a year to finalize an assignment agreement that i am happy to say that that has been completed, and we expect phase
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two of this project to commence in the fall of 2024. in this next slide, what what it's shown here is some of the workflows that, and the project timeline for phase two. a lot of the success on phase two will rely upon the coordination. and, what's important to note here is that as we progress through each period, there's more multiple tasks that are being worked on simultaneously, and a lot of the success will require not just coordination of all the different functional teams, but it also requires some additional staff support as we implement our new jail management system, we have to understand that we don't stop our day to day operations. and this project is just work in addition to what we're currently doing. so with the new jms, it does require additional resources and some of
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which i'll get into in the later slides. but overall, this slide represents the our timeline for phase two in our jms project. our information technology support services. we do need some additional it professional staff in order to, have a successful jms implementation implementation, but also to have successful implementations on some of the other it projects that we want to have funding for. and we also want to successfully implement. so some background on the informational information and technology support services unit. it's responsible for all of the information technology and technical needs for the sheriff's office. some of the functional needs includes compliance to cal d.o.j. standards for criminal and custody records, maintaining all the data reports and dashboards, maintaining our physical networking infrastructure, support our electronic, mobile,
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mobile devices, and also our computers, and also providing help desk support for end users. currently, our staff is a mix of professional and sworn staff. i will say that after i've joined the sheriff's office, i've seen three deputies and sergeants be transferred out of the it's unit, and they've been transferred back to custody division throughout that time, i haven't seen any we haven't hired any additional staff. and what that means is now there's a significant gap, capacity gap on what services are its unit is able to provide, with the implementation of the jms and with the reduced staffing. and it's that has had operational impacts to the sheriff's office. i haven't seen an it unit shut down in any department that i've been in at the police
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department, human services, emergency management, i've seen it pretty regularly that at the sheriff's office, the it's unit has to shut down, because of staffing availability. and when that happens, if you're a user and you need your password reset or if you're having computer issues, you just have to wait. which which is glaring to me because we're not an 8 to 5 department. we operate 24 over seven, and having an it unit that shuts down sometimes days at a time, and a lot of that is controlled. or the cause of that is really because of the lack of staffing, both in terms of not having enough professional staff, but also in terms of not having enough deputies. and in years past, we've had to rely
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upon deputies to fill some of the professional staff positions. that has the potential to be civilianized. but at the same time, we don't have of the budgetary support to enable that. and what we've seen in more recent years is that because of the significant shortage in our sworn staffing, that we have no choice but to transfer out deputies back into other units at the expense of operation. the our operations from some of the supportive units, especially our it unit. one of the things that we also need support on is our networking infrastructure. the city has adopted a hybrid work environment, and some of the some of this requires adequate infrastructure for when we transition to a new jms or when we adopt a nibrs compliant ms.
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it will require some infrastructure upgrades in order to help us utilize some of the new capabilities and the existing system that we have has reached the end of the product life cycle, and the vendor no longer provides support. so we do risk. we do have a high risk of failure and some of the downstream impacts to operations is if the system goes down, it will require a significant support effort from both our it staff in order to get the system up and running, but it will also have an impact on operations if the system goes down for a extended period of time. and, i want to reemphasize that we are a 24 over seven, facility or our department rather, and any suspension to any of our supportive functions does have very significant impacts in the way that we can do business. and we did see that. we did have
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first hand experience with that, not with our department, but when the department of emergency management, when they open up the new call center, their system went down, unfortunately. and they did have backup plans with, you know, the old fashioned pen and paper. but it did have a it did have an impact on their operations. and that is something that we want to avoid. i did speak to on the last page. i did speak about our networking infrastructure upgrades, and the next topic i want to speak about is the record management system. several years ago, the fbi, they transitioned to the national incident based reporting standard and this is for uniform crime reporting. in the past, uniform crime reporting, the standard was based on summary
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reporting standard. what that means is any type of incident, what the data that gets captured is only the most severe offense is recorded, as part of the data set for each incident. so so if there's an incident that involves multiple offenses, you don't really get that full picture. all you really get is if there was, let's say that there is an incident involving a homicide with additional assaults, robberies, etc, you really only get that most severe offense as what occurred for that incident with the transition to the cyber standard , what it allows departments to provide is it associates the it gets rid of the old hierarchy model and it in turn it collect, including where the crime takes place, what form it takes, the
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characteristics of victims and perpetrators, and also all of the offense, information that's associated with that incident. one of the benefits of, not it not just having nibrs compliant, data. one of the benefits for the ms. is also avoiding double entry in some of our legacy systems. we don't we want to be able to avoid having to copy information from one system to the next, to which we do on some of our operational, systems, just because of lack of interoperability. one last topic that i want to discuss is our body worn camera program. in 2017, the sheriff's office started a pilot project to outfit deputies with body worn cameras. we were able to expand the program and at this point,
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we have contract authority to deploy 340 cameras. however, we lack sufficient funding to deploy all 341 of the benefits for body worn cameras is that it helps support accountability and transparency. and there was a study funded by the national institute of justice. they conducted a randomized trial, and randomized trial study at the los angeles metro police department and what they found was that officers at las vegas metro police, those who wore body worn cameras, had fewer use of force incidents, fewer complaints against their officers and the city was also able to see reduced costs to resolve, the use of force complaints. and so one of the benefits that we want to see is having all of our deputies
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outfitted with body worn cameras , one, to help improve our safety for our members, but also to help improve the accountability and transparency of the department. we are looking at, some other opportunities for funding, not just in our budget requests. there is a grant program from the department of justice, the office of community oriented policing services. they have a body worn camera grant. that is one grant opportunity that we're exploring, and we intend to submit an application for, it does require a 50% local match. and that's something that we're trying to get gain support for. but it is a funding opportunity that we're exploring. so i've discussed a lot of our information technology priorities. i do want to have touch back on the budget
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discussion and how it relates to what we submitted at, and what some of our next steps are. i do i first want to discuss some of our budgetary pressures. we've heard under many circumstances, occasions that we've experienced significant staffing shortages, not just on the sworn side, but also on our professional staff, i can say that during the last couple of years, we've also had many increase in the cost of doing businesses, business. rather, we've seen increases in the supplies in, cost of food to feed the jail population. and we've also seen, a significant pressure on our budget budget deficit because of increased use of overtime. and that's attributed to not just, the
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number of deputies that were understaffed by, but also from, retirements. it's also from the, any type of incident that occurs that is not budgeted for, but it's like unforeseen circumstances. so the one that inspector general inspector general wiley had reported out with the attack on deputies, that would be one, instance of cost that we've incurred that was not budgeted for. when we experience a, a lockdown at the jails that also requires additional staffing. and the way that we're able to do that is through overtime. we do lack, a significant number of deputies. and the only way that we can supplement staffing at this present time is through the use of mandatory overtime, backfill,
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in terms of the technology projects that i've, that i've identified in this presentation, the funding, the funding requests and opportunities that we've looked at. the first one is the court process, the committee on information technology, the city has an annual process where each department submits their technology requests. and unfortunately, the department needs often exceed what's available, with with the current submission, we did request for $2.9 million for our jms project, we were able to receive $1.5 million in allocated funding through the court process. and so at this point, we do have to kind of reshuffle some of the, some of what we're able to do in that project. and,
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we are exploring other funding opportunities, not just from grants, but also with working with the mayor's office, and the board of supervisors. and for a lot of the technology projects, some of which, as i've described in the in the other slides with the body worn camera project and with some of the other projects, we are looking to, some grant opportunities, either from the at the fed level or at the local or private level, because we do recognize that we are at the city is in a downturn and the unfortunately for budget dollars, it's limited. and we do want to be respectful of that. and i thank you for your time. if there's any questions, i'd be more than happy to answer them. thank you, do i have any questions or comments from members? welcome to a hard working team with little resources, member rector. which
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model body worn camera is the. is the sheriff's office currently using? i don't know the specific model, but i do know that it's, the body worn camera is through axon or axon is the vendor, i should say. and do you know how old they are? they are a couple of years old, i know that one of one of the grant programs that we're looking at, the cops office grant, it does allow for the expansion of the body worn camera project. and it also will allow for, replacement of existing cameras. so that's one of the things that we're looking to apply for, it does is, at least in terms of the body worn camera grant from the, from the feds, they do provide these new programs or expansion of programs, hire than replacing existing hardware. but given what our program, given the
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program that exists for us right now, we are looking for both opportunities, both the expansion, because we do want to have body worn cameras for all of our deputies, and we also want to replace the existing cameras that we have. and you mentioned the cops program grant requires a 50% local match, but what would be the amount of that? and is there any money in the current budget allocation for that? so no, it does depend upon whether or not we're we apply, for just the number of cameras that we have deployed or whether or not we're able to expand the program to the entire , sworn staff that we have in terms of the program, the grant will allow up to $2,000 of funding per camera, so for the local match, i have to double check whether the 2000 is the total amount or whether it's
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just the fed portion, but, if it's if 2000 is a limit at the very least it would either be $1,000 local match or if the 2000 represents the federal portion, then the total local match in that instance would be 2000, it is a scalable project. so if, for instance, if we were to apply for 200 cameras, right, the local match would just be for that amount versus if we were to expand it for the whole entire, sworn staff, let's say it's 750 cameras. that's more than three times that amount, but we are still in the early phase of developing the grant application, and some of those numbers still have to be worked out. and does the department use axon axons, cloud based storage service evidence.com, i believe so. and do you also use that for
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the, cctv camera footage within the jails, that i don't have any information on? i don't believe that axon that that axon is the vendor for the closed circuit tv. do you know anything about the state of the technology of the cctv cameras, how old they are, how the how those how that footage is stored? and, how long it's retained for that? i don't have any information on that. i, i will say that, for the security systems at the jail, that is another project that we're we were hoping to find funding for. that is a significantly higher amount. and it isn't considered just an information technology project. it flows more in line with a capital project, because of all the physical cameras involved and some of the wiring, etc. that does, and it's not just the cameras, but also the, access to
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the doors and, with that type of project, it does require additional, funding for all the capital improvements, but in terms of what the current process is, i don't i'd have to, i'd have to get find that information and get back to you on that. i believe. just so you, i do know that axon is not the vendor for cctv. they are completely separate and different. they only do the bwc through evidence.com. thank you. and you mentioned the nih study, and that it showed fewer uses of force. did it provide any information on what, assaults on deputies, that i don't recall, but the study, it was two it was either 2017 or 2018. i can send you a copy of the report if you'd like. yes and he also
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mentioned reduced cost to resolve use of force complaints that that include, payouts and civil suits or judgments. from what i remember of the study, what it compared was, is, when there was a use of force or when there was a complaint against an officer, the investigative time, to see whether there were merits to the complaint, that it was significantly less for those who were body worn cameras versus those without. so the savings, the potential savings from that study, that was a comparison, i don't know whether or not it was whether whether there was any information on attacks on on officers or deputies in that study or it's not something that i can recall. okay. thank you very much. thank you. member nguyen, just just to add, yeah, i do agree that when the system goes down, it could be very problematic. when inmates get
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released, they have to be updated in the system. so by, deputy waiting to do that, it could go way past their their time off, and it could go into overtime. and also when the deputy is trying to cite somebody out for a ticket, they have to log into the system for registration information for the for the ticket. and if the system goes down, that could be extremely problematic as well. and then they have to do additional steps to contact dispatch. and it's very problematic to get that information through the radio. whereas if they were to get it on their mdt, it would be a lot, a lot quicker, a lot more simple. so, we definitely do need more funding for that. i think you had also mentioned at one time, and this was a pilot program, the report writing, and i know it's always kind of an avalanche, like what takes priority. but you had mentioned there was a pilot program for more efficient report writing by the deputies, but that was just a pilot. right now we're going
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on a very old system where we're doing reports on pdf format and to open like several pdfs and, the pdf actually crashes sometimes because, because the way the system is designed. so so, you know, like, maybe we could, update to like, a salesforce system where, we can streamline that process. so again, like the additional funding, is the solution to the problems for updated report writing system, one of the areas for the report writing system a the ms. system. so the san francisco police department right now, they're currently implementing their ms. and we do have some we are intending to schedule some conversations with their, their it staff and also the vendor of their, the system that they will implement, the benefit of an ms. is that it
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does include a module for the report writing and at least conceptually, if, we're able to adopt the same system that that will also gain some efficiencies on not having to do double entries, that some of the data that they would enter would populate, into carry over into our system and also into the jms system that we would adopt and that are at least, have some staff savings because there's less time for people to have to do data entry, vice president, carry on. just a comment. when you said that, as somebody who is constantly forgetting user names and passwords, i cannot imagine working in an environment where you would just have to sit and wait to be able to do your job, that sounds absolutely absurd, thank you for the work that you're doing. it's unfortunate to hear this report because it seems very dire. it
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at least from my perspective, of in terms of the technology of being writing in paper and all of those things, so you have your work cut out for it, but it looks like you're you're also game, to use the inspector general wiley's word, so thank you for the work that you're doing. and i appreciate the thorough and presentation. member brichter know, i think there just seems to be a consistent theme here of resources and the reports together and funding. but but i also, you know, enjoyed hearing from member nguyen, though as well too. hopefully we're also trying to think outside the box. i mean, being in a city like san francisco where we have access to technology companies that are global, for them to also be able to help potentially chip in and help us with our systems so that we can, you know, continue to maintain and run our city much better, thank you for the comprehensive. oh, actually, let me go to member palmer first. no. great member. well, thank you for being here. i appreciate
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the comprehensive report and it just emphasizes what we already knew when the it chief first came, i guess, you know, i think the crucial part is really the testing period, because as you have a hodgepodge of things and things that might be aging out or the vendors have just, you know, left and, and not offering support, you hope that the computer systems are talking to each other because otherwise it's like band-aids. and we definitely do not want a situation like the san francisco unified school district, where they spent millions and millions on, you know, a payroll system that just flopped and they have to go back to square one after spending millions and millions, let's see anything. oh, so i guess the other thing is, is there a possibility of recruiting, civilian? it staff from, say, city hall? i mean, we have a lot of it staff with within city hall that could actually bridge the gap right now. so in terms of it is a
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possibility. the although it's dependent upon the department of technology, tech department on technology, what their availability, what their workload availability is on how many workers they have available, available. but i think for us, one of it for at least that it's somewhat a short term solution, because again, when in in order to support the long term health of the department, you want to have a stable workforce, right? if we implement a jms and we're relying upon the vendor or we're relying upon, det, those aren't our employees. and so once the project ends or once they're unavailable, they get transferred, etc. we're stuck with a system that either we don't know how to use or we don't know how to support. and so having, full time department
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employees helps ensure the longevity of us as a department, being able to support the system. but it's also one of the, one of the barriers that we face is part of it is just the lack of funding to help support some of the hiring. we have used prop fs, retirees as some of the stopgap solutions, they have recent retirees who've come back to help provide at least some relief, but they're limited to 960 hours in each year, and i believe we have two, two of those prop f's, helping out with our information technology needs. and it again, i think it is somewhat of a just a stop gap solution, preferably we would want somebody that we can hire for the long term, because
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they're going to be the ones that are able to support us, once the system is up and running, but also because when you're relying upon a vendor or you're relying upon, even another city department, that their needs can also change and also their priorities aren't necessarily the same as our department priorities. so with our staff, we can deploy them to where we specifically need them, you know, and we're constantly having to wear different hats, putting out different fires, and if we have our own employees, we're able to do that more, effectively because we can deploy them specifically to where we need, not just based on who might be available or what they might just be contracted to do. i agree with you. i mean, this is also the stability of the workforce, but it also lends to succession planning too. if you don't have the permanent employees, the more seasoned
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employees who you know are, say, five years out from retirement, don't have the opportunity to transfer skills to the newer hires, we just, you know, with our system for the iag, marshal kind did a fantastic job, and saving us lots of money, taking the salesforce, dashboard, that was for the department of police accountability and sort of making some tailoring. and now it's usable for the ig, but it would be so much easier if you just had one system and the data was right there. so anytime i would ask chief jue if we could have a report, and by the way, we still need to work on a template, although, you know, the report that chief jue gave, really focused on the particular data that we needed, but we wanted to just make it more official and consistent. but to be able to just push a button or do some data searches and have a report spill out rather than calling different units and pulling out the paper, entering
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things, i think in the long run we'll save money. but so it's really incumbent on all the residents of san francisco to actually talk about funding priorities. i know each supervisor also, they have town halls talking about budget priorities, but it seems like the sheriff's office is always left out. it may be because and remember, you'll have some perspective on this. the police department and you as well. because having come from the police department, they seem to get a lot of funding. and even when we were looking at reports for domestic violence, human trafficking, it was so much easier because the justice system was implemented. and then there was justice system 2.0 and the sheriff's office was still left with paper. and so that's why once we formed as a board, we consistently push for more funding for the it systems. so anything else, seeing none. let me ask if there's any public comment for members of the public who would like to make
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public comment on line item three san francisco sheriff's office presentation. please approach the podium when it is free. pairs. we have no public comment. thank you. the next agenda item please calling line item for rescheduling july regular meeting discussion and possible action discussion and possible action on whether to reschedule or cancel the july regular meeting. so colleagues, when we looked at this annual calendar from the get go, we decided we wanted to keep the particular dates, and july 5th falls on the friday right after july 4th. and so we thought it was prudent to just solicit input to make sure that we had a quorum for our july meeting, and again, i'm going to remind everyone it's really a crucial time because we're talking about budget and resources. so i think that, if we if we meet consistently and even if we don't take a summer break, which i'm advocating that we don't, that we can get some more dollars for both the sheriff's
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office and the office of inspector general. so but just wanted to check to see if people were still available for july 5th or they wanted to re calendar for the week after. so i have a question. i guess to me is, what is it that we would be doing in july 5th that could not like, you know what i mean? like what what do you think is some of the pressing agenda items that would need to be, so if we go back to the calendar that we had approved, so july is really all the different reports, and then we also, although this would be official meeting, we, i think three of us and i was thinking about you, vice president carrion, as well as member mango to do a jail visit county jail to with the inspector general. but also we're ramping up towards the fall months where we're going to have more community engagement. so that's typically in, august. september would be national night out, and then in september we're going to have faith in
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blue, where we actually do have some simulated training as well as presentations at county jail three. so i just thought it was important to meet. and then, if there are particular reports and any kind of updates that we could do on the budget, i thought it was just important to be here. but, typically that the month that we would take off if we took off would be august. but i'm just looking at july now, whether or not we want to meet july 5th or the 12th, some people stay in town anyway, so it doesn't really make too much of a difference. i'm going to stay in town, but like, you know, sometimes it's nice to have a break, but i, i'm open to okay, other people's schedules. i'll be out of town july 5th. okay. and member brooke. are you. yeah. i'm okay. i'm good with 12th. okay you rather move it to the 12th, then? okay. i definitely won't be able to make it, but if there's anything i can do to help with the budget priorities. i mean, are you talking about both the fifth and
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the 12th either. yeah. okay. okay. and then same fifth and 12th. i'll be out. july 5th to july 20th. okay. and then i will definitely be out for the july 4th weekend, so you'd rather have the 12th if we were able. are you okay for the 12th? vice versa. okay. jason or i probably will not be available on the fifth. and the 12th is iffy. okay, so. so, i mean, if we were to take a break, then we would not. it would be typically august. so maybe we don't take a break in august and we do it in july. yeah. and that will give additional time for the sheriff's office to do their report for us. okay i think so. i think so, so, member kerry, vice president kerry, would you like to make the motion? yeah, sure. i move for us to, cancel the july 2024 meeting, due to
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the unavailability of all of the members for quorum. and do we have a second? a second, any public comments for members of the public who would like to make public comment on line item for rescheduling? july. regular meeting, please approach the podium when it is free. it appears there's no public comment. i think there was one. so can i just ask for clarification? you're just canceling it. you're not moving it to july 12th, is that right? correct there. there are members who are also unavailable. july 12th. i just wanted to make sure that was clear. and we have a member of the public for comment . oh, okay. so i'll call the roll on the motion to cancel the july 5th meeting. member i mango is i member bruckner aye. bruckner is i vice president carrion i carry on is i member
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win i win is i member palmer i palmer is i president su i su is i member wechter i vector is i. there are seven eyes and no nose. the motion passes and is approved. thank you. the next agenda item please calling line item five future agenda items discussion and possible action item. does anyone want me to just kind of talk about the calendar items that we have up? so in, july we're going to have the reports. we can have the reports in august. in august we were also going to look at the topic of prosecutors and victim services. i think that's all the more worthwhile now that the mayor has actually increased the victim services, particularly on sexual assaults and sexual harassment. and then in september, we were, finally hoping to delve into policy. so looking at our use of force
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policy. and i will also check in with ronnie singh, general counsel for the sheriff's office , october, we're getting back to more reports, and then, november, december, i was i kept it open. so that would also be if members had some submissions or other burning topics, but otherwise we could actually revisit some of the topics that we looked at earlier in the year for follow up. i think what's important is, you know, oftentimes we bring in topics and then we don't have a follow up. and so i'm also hoping that members of the public would also indicate if there's particular issues that they would like us to revisit or follow up. sounds like a good action plan. i'd like to see a presentation. and this had been scheduled about a year and a half ago and was postponed on judgments and settlements from the sheriff's department for perhaps the past
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five years. that's something many counties in the state have been compiling and reporting on, and i think it would be useful for us to know that. okay, i will check with chief jew. but also i think that this also goes hand in hand. also with the board of supervisors, general audit and oversight, because it's pretty shocking when we're sitting there asking for just a fraction. well you know, of what we want as a budget. and then there's pages and pages of settlements overall with the city. so that so that's also goes hand in hand with, with budgeting. so i think we talked about the city attorney giving us anonymized data about the total amount of settlements for things other than motor vehicle accidents. so i know, member wechter, would you fill out the form and submit it to dan and then we will formally submit it to okay. also, since we're going to have to do a performance evaluation of the inspector general probably by january, i think it would be useful to get a sense of the best practices
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for the criteria. i'd like to i think we should hear from amrik singh, the inspector general for the state of california who conducts oversight of the california prison system. who's very knowledgeable and i think could provide some very useful information on how to look at that, how to start setting up our criteria. great. any other. okay. do we have public comment for members of the public would like to make public comment on line item five future agenda items. please approach the podium when it is free. yeah. sorry. there's, appears to be no publ comment on that line. chair, i apologize, i am going to be making a request on a possible future agenda item, but i'll wait until public comment. oh, this is this is the time for the time. yes okay. so i okay,
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then i would appreciate, the, the opportunity for you all to have at a future meeting a discussion, under discussion and possible action item requesting the tear gas incident that happened at the san bruno jail, i'm from san bruno, but i'll speak a little bit further. more on under public comment. okay. and i understand that that's still under investigation. so that's why we didn't comment on it today. so that's noted. so dan, next agenda item please. colleen line item six. general public comment. at this time, the public is welcome to address the board for up to two minutes on items that do not appear on this afternoon's agenda, but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the sheriff's department oversight board. during public comment, neither sheriff's personnel nor any board members are required to respond to questions by public, but may provide a brief response if you would like to make public
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comment, approach the podium when it is free. as a reminder, you have two minutes to give public comment. thank you. good afternoon everyone. thank you so much. so my name is jennifer blanco. i'm a trustee for district one for san bruno park elementary school district. and this incident happened in my district. and so this is why i'm here to ask. and to request to have this. so when i do, do know that there the investigations have not concluded yet. i totally understand that. but when it is, i am requesting that this come before this board, i just want to share with you a little bit more information about what's going on in my community. i do know that there is that there has been a, that we are drafting or we have sent already a joint letter to the sheriff, asking to discontinue the tear gas, exercise activities in our community. we do know that, regarding i don't
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know, in the media, in the newspaper, i do believe that there are more than 30 children and there is more than what's being reported in the media, with the families that have been impacted and affected by by the exposure of the tear gas in our community. and so we have sent a survey to find out exactly, somewhat estimated amount of the families that were impacted and affected by the exposure. and so, and we will be we are, requesting also to have the sheriff's, department be better neighbors with the city of san bruno. so thank you for the time . happy friday today. thank you so much for all your work. good afternoon everyone. good afternoon. a little nervous, but no, don't be nervous, my name is
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jesus rios, i work with the latino task force, along with other organizations like roadmap to peace, moves, and a couple others. but i just wanted to share a couple thoughts, and thank you for the presentation. that was was a great presentation, but, i go inside the jails as part of my role right now. we do programing inside the jails, and i just wanted to talk about the budget cuts. you know, our community has felt a lot of budget cuts, from different organizations, different parts. and, i was going to talk about that, but we just did a group, in cx two for mental health month last month. we did it on june 3rd, and i'm just sitting there with the people, you know, they still are people, even though they're inmates, you know, and we talk about a lot of stuff like that. so, i just want y'all to not forget about the nonprofits and the community, the community work, you know, these people are still being released to the community, we help them in the
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community. and i think it takes the sheriff's police department community, all of us, to work together and to try to find a better solution, just seeing the smile on those people's faces, you know, makes my day, even even if it's just for 45 minutes to an hour sitting there with them, talking to them, you know, making game plans of when they get released and stuff, i think that's really important, but i just want to say thank you for that presentation again. was that the event where you guys brought the. yes, we invited you, but, you know, you're busy, man. busy man. i met you when i was over at latino task force. yes, sir. yes, sir. got you, got you. mr. sorry, i missed that. mr. wiley's in the washington, but he's also in the community, but i just wanted to show him. i wish more people from our community showed up because it's not the lack of it. you know, we had a good showing in february, so you're always welcome. and i think, we share your concerns and we definitely, want to
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enhance the nonprofit organizations. they are great partners in what we do, particularly pre reentry and supportive services for reentry and well noted about language access and the programs because, people who know me know i've worked on language access for a long time, even with the very first ordinance here in the city . so i truly believe that we have to have better language access in our jails. and the programs, so and also, you know, explaining things to families of incarcerated members so they understand what's going on as well. definitely. and the annex, how y'all spoke earlier, i was just there on thursday is filled with, people from honduras, mostly central america and a two part of that mental health day. we were able to feed them, we brought a 60, foods, basically a pre-made foods. and, they were able to eat that, so they got to taste a little bit of home. so thank you all. i just appreciate y'all having this meeting. thank you for being here. and thank
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don't be a stranger. i will let everybody know that one question about agenda item five. we'd had again, we'd had a community meeting scheduled that glide last year. is that next time i think we should just make sure that we're done talking with the community before we, like, start talking over them, okay. yeah. and mr. wiley also had some comment to say before, yeah. i just wanted to let everybody know i was at the latino task force, offices last week, and i think we met while i was there, but the latino task force, as is on their own, is providing programing to the inmates in the annex, so i just wanted to let folks know that they're not being compensated, but they're providing programing. and i think it's very admirable on their part. so member rector yeah, my question. we had a
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public, community meeting scheduled for glide church last year. is that, being rescheduled? if there's if there is kind of the community wants and the board need, but it appears that even though we tried really hard for the community meetings, a lot of community members now say that they feel safer being in city hall. so we can check back. dan, do you want to check back with glide and see if they'd like us to be, i'm curious which community members like a particular like, is it a certain population? is it like an te be. it would be, pretty much the people who serve glide in the tenderloin area. and we remember we were doing i think she's asking, like, all communities. right. yeah. i guess my question, to be clear, is who are the committee members that you're referencing that feel safer in city hall, well, when we were doing i mean, even with
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the latino task force, they said to me that we'd rather be in city hall. and you guys are, you know, having meetings all over the city, but we would just rather have it at city hall and it could be possibly, you know, public transportation lines and city hall might be more central. i see. so i leave it out. i'm not wedded to anything. i just want to make sure that we're accessible to the public, and we meet them where they feel most comfortable. and i'm a believer in field trips. i also, you know, would like to visit more areas and especially like even the nonprofit. it's about the services. i mean, it was great to be at the southeast community center, and i hadn't been to the new one. and i'm like, wow. and you know, there's a beautiful cafe there as well. so, so i'm, you know, i'm open to suggestions if you'd like to. i mean, i'm of the mindset that we should be going out to the community versus having the community come here to city hall and taking time off, like, you know, most people are working on fridays 2 to 5. and then the second piece is like, it's not.
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i mean, i know we had our town halls. it's a little tricky because we have our town halls that we try to do in each district, and we didn't have like the greatest attendance. but i wonder if, like, we can just meet where the impacted communities are already doing their meetings. so for example, if the latino task force is already meeting on a wednesday every month, we just plop right in. i agree with you. i think if they're having a particular meeting or it's a particular church, and then we go there and after services or something, we're there to share information . you know, the meeting was was canceled because we didn't have a quorum. but i did go there in case anyone showed up. and they had over 40 people who had signed up to attend. so i think there is a desire for us to go to that community and be present in evening hours, when it's easier for people to come to a meeting. and i also wanted to add, i think we should be prioritizing the impacted communities like not all districts. we don't have to be like the ones that like would care the most, i wonder if this
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is a i'm not sure if it's a question for the sheriff or the inspector general, but can we get kind of a map of where do we who has the information of reentry and who has the information of where? what are the districts that have more of the family members and population that have been previously incarcerated? so part of that is also, i think, on that the dashboard of where the crimes happened to. so so, it it pretty much parallels. so we can we can do like southeast corridor, tenderloin, i think it might be helpful just to get that information. so then we can just identify concretely, okay. these are we're going to prioritize these because they're a higher number of so inspector wiley, could we call on you to
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pull that information together? and also, particular maybe community groups who might want to invite us and be part of their meetings, something that's already with us, set population. yes. so what? i will glly do that. and i, reached out to supervisor walton's office, and tracy gallardo provided me with a list of all of the community based organizations in his district. and so i've invited all of them to a town hall next tuesday here at the, and i reached out and spoke to people and everybody, thought it would be a great to have it here at city hall. and one of the, so we're having a town hall here on the 11th from 4 to 6. so so, jana, let me call on you. there were two meetings, so there's going to be a budget meeting as well as the town hall. so,
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opinion from you whether or not it would be problematic to have a quorum there because i intend to go there. be at both the budget hearing as well as the town hall here at city hall. okay. thank you. yeah. and i was just going to say that we do need a, a list of people who are in san francisco who are dealing with transition, reentry and other community organizations that deal with reentry. people so, i even suggested when i was on this, reentry council, i still am, but i did suggest doing the chesa boudin administration that there should be a reentry, office with the mayor. like that's such an important part of our community. now here in the city, and not to have an office of reentry in city hall that makes sure that those those vulnerable people
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who, owning protection of going back is, a whimsical decision by a parole officer or probation officer should have some lines of protection to prevent them from false allegations and abuse of authority, etc, etc. so i think just on beginning that would be just getting contact with those organizations and having, touching basis with them. and then also member palmer also call on you with the jail justice coalition and the member organizations. if you can call on them to ask for suggestions on what you. but in the meantime, i will, contact the reentry council because i actually like them to make a presentation. yeah. and the judge justice coalition did want to see if we could change our hours, because these hours are bad for them to come to our meetings. so maybe they can maybe we can create a town hall where we are there and we can show up with them as well. can i
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just add one suggestion? in most, you know, in most counties, probation controls a lot of the reentry money. that's true. so it might not be a bad idea to have the head of probation, come and present to the board. like, how what are you doing with the reentry money ? and i just wanted to ask, can we ask the mayor's office to come and present to us? we can again. we can ask. yes, yes. if they come, that's a different story. i thought we better in july, but we could do it in august. also, you know, people are out and about and it's summer months. and so i take every opportunity to beg for money short of putting out a tin cup, so i would call upon it's, you know, it's all of our jobs as well to say that we can't do
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our best job when we don't have any resources from day one. we have made that very clear, inspector general, even at his acceptance speech after he was sworn in. provided i have the adequate resources. so but, i think, you know, we've done more work in the past few months since you've been here than some people would take a year or two to do. so commendable. and really want to take the chance to thank marshal kind. he's on a well-deserved vacation, but for all of his support, oh my god. and one final note i did attend both days and i know member bruckner, you're always so busy running an organization with so many employees, but that california coalition of oversight, the california oversight, california civilian oversight. civilian oversight alliance. yes, it was great because it was talking about shared resources, opinions?/ and from different organizations. so not just in the bay area, but
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also nationally, but definitely the bay area. there's a lot of sharing. and even as we're dealing with statistics, i know there's still disparities with the black and brown communities, but we are measuring against the population of san francisco, and it is not just measured. it shouldn't be just measured against the population of san francisco, becauseare regional. so our nine bay area counties. so i'd like to see a little bit more efficiency on just even our nine bay area counties, how we're working together. i think everyone has a really good relationship. and in particular our san mateo sheriff also, that we have a san bruno, representative here too. and i think we do enjoy a relationship with the san mateo sheriff's office. so anything else? yes. so, i guess i can call the meeting adjourned, and we do have a photographer today, i think he had to go. oh, he had to go. he'll be back. he's not
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>> come shop dine and play. taraval street is open for business. >> i am a coowner at 19th. this establishment came about when me and my brother andy, coowner, we decided that it time for us to take a step up in the barber industry, and open up a space of our own. ory business is a community that shows their true artistic side of the barber industry. we are involved in teraival bingo so stop by, get a hair cut and when you do you get the barber sticker made just for us. i say in three words we are community, arts and here to help any way possible we can,
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>> you're watching san francisco rising with chris manners. today's special guest is katy tang. [♪♪♪] >> hi. i'm chris manners, and you're watching san francisco rising, the show that's focused on rebuilding, reimagining, and revitalizing our city. with us today is katy tang, and she's talk to -- talking to us about assistance and services provided to local businesses. can we talk about the role of the office of small business? many small businesses are struggling to help. how can you help? >> director tang: we are here as the city's central point of information for all things small businesses, so we can
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help people start, stay, and grow in the city. if you want to start a small business, we can pair you up with small business advisors, who can talk you through your business plan, help you develop it, whether it's regulatory requirements, business permits, and just help you understand the journey that was up ahead. and if you'd like to stay in san francisco and perhaps your business is facing challenges, we can also pair you with a business advisor who can assess your business needs and figure out whatside that would best help you. so for example, perhaps you need more marketing assistance or you need to be connected to a loan, a low interest loan or a grant program, if that's available. those are services we can provide to you, whether you're starting out or trying to stay in san francisco. and of course, if you want to expand and grow into a new
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space, we can help assist you with that and help prepare you for the journey ahead. we have a team dedicated to assist you you with all the small business needs, all the requirements needed to help you establish your small business in san francisco. >> do you have an e.s.l. program for people who want to start small businesses? >> director tang: we have staff that can speak spanish and mandarin and cantonese, and we understand if english is not your first language, it can be difficult, so we want to be as helpful as possible. >> excellent. i know that s.f. shines was created to help with restoring and improvement. can you tell us more about that? >> yes.
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it's run out of a sister development and it's much needed in the small business community. if you are trying to improve your storefront, whether it's outside, perhaps you want to make some interior improvements, a lot of times, that involves a lot of cost and resources to be able to do so. for example, you may need to hire an architect to smi drawings so you can get your work done. currently, s.f. shines is offer a pairing of business sign services. you can be paired up with an architect to get your drawings done to help you start to do the actual work. we hope that people will stay tuned, and you can find out
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website. that's sfgov.org/osb. >> let's talk about the shared spaces program. it's been a huge success, and outdoor dining spaces are very popular. >> the shared spaces program, especially during the pandemic, really helped spaces survive. to have an outdoor space where people could safely gather was critical, and the office of small business has been working with these shared spaces during the pandemic. some may or may not have been up to the city's code regulations, so department of public works and other departments have been trying to figure out what violations are and help businesses come into
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compliance. the planning department and the city have decided that they'll give businesses until 2023 to come into compliance. also in the meantime, for businesses that want to start new shared spaces, new parklets, that is still an on going program, a new program, so people can always submit their applications for shared spaces regardless whether they started one during the pandemic or not. >> do you anticipate there being other shared spaces programs in the future and how do small businesses go about finding out about them? >> small businesses can find out about it by visiting our website, sfgov/osb or you can call 415-554-6134, and we can
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connect you with the planning department and other agencies that would be connected with the shared spaces programs. >> over the pandemic, businesses have been victimized by vandals and other crimes. how can you help them? >> the city offers a program called the vandalism relief fund, and this would allow businesses suffering from graffiti or broken windows to apply with the city through our neighborhood services division, and you could get up to 1,000 or 2,000 if you submit certain documentation, such as a photograph of the damage or a copy of the receipt or document showing the amount you paid for
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to correct the incident. we are so excited that the city now has a centralized permit center, where people can come and get their business done, hopefully, in the same day where there are several different agencies, ranging from department of building inspection, planning department, public health, fire department, all here to help people, whether you're building a new business or even new construction, to be able to, again, fit all of your appointments in one day and get things done quickly. so starting in may, our office of small business has actually started working out of 49 south van ness at the permit center, and we have a team of two staff who are dedicated to helping small businesses through their permitting journey. so we do encourage people, you can come to the permit center or you can e-mail us at sfosb@sfgov.org, and you can
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communicate with our staff dedicated to helping you with your permitting needs. we hope that people will consider consulting with us before you even sign a lease so that we can help you on the path to success and understanding the journey of setting up a small business in san francisco. >> well, thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show, miss tang. thank you for the time you've given us today. >> director tang: thanks for having me. >> and that's it for this show. we'll be back shortly. you've been watching san francisco rising. for sfgovtv, i'm chris manners. thanks for watching.
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. >> shop and dine the 49 promotes loophole businesses and changes residents to do thirds shopping and diane within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services we help san francisco remain unique and successful where will you shop and dine shop and dine the 49. >> my name is neil the general manager for the book shop here on west portal avenue if san francisco this is a neighborhood bookstore and it is a wonderful neighborhood but it is an interesting community because the residents the neighborhood muni loves the neighborhood it is community and we as a book sincerely we see the same people here shop all the time and you know
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to a certain degree this is part of their this is created the neighborhood a place where people come and subcontract it is in recent years we see a drop off of a lot of bookstores both national chains and neighborhoods by the neighborhood stores where coming you don't want to - one of the great things of san francisco it is neighborhood neighborhood have dentist corrosive are coffeehouses but 2, 3, 4 coffeehouses in month neighborhoods that are on their own- that's
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