next on "kqed newsroom," the new president of the san francisco board of supervisors targets violence in an unconventional way. >> we need people who are getting paid to work with our young people to roll up their sleeves and go to their homes and be in the community and work with young individuals, but we also have to hold our own kids accountable. the measles outbreak reignites the debate over parents opting out of vaccinating their kids. plus the state's top judge on why we should care about the health of our court system. >> and those laws matter. and we believe we have a guaranteed right to them. and where do you test that? in a court of law. ♪

♪ good evening and welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. earlier this month a shooting left four african-american men dead in san francisco's upscale hayes valley renewing calls for more policing. the supervisor who represents the area grew up in public housing nearby. london breed has strong views on crime and violence. >> i remember when i was 12 seeing my friend get shot right in front of us as we were trying to enjoy ourselves outside. >> this week, for instance, she called on people to turn in their own family members if they're involved in criminal activity like selling drugs. her outspokenness has endeared her to some while alienating others. scott shafer talks with supervisor breed.

>> supervisor breed, welcome to "newsroom." >> thank you scott. >> this week you surprised some folks. at mlk day you gave a speech and you talked about gun violence and you urged people who had someone in their families who might be involved in gun violence to turn them in. some folks call that snitching. what kind of reaction have you gotten? and what prompted you to say that? >> well, i've been working with a number of people in the community for some time now. and this is the message that we're trying to get out to the community. it's what we've been working on. because we don't want to see another young life lost to senseless violence. so we want to protect our kids. and unfortunately there are a lot of challenges out there right now. and clearly, there's a back and forth between in my community in particular between two different groups of young men who don't even know what they're fighting about in the first place. >> but telling, for example a grandmother to turn in their grandson that's tough. >> it is tough. but when you have a kid who feels that they have to walk

around in the streets with a gun on them in order to protect themselves, then something is wrong. something is wrong. and rather than have them die on the streets because someone is after them or because they feel that they need to defend themselves, i don't want to see another young man die. i think about the friends that i've lost and what i wouldn't give to just see their face one day walk down the street. the people that i lost. when you die, you are not coming back. when that trigger is pulled and somebody is dead they're not coming back to life. >> you grew up in public housing in san francisco. were there cases with your own family or your own close circle where you wish someone had called the police? >> well, there have been cases and in particular, i mean a real minor case. when we were young my grandmother -- you know, my brother, he was selling drugs and my grandmother found the drugs, and she flushed them down the toilet. and she was just really strict. and she said, you know what? this is not going to happen in my house.

this is not okay. you can't live here if this is what you're going to do. and because i didn't want to be homeless i never did it. i didn't want to be out there doing the kinds of things that would get me kicked out of my house or get me in trouble in any way. and it was because of my grandmother. >> how did all that do you think influence your view of crime? because there's sort of this dichotomy. that crime is as a result of poverty and raceism and lack of opportunity and bad schools and others say no we just need more police. what's missing from that? >> well, we need the police. we need the social service agencies in the developments where we have the most challenges. we need people who are getting paid to work with our young people to roll up their sleeves and go to their homes and be in the community and work with young individuals. but we also have to hold our own kids accountable. we just do. we can't continue to be in denial when we know our children are involved in activities that we personally feel are the wrong things for them to be involved in that could result in them losing their life. >> there was a crime that

occurred in your district a couple weeks ago. four young men shot and killed while they were sitting in a car. stunned a lot of people. are you satisfied so far with the response of the police? they have not arrested anyone. >> well, i've been working with the police, and they are doing everything they can in order to try and catch the individuals who did this. this is not just devastating to my community. this is devastating to the city and county of san francisco. and the police realize that. the community realize that. and that's why the community is coming together, talking regularly to try and figure out real solutions that will lead to this violence stopping, period. >> when you say we need more police, how many more? >> we need more police. we're not even at the mandate that we have put in the city charter in order to have a certain minimum staffing level in the police department. we need at least 200 more police officers out on the streets right now. >> at the same time you and your colleague, malia cohen a supervisor who has a district

that has a lot of crime, have asked for more accountability and are looking into an audit that found some 47 50 million dollars spent on violence prevention has very little accountability. what do you make of that? >> so there's no accountability. there's no -- these program dollars are mostly being spent in locations where this gun violence is occurring but not at a substantial rate in comparison to for example, the bayview hunter's point. it was really alarming to find out that out of this $46 million not a lot of it is going to the bayview hunter's point where we all know, even just reading the newspapers, that gun violence occurs there more than any place else in the city. >> so where's it going? or you don't know? >> it's going to a number of community-based organizations. primarily in the tenderloin and in the mission where it's definitely needed. but what's important is that we redistribute funds, we hold organizations accountable to serve those neighborhoods who need it the most as well. >> let me ask you about a different subject that's bubbled up in san francisco, and that is

the cost of living here. the city gave twitter a big tax break a few years ago, and now mid-market has exploded. but there are also concerns about people getting pushed out of the city. was it a mistake do you think looking back on that tax break? >> well i don't know if it were a mistake because we don't know what could have happened to the mid-market area had we not done it. i wasn't on the board at the time to just really weigh what was possible or what wasn't possible. but i do think it is important that we do things that are innovative and different from our housing policies of the 1960s. >> is it too late to just say we're going to build more affordable housing? >> it's not too late. and that's exactly what we're working on. we have underutilized spaces in our public housing development, in our hud housing developments where we can add more units, we can rehabilitate these units and we can bring more families into these units. i mean, just recently 2.5 million given to the public housing -- the san francisco housing authority to rehabilitate 163 units. already 70 families have moved,

formerly homeless families have moved into those developments. >> we're short on time but let me just ask you. you got into some trouble during your campaign, and you released sort of a f-bomb-laden blog post saying basically you're not beholden to anyone including willie brown essentially. have you had to kind of dial back your personality in a way now that you're such a high-profile public figure? >> well i've had to dial it back just a little bit. i want to be just ultimately a role model for young people. kids that i've worked with in the community. we are all human. we all make mistakes. and sometimes those mistakes when you're an elected official, they follow you. but at the end of the day, you know that's what makes us human. and i'm not going to be dishonest about the kinds of things that i say and do. but i grew up in public housing. we fought with words. we said what we needed to do. but at the end of the day it was about the passion and the love of our neighborhoods and trying to figure out ways in which we can communicate with one another without leading to a result of

someone not being able to return home to their families. and i think i used my words to fight instead of my fists and a gun, and i think that's important too. >> all right. supervisor london breed, thank you so much for coming in and good luck in 2015. >> thank you. and coming up, we talk with the chief justice of the state supreme court. but first, turning to a growing public health issue. disneyland has been ground zero for a measles outbreak that started in december and has since spread to numerous states. 68 cases have been reported in california plus a handful in nearby states and mexico. more than half of those who have contracted the disease were not vaccinated. the outbreak has renewed the debate about parents who choose not to have their kids immunized. here in the bay area marin county's rate of parents opting out is among the highest in the state. health experts are concerned about the spread of a highly infectious disease that's preventable. joining me now with analysis are lisa aliferis, editor for kqed's

state of health blog. and dr. art reingold with the uc berkeley school of public health. thank you both for joining us. lisa, i want to begin with you. how infectious is measles? >> measles is one of the most and perhaps the most infectious disease known. if someone has measles and walks into a room, coughs or sneeze, and even turns around and leaves the room, someone else who comes in who's not vaccinated or not otherwise immune, they stand an almost certain chance of contracting the disease. now, before the vaccine came along there were 3 to 4 million cases a year of measles. this would have been in the '50s in the years leading up to the introduction of the vaccine in the early '60s. and of those 3 to 4 million cases 500 people would die, another 1,000, on average another 1,000 people would be left chronically disabled from -- primarily from encephalitis that can be caused by measles.

measles can cause pneumonia. measles dehydration. >> it can even cause death. >> 500 deaths a year. it -- the state epidemiologist, gil chavez, stressed today this is not a trivial illness. it can be very serious. >> so dr. reingold, this is a disease that was considered eradicated in 2000. and because we haven't seen severe epidemics of it constantly, do you think people have forgotten how dangerous it can be? have people become not as vigilant as they should be? >> well i think that's exactly part of the problem. most parents of young children today, they themselves didn't have measles. they haven't seen a child with measles. in fact the average pediatrician and family practitioner and nurse-practitioner working in the united states today may not have seen a case of measles unless they've worked overseas. so i think there is a fair bit of complacency about the disease and that's unfortunate because as lisa said this can be a life-threatening infection in some cases and can certainly put you in the hospital and make you

quite sick. >> this is the worst measles outbreak in 15 years. and we know that it's partly due to numerous people choosing not to vaccinate their kids. why do you think the anti-vaccine movement has been so effective in certain communities? >> well, some people are anti-vaccine. many people are what we might call vaccine hesitant. that is they are potentially willing to be convinced about vaccination or they're willing to accept some vaccines and not others. but basically, i think the fundamental problem is that some people have concerns about the safety of the vaccines and they really don't have any fear of the disease. so if you're trying to do what's best for your kid and you think the vaccine is potentially harmful and you're not worried about the disease then it's a rational decision not to opt for vaccination. it's unfortunate because these are very, very safe vaccines and measles can be a very serious disease. >> well, so given that, lisa

besides pointing to the many studies out there that show that there is no link between measles vaccines and autism for example, what else can be done? is that scientific message something that plays well with people? >> well, if people are concerned about what might be in the vaccine science is probably not going to convince them. it's a disconnect between what i think as dr. reingold very clearly said, that people don't have any fear of the disease anymore. one thing that the state of california has done, though, to capture these, to try to get the right -- the credible scientific information across is california had a really easy way to opt out of vaccines. you could just sign something that said i am opposed to vaccines and your child could go to school then without being vaccinated. >> it's called a personal belief exemption. >> a personal belief exemption. so over a seven-year period those personal belief exemption

rates doubled in california. now still only around 3% of the population. but they would cluster as you said in certain areas. so the rates of lack of vaccination would be much higher. effective january 1st, 2014 a new law went into effect. this is the first school year where people who want to opt out of vaccines must meet with a health care provider first. and we've seen a decline in california of the rate of personal belief exemptions. so some of these people who are hesitant about vaccines are clearly susceptible to getting the right information and to choosing to vaccinate their children. >> and i think it's worth pointing out that that 2% to 3% statewide covers a lot of territory. so we do have counties and we do have communities where 15% or 20% of children have not received measles vaccine. >> and some of the numbers are interesting. i just want to take a moment to point them out. according to a study in the journal "pediatrics," you know, we've got statistics like from

7% to 10% in san francisco, in parts of marin county, in parts of the east bay. that's significant when you're talking about something like measles. it's as many as 10% of the population is not vaccinated. >> right. measles is so highly transmissible as lisa said, that fundamentally if we want any chance to have herd immunity, to have indirect protection of children, then we really need to achieve much, much higher levels of immunization. and that's really the only way we can protect some children who really can't be immunized, either because they have immunovesive condition like leukemia or children who are too young to be vaccinated. and we really want to offer them the indirect protection that comes from living in a well-vaccinated population. >> i think it's worth pointing out that six of those who were not vaccinated in the wake of this disneyland outbreak were babies too young to be vaccinated. so that's through no fault of their own. >> and lisa you talked to a

father who's dealing with is it leukemia in his own family? very concerned about this. >> i spoke to carl crawlit. he lives in court madeira. his 6-year-old son has just completed a 3-year regimen of chemotherapy to treat his leukemia. the boy is now in remission. but this father spent -- he's really very concerned about this. his son cannot be vaccinated because of this medical condition. they're waiting for his immune system to build back up so that he can be vaccinated. in the meantime at his school reed elementary in tiburon, their personal belief exemption rate actually went up slightly this year. it's now 7%. so he worked with the school to try and make sure that all the kids in his classroom would be vaccinated. but he said he was at a back to school night at his -- a community event at his daughter's school where the -- people raised the issue of peanuts, that peanut allergies,

don't bring peanuts to school because people have allergies and they could die. and he raised his hand and said in the interest of health and safety of our children can we have the assurance that all the kids at our school are immunized. and people came back to him later he heard through a friend that people were very upset that he'd raised this question. it's very troubling. >> this is one of those cases where someone's personal belief in this case of an infectious disease is very much having an impact on a very public situation, and that is people's public health. but i wanted to also ask you about people who have been vaccinated. some still can get the measles. why is that? >> well we moved from a one-dose schedule to a two-dose schedule a number of years ago when we learned that the first dose of measles vaccine only protects about 95% of children. people who receive two doses pretty much everyone will be protected. yes, there's a very, very rare individual who can receive two doses and not be protected. but fundamentally, if you get

two doses of measles vaccine, for all intents and purposes you are protected and quite likely protected for life. >> so then i'm wondering if some of these people at disneyland who were vaccinated but still got it is that because measles is so transmissible and a lot of people go to disneyland that if just a handful of them are not immune they could all have been susceptible to contracting it. >> well we know that if you've only had one dose that some children will remain susceptible. we also know that if you received the vaccine at too young of an age you may not have an appropriate response. so without knowing the details about those kids i can't say exactly what happened. but is the vaccine 100% effective no matter who gets it? no. there are some vaccine failures. >> let me ask you real quickly, and this will be the final question. you know, this week health officials in orange county barred a couple of dozen high school students from going to school because they weren't vaccinated. should public health policy be changed, barring students who aren't immunized from going to the campus? >> well, i think in the context

of an outbreak that's a perfectly appropriate thing for a school to do. and a number of schools have done that in the context of whooping cough outbreaks measles outbreaks, and other things, to basically say if your child is not immunized and we have an outbreak situation your child cannot come back to school until they're either immunized or the outbreak is over. >> okay. well, certainly much more to come, i think. this is something that continues to develop, and we'll see how it all turns out. thank you so much, both of you for joining us. dr. art reingold with the berkeley school of public health, and lisa aliferis with kqed's state of health blog. >> thank you. and turning now to the most important court in the state, the california supreme court. it oversees 58 superior courts one per county with 19,000 employees and a budget of nearly $4 billion. a quarter of the court's work

involves reviewing death penalty appeals. in recent years the court system has weathered deep budget cuts that led to courthouse closures and layoffs. now the court is under fire for misspending. a recent audit highlighted "questionable fiscal and operational decisions that limited funds available to the courts." even if you've never committed a crime or filed a lawsuit, the decisions made by the state supreme court affect all californians from immigration law to gay marriage. scott shafer talked about the state of the court and its impact with chief justice tani cantil-sakauye. >> chief justice cantil-sakauye welcome back to "newsroom." >> it's a pleasure. thank you for having me. >> most people don't come into contacts with the courts if they're lucky. they may be on jury duty. but by and large most folks don't. and they certainly don't come in contact with the supreme court where you're the chief justice. why should people care about what happens in the court system in california? >> well there were 7 million filings of court cases in

california last year. and the laws for everyone and the judicial branch is a third branch of government that performs a check and balance on the legislative acts and on the governor's acts. people should care because the law affects so much of our lives, our neighbors' lives, our cousins', our relatives' lives, and those laws matter. and we believe we have a guaranteed right to them. and where do you test that? in a court of law. >> yeah. so you took office the same day jerry brown did. i think it was january 3rd, 2011. and you've had to talk with him. you've had to lobby him for your budget. what do you make of his view of the courts, given that he's now appointed three people none of whom had judicial experience, all of whom were smart academic types from yale law school. what does it tell you about where he wants the court to go? >> i think he is looking for new thinkers, bigger thinkers. and i -- >> what does that mean, bigger thinkers? >> obviously thinkers who are beyond -- who are not judges, who are not trial attorneys. he's looking at folks who bring a broader and different kind of

experience. it's a diversity of sorts i think that he's looking for because he of all people knows the diversity of california and the direction we're going. >> does he take it to the next level? i mean the first time he was governor he was thought to be soft on crime for example. and three of the judges he appointed to the state supreme court were recalled including rose byrd. >> from my discussions with him, i didn't know him back then but i know he's always talking to me about learning to do things in a different way. he talks about reengineering. he talks about changes. i mean, look at criminal re-alignment how he totally changed how we think about sentencing in california. look at the initiatives we've seen that have succeeded in california. prop 36 on the recent encino three strikers. prop 47 that turns some six felonies into misdemeanors. we're clearly seeing a trend that's rethinking criminal sentencing. >> and you're okay with that? >> that's right. i'm okay with it. i enforce the law. i interpret the law. >> i want to move on to the death penalty. 745 or so inmates on death row in california. 13 have been executed in the

last several decades. the leading cause of death on death row is old age, followed by i think suicide. is the death penalty working in california? >> it depends how you define working. is it a law that we are working as a court to implement? absolutely, we are. 25% of the california supreme court case load is dedicated to the automatic appeal death penalty case and to the habeas corpus petition that accompanies every single case. so are we working on these? absolutely. they have anywhere from 18 to 32 to 40 claims in these kinds of cases on appeal. the supreme court answers every single one of these responses. now, in terms of the length, it takes time. it's expensive. they're entitled to appropriate and reasonable representation. it takes time. it costs money. >> is it dysfunctional? >> is it working? well, you said the numbers yourself. we have over 740 inmates on death row. we have 13 who've been executed. and it's difficult to say that it is working. >> is it fixable given the

political realities in california? some say it could be fixed with more money. but then many say we're a democratic state democrats don't want to see it fixed, they don't want more executions, maybe we should just get rid of it. >> i'll put it this way. there's no talk in the legislature about fixing the death penalty. >> therefore? >> therefore, it doesn't seem to be a priority. but we are continuing to work in more efficient ways. >> i want to ask you about a high-profile case from the past year. sergio garcia, an undocumented immigrant who went to law school, wanted a law license. your court in your opinion i think you wrote said he should be entitled to be admitted to the bar in california even though he was an undocumented immigrant. what does that decision say about the way this court looks at citizenship? >> well what it says is what this court looks at in terms of admission to the bar. so that case was solely about whether or not mr. garcia was authorized under california law and federal law to be able to obtain a license. it wasn't about employment. it was about a license.

and as you know, prior to that case being argued, after the case was argued in front of the california supreme court the legislature stepped in and changed the law in california that made it permissible that a person like sergio garcia could obtain a license if they met all other requirements. what that says to me is what california is. it's a very progressive forward-thinking, diverse state. >> does it undermine the value of citizenship when you're saying you don't need now a citizenship to get a driver's license get a law license, a professional license? does it devalue it? >> i don't think it devalues it. i think it tells you our legislature passes laws after healthy debate and this is what came forward. >> i want to ask you about court funding because that's something you have been lobbying for for years. there have been years of budget cuts in tough years under governor brown, and there was an audit, though that came out just this month from the state auditor saying that there were lapses in oversight, that there were questionable fiscal decisions.

you know you saw the audit the judicial council responded and then the auditor said that your response suggests that meaningful change will not happen. they seemed frustrated that you weren't getting it. what's your response to their response to your response? >> well, my response is i find that highly interesting. as you can tell if you read the audit, it talks about the strategic evaluation commission report that i commissioned in 2011 that came to me in 2012. it had 124 recommendations. the judicial council accepted all of those recommendations, and over half of those recommendations to reengineer change has occurred. there are some that haven't occurred that the auditor pointed out because it's waiting for a class and compensation study that we initiated over a year ago. so there are changes and i think there are many changes that are not reflected in that report that we will be taking to the legislature to prove that there's been radical change in the last two to three years. >> what do you think is the biggest misperception people have of the courts? >> i think they believe that

judges rule from our feelings and our emotions about a case when in fact judges rule from the rule of law, prior decisions statutory interpretation, and our feelings have little to do with how we get to our decisions. >> chief justice tani cantil-sakauye, thank you so much for coming in. >> thank you, scott. >> and that does it for us. for all of kqed's news coverage, please go to kqednews.org. i'm thuy vu. thanks so much for joining us. have a good night. ♪ ♪

captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, january 25: a critical election in greece. parliamentary voting that could have major implications for all of europe and for markets around the world. a top health official explains what's behind the growing outbreak of measles in the u.s. and what can be done to stop it. and as president obama's visit to india continues, we'll look at that nation's plan to modernize its economy. will hundreds of millions of poor people there benefit or be left behind? next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: