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tv   [untitled]    August 10, 2010 5:30am-6:00am PST

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supervisor campos: the morning, everyone, and welcome to the
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august 5, 2010 meeting of the board of supervisors rules committee. i'm the chair of the committee. i'm joined by vice chairman, supervisor alioto-pier, and by committee member, supervisor mar. are want to thank the staff from sfgtv for covering the meeting today. -- i want to thank the staff. madam clerk, do we have any announcements? >> please make sure to turn on cellular phones and pagers. completed speaker cards and parts of documents being submitted or the far up -- before the file should be submitted to the clerk. supervisor campos: thank you very much. please call item one. and item one, motion approving the mayor's nomination for the appointment of john newlin to the entertainment commission for the term ending july 1, 2013. supervisor campos: please call item two as well. >> item two, motion rejecting the mayor's nomination for
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reappointment of john newlin to the entertainment commission. supervisor campos: commissioner, good morning. this is an opportunity for you to make a statement to the rules committee and for us to ask questions, and then we will hear from members of the public. >> for the city of san francisco, for 35 years, retired as a captain with the police department, how many job assignments to many distant stations, narcotics investigations, and various administrative tasks. i was executive director of the department of parking and traffic for four and a half years under mayors brown and jordan. i have served as a member of the entertainment commission for two years and look forward to the possibility of continuing to serve the city through further appointment. supervisor campos: colleagues, and questions?
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and i do have a couple of questions, if i may. let me begin by saying that i'm grateful to anyone who wants to serve the city and county of san francisco. i think that the issue of entertainment is one that is very important, and i think it has a lot of different meanings to different people. as a member of the lgbt community, i can tell you that entertainment plays a very important role in the lives of the community, and just the process of being able to interact with other members of the lgbt community is something that entertainment does. times are different now, and there are more people who are openly gay, but there was a time when that is where you saw other members of the community -- at the club, at the bar. so with that context, i have some concerns about what i see as sort of a trend on the part
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of certain officials in city hall that at times appears to be anti-entertainment. i'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that issue and some of the trends that we have seen. there has been a lot of criticism of the entertainment commission, and some have indicated that at some point, maybe we have a war against fund in san francisco -- a war against fun. we want entertainment venues to be responsible, but it is a fine balance. >> speaking for myself directly, i joined the police department in 1970 and what the foot beat and controls in northern station where pope st. was -- where polk street was the center of the gay community at the time. i worked well with the community and never had a problem. in terms of the entertainment
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commission, i have actually never witnessed any type of resentment towards entertainment aimed at the gay community or, for that matter, any member of san francisco's community. i think what we focus on our clubs had our problems in the community, that the community comes to us and expresses their problems. our first attempt has always been to try to work with the community and the club to resolve those problems. i'm not aware of any effort to single out any group and restrict the fund -- fun. supervisor campos: let me give you an example, and i think it is relevant to your background, given your experience in the police department. there was an incident involving a latino club where you have police officers going in and asking every single person who was in the club -- close to 200 people -- to come out for the purpose of carting people to make sure that no one under age
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was found -- for the purpose of carding people. - standing as they did eventually have one person out of that 180 people who did happen to have his brothers drivers license -- my understanding. it was a difficult thing to catch. for a lot of people, it gave the impression that this was an immigration raid. clearly, we want clubs to be responsible, but we also want to make sure that law enforcement approaches these kinds of matters in a careful, sensitive way that does not undercut their need to protect the public, but at the same time recognizes that some tactics may actually go too far. i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about the relationship between the police department and the entertainment industry in san francisco. >> as you are well aware, we inherited the responsibility of overseeing entertainment from
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the police department, and we work with the police department to that end to this day on various issues. we try to have a good working relationship with various system stations, but in the incident you are referring to, this was not in any way motivated by the entertainment commission, requested by the entertainment commission, and might understanding of the incident was that it was actually -- my understanding of the incident was it was actually brought about by the abc, not the police department, and the police department went in for backup to the abc, but it was strictly a state-driven agency. >> -- supervisor campos: did the entertainment commission hold hearings or do any investigation following the incident? >> we did have a hearing with the members there and the owners of the club and members of the community, and we'd shared all
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the issues. we took, as i can recall, no accident -- no action on the incident, and based on the citations issued by the abc, the owner voluntarily shut his club down temporarily or permanently -- i do not know. i think they may be reopening. supervisor campos: i think it depends on who you ask. and think one of the reasons they shut down was people stopped coming to the club for fear that it was immigration that was reading the club. the story is not that clear-cut. supervisor mar: thank you for your 34 years of service as a police captain. i wanted to ask you about the violence at suide a -- sued and pink diamons and whether you think you have the authority to hold accountable clubs that have incidents of violence -- suede and pink diamonds.
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i know the four mayoral appointees, you are the law- enforcement one, but from your point of view, how could we counter the violence going on in some of the clubs in the city? >> in the biggest thing we could do is thank you for yesterday passing the legislation that gives us the authority to have a firmer grip on clubs that are apparent and non-responsive to our attempts to get them to conform -- i think the biggest thing we could do is thank you for passing the legislation gives us the ability to have a firmer grip on clubs that are apparent. -- that are errant. there is just a few clubs out of control that put a bad name on everything, and now we have the legislation, i have seen a lot of change in the commission in the two years i have been there.
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i think the commission will be very responsive to go after clubs that do not conform to the code of conduct that we want to see in the city. supervisor campos: if i may, just a final question, there have been some discussions on the part of some elected officials about stripping some of the powers and authority away from the entertainment commission. i wonder if you have any thoughts on that. >> at this point, i think that would be premature. the last thing the city needs to do is create another bureaucracy and the costs associated with it. i think meeting with staff and looking at the future of the club, again with the legislation you have brought forward, and the publicity and putting the entertainment commission under the spotlight, i think you are going to see actions done that will serve the city well. i think we are also looking at making the commission, hopefully by the next budget cycle,
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completely cost-effective where we will receive all the revenues necessary to run the commission and do the enforcement from the fees that we charge throughout the city so that we will not have to come to the city for any money in the future. supervisor campos: i do have one final question -- given your background of the police department, i imagine you have a pretty good understanding of the interaction between the police and the entertainment industry. at times, and number of us have felt that the police department has gone too far in terms of its approach at times. in understand that she's -- i understand thatchief gascon has made many efforts to reach out to community. do you feel that at times the police department has gone too far? >> there was one instance, and i do not know the whole background, where ha