uses and star -- strong our biggest challenges, in my view, are at night. in my view, nothing good happens in our parks at 2:00 in the morning. overall, we have been successfully vigilant in our approach to enforcement of illegal campers. it is something which we still struggle with. since july, and golden gate park, we have had two homicides, a stabbing, the bull attack, and a sexual assault. in all of these cases, either the victim or perpetrator was in a camper illegally in the park. what is incidences have caught our attention, we struggle routinely with incidences of the vandalism in the parks. in golden gate park, we had

rosebushes cut, and a golf course destroyed. the cost of more teen vandalism is immense. graffiti, stole an irrigation wire, dumping. we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year cleaning up after bad behavior in our park system at a time when we cannot afford critical services in our facilities. in 1977, we had 135 staff dedicated to maintaining golden gate park. in 1994, we had 99. the golden gate master plan, which was ratified by the planning commission in 1998 recommends 130. today, we have less than 70. we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every year cleaning up after vandalism and illegal dumping.

we currently have 21 budgeted fte's for park staff, which translates to three per department full time. 14 golden gate, one for candlestick, and one for the remaining 222 parks and our system. we are doing the best we can, and even with the tremendous cooperation of the police department, this is not a formula for success. the golden gate master plan includes a chapter on part safety. it underscores the importance of maintaining a safe park and calls for a number of stress -- steps. one of the reasons we are grateful for this hearing today is to contemplate legislation to assist the police department in calling for stiffer penalties for certain crimes. it talks about ensuring the highest possible level of maintenance in our parks. it talks about expanding park

patrol to 24 hours a day, which is something we have done, with limited resources. it talks about a british court nation with san francisco police. i do not think that court nation has ever been stronger. we are not challenged by a lack of cooperation by the san francisco police department to work with us or with our park patrol. it talks about an interagency approach to adapt -- address camping, drug abuse, and other problems in the park. we are out in golden gate park every morning with a combination of service providers, part professionals, and representatives from the police department in a multi-pronged approach to assist illegal campers and to enforce our current code. it talks about involving park community groups. you have captains here today from the park station that can

talk about their community advisory board, and our collective efforts to talk about park safety. it recommends park maintenance staff wear uniforms, something we will be starting in january. it talks about a number of physical improvements and landscape improvements that can be made to improve sightlines and lighting, which in some cap our resources we have been working on. our greatest story for success continues to the activation in our parks. we have a number of projects specifically in golden gate park which we think will improve that. we have improved lighting at the soccer field. we think off the grid, perhaps a new skateboard park on waller is one way to activate community

participation. i want to invite some of my colleague to talk about our operational challenges, some of the things we're doing in golden gate park to ensure a safe environment. >> supervisors, director of operations with rec and parks. i will address the operational aspects of park safety, since all the gardners, custodians, street crew, part control, preparation staff, fall under operations. part safety falls under two categories, a property crime, which is what i will address, and the violent crime, which i will refer to sfpd. property crime then divides into two categories for us, vandalism -- which still addressephil addressed --taggint

irrigation heads, cut wire, stolen metal, and by that i mean plaques off of statues, gutter covers, run over a street light poles, arson, cut trees, stolen plant material, off-road damage. the other larger area of property crimes is illegal dumping. in golden gate park alone, every week we collect 3.3 tons of the illegal dumping, which is principally left there by the illegal campers mentioned previously. on our effort to try to combat this within golden gate park,

our staff presence is the following. we have 69 landscapes that, gardeners, supervisors, open for a street tree crew, 10 custodians, and on average, three patrol park officers working throughout the park. they are our eyes and ears for vandalism. they are the ones ever for the work orders to repair the vandalism. important for us, overwhelmingly, vandalism is discovered by park staff. upon their arriva upon their are morning. the inference is this is happening at night. it is exceptionally rare that we or the public reports of vandalism at a time. although costs are somewhat subjective, it is our estimate that one-third to one-half of the 14,000 structural made its work force order that we receive

annually for all of our part to mitigate vandalism -- basically, one-third of one half of them are due to vandalism. that equates to up to $300,000 worth of annual materials cost and for annual salary, $4.6 million annually throughout the system. golden gate park is roughly one- third of our park system's acreage, so extrapolating from those numbers, it demonstrates golden gate vandalism costs the city anywhere from $1.5 million to $2.2 million annually to mitigate. it is important to point out, the fund that we spend to mitigate been those in our funds that cannot be spent to further improve the parks for all of our park users. the other part of property crime i mentioned was illegal dumping. in golden gate alone, our fees for the weekly three-plus time

to collect his 27,005 under dollars annually. we employ two full-time cleanup crews seven days a week, and this results in saw costs to $377,000 annually. together, the park spends approximately $400,000 annually in the clean-up costs for illegal dumping and other debris brought into the part. in summary, speaking from a property crime perspective, our parks are not unsafe, but in the hours of darkness, our public safety concern is significantly increased due to design and infrastructure issues that do not support nighttime use. to echo with the general manager says, nothing happens in a dark park landscape at night. i now turn the microphone over to richard from

the police department. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good morning. i do not have prepared remarks this morning. i was captain of richmond station, have been involved in the parks for the two years i have been there. ready to answer any questions you might have of our efforts in the park, our relationship with park and wrerec, and maybe 2 tell you that we described park policing as the crown jewel. it is an international icon that draws attention every time something happens there. police want to provide that sense of safety. i also want to say, i think the park is as safe as anywhere in town, but events happened which are part-specific. if you have any questions, i am

glad to answer them. supervisor chu: can you speak quickly more about the partnership with rec and parks, given what they have talked about in terms of the few members of part patrol officers we have at any given time. the fact we have one at golden gate park and in any given time -- what is the relationship that has been developed over years with park stations? >> part station has the east end, richmond station has from conservator drive out west to the beach. we work a lot with the rangers. the best way i can describe it. they are by the station a lot to be briefed on what we know is happening around the park. they bring a particular expertise about issues in the park, and locations.

while i may describe the park in large areas, we can bring it down to hundreds of small grains as to where areas are, policing problems are. every morning as part of the homeless outreach program, rangers need up to go out and offer services to the homeless and cite people for sleeping in the park. that happens every day. i can tell you, the meetings we attend with the ranger are very productive in terms of getting the most out of the assets that we have. we also work together at any of the larger events in the park. there is always a ranger contingent working with us. we are, maybe not great in numbers, but better together. their expertise and our particular resources that we bring. supervisor chu: do the richmond

or park station provide outreach/transportation? >> yes, each car that is on the street, part of their day will necessarily include the park. with the dog mauling an event that we had in july, in richmond, we started when we called operation safe summer, which ran through the end of october. we did traffic enforcement in the park. we did a beat in the park. we have some lead time activities, officers deployed to different sections of the park. the point is, we wanted to send a message out to folks, when they see police cars, horses,

they feel safer. so we moved those assets all run the park. generally, it is a patrol area of our district and park district. supervisor chu: what i am hearing is we have patrol, but that is not adequate. we have only one at any given time. meanwhile, from what you are saying, you do regular patrols through golden gate park. what is the nature of the manpower, during the day, at night time, how would you describe that? >> it changes depending on what is going on, if there is another mission that is calling officers away. supervisor chu: in a typical day. >> at the level of one park

ranger, you are basically providing for a response, usually, keys to get into an alarm, some sort of information and at the officer's name. the question for me, at any time, is what is the mission? if your mission is to prevent vandalism, crime, you have to staff for that. certainly, the rangers are not staffed to do that kind of work in the park. you are hard-pressed to get me to say that we do not have enough to do the job, because there is always more we can do, and that can change in a moment when officers are pulled away. it also raises the ability for us to say -- in the vandalism that happened in the middle of the night at the golden gate golf course.

it was a secluded area. there were some folks that did a lot of damage there. the tree cuttings that have happened, a radio car make go by, but you have to go by at exactly the right time to stop something like that. i do not know if i am answering your question. supervisor chu: do you have any statistics gathered from richmond and parked stations about the level of crime we have seen in golden gate park? the number of property crimes, violent crimes that have occurred. do you have those numbers? if you do, do you have them over time? are we seeing a trend, increasing, decreasing? >> if i came here without numbers, i would be very

unprepared. we use numbers a lot. our deployments are based on numbers. i can come back to you with the year-over-year trend analysis. i can tell you some numbers this year to get a sense of what we're doing. 1154 calls for service in the park. that is the full range. some result in reports, some are serious, some are minor. of those calls, 250 were a- priority emergencies. in terms of crime, we have park1 and 2 crimes, and -- part one and part two crimes. part one tends to veer more serious. -- tends to be your more serious crimes.

492 police reports taken in golden gate park year to date. our problems in the park are a lot of auto break-ins. -- i will just focus on part 1. 160 or auto break-ins. 15 assaults. 15 auto thefts. 11 robberies. there were two homicides in the park and in arson. it raises an issue that i would like to weigh in on. many of the folks that we encounter in the park are not necessarily the one that would be calling the police asking for help. our homeless out -- officers -- personally, when i have been out with them -- during the summer, there was a lot of victimization of the homeless folks where they are assaulted and robbed for small amounts that do not get reported.

in other areas of the park, there are other things happening that are not reported to us. in some ways, you see 160 auto boost things, but how many were there really? how many robbery's? one morning i was out and i encountered two individuals who had been assaulted since hitting the streets in the previous week. that was in the summer when we have a lot of out of town homeless at come to the city to hang out. they tend to go as the winter sets in. then we have our long term homeless issues in the park. i hope that is responsive. i am concerned that there are folks who are not able to reach out to appear before a lack of a better term, they are off the grid in terms of connectivity.

supervisor chu: you have given us a breakdown of the part 1, part two crimes. 213, 279. obviously, we would love that to be zero. is there a certain level that we should be at, is this a high amount of part one that we should be expecting? how do we judge this number? >> we should have 0. supervisor chu: that is something that we all hope. but how do we put that in context? >> to say what number it should be would have tbe, i would haven time. part of it is, with the arrival of chief gascon, our i.t. support has grown tremendously,

but we will be doing work to get you some numbers. let me say this. no one likes to hear of a single robbery. the question is, how safe do people feel? when a crime happened in golden gate park, it rattles people. the fact that our two -- three beds of roses were aggressively vandalized in july -- it was an international event. whereas a serious street assault with terrible injuries are terribly net -- barely noticed when it happens just outside the park a few days later. i think the intensity of the affect on folks in our city is a lot higher when it happens in the park. probably, too, the notion of

crime and a part is something that leads people disturbed. that is my concern, talking to folks in our community. any event in the park is a big deal. supervisor chu: just some last questions about what you have observed. could you talk about, given the locations of -- i know tracking where the crimes happen is very important to chief gascon. in terms of location where part 1, part 2 is occurring, the time of day -- do you have information that you can provide us? >> i can give you my opinion based on the statistics. most of the crimes occur in the central park ut of the park.

our reporting areas are quite large in the park. basically, the park is broken up into three areas in terms of capturing the data. copper around albert light, park station, you have drug activity, warrant arrests, robberies. the homicide was at the tennis courts which is sort of the next area out from that in your area. then you come to the auto break- ins which have been a long martin luther king, bowling green drive. that area west of there. then it is a collection around the park. certainly, more during the daytime and early evening, but these are reported crimes, mind you. the outer part contents to be rather quiet, probably because there are fewer people out there

as it gets later. as it gets to the evening, there are not as many people in the park, visitors, tourists. it is interesting, there was a bluegrass concert. there were hundreds of thousands of people gathering, and you wonder, when and how are they going to get home? supervisor chu: given the patterns of what you have seen, what do you think about the partnership with iraq and part? have you worked with them to put up signs perhaps that warn folks not to leave valuable behins be what kind of things have you been doing with rec and parks? >> when you go to the website

of, let's say, the academy of sciences, you will see a letter there thafrom may that it encouu to keep the interior of your car and the -- from me that encourages you to keep interior of your car empty. there are plenty of bushes that grow low and block the view from the street. i know rec and parks are strapped, but they're working with us tothin those areas out. creating a more open feeling in certain areas of the park. that has been helpful.

we all get together with park and wrrec upper management on how to solve these crimes. lighting, i have not weighed in a lot on that issue. my law enforcement experience is much more about preventing crime by environmental design than an urban setting. while i might be good with buildings, my general idea of where things should be lit -- park and rec has a lot of good ideas. when you walk along certain streets in the park and you cannot see 5 feet into the bushes -- and i can tell you,

the recent high-profile arrest out of the beach on friday -- people were camping just 10 feet off of the path but there was no way that you could see back there. i had to climb a tree to see. there are a lot of areas like that. maintaining those areas maintains a sense of safety, and it also prevents the this criminal element from finding comfortable places where people cannot find them. supervisor chu: for the recreation and parks department -- thank you. supervisor avalos: a lot of the same question that i would have asked. i think you covered it, thank you. supervisor chu: for the recreation and parks department, could you speak about the options for lighting some areas,

where you think there might be ways to assist with the police department as they are doing their patrol? >> i think most of our drives are lit. the park is 1,017 acres, and by design, has elements that are intended to be more open, more urban, institutional areas of the park, which, by design, are intended to be urban forest. so it kind of depends on what area of the part you're talking about. i do think there is a strong [no audio] with the captains of both of the stations in particular. we talked about environmental

design. lighting is also a capital issue. our ability to actually redesign the part is more of a complicated design challenge. from a maintenance standpoint, i think it is our responsibility to make sure where we have lighting in the park, that it is functional and working. supervisor chu: in terms of the western end of golden gate park, one of the main issues we have heard from residents is people walk through golden gate park different times of day, and sometimes they see things that occur there. can you speak to what the response has been, when you are doing to make sure parks are used as parks? >> i cannot emphasize enough the importance and seriousness to