of whether the complaint of officer violated police department rules or local, state, or federal laws. if a complaint made by a civilian is sustained by the occ, we forward the report to achieve gascon for further action. she gascon can impose discipline up to 10 days of suspension. the police commission has jurisdiction over cases where the recommended discipline is greater than 10 days of suspension. in addition to disciplinary and policy matters, the office of citizen complaints also provides mediation as an alternative to discipline. last year, we facilitated 63 mediations. this represents 8% of the 812 cases we close last year. the mediation program allows complainant to resolve issues with the accused officer in

person in a dispute resolution format. the goal of mediation is to bring involved parties together in an effort to achieve mutual understanding. we have a partnership with community boards and the san francisco bar association to provide a neutral mediator is for our mediation programs. our mediation can be and has been conducted in languages other than english. participation in the program is voluntary and the complainant and the police officer must agree to mediation. i am proud to report that eligible officer participation in our mediation program last year was over 96%. some of that is due to the facilitation that takes place by the san francisco police officers association. i would like to share a few

statistics with you about the complainants and the complaints we received in 2010. the occ received 854 complaints, a 16% reduction in complaints we receive over 2009. there were 16% less complaints filed in 2010. last year, the occ sustained allegations of neglected duty or misconduct in 9% of the cases we closed. we found proper conduct in 29% of the allegations we investigated, and we found that 3% of the allegations were not true. the largest percentage of delegations we received were for unwarranted action, 39%, followed by conduct reflecting discredit, 23%. allegations of unnecessary force comprised 12% of the

allegations in 2010. in 2010, about 26% of complainants were african- american. caucasian's comprised 31%. 18% declined to state their race. additionally, complaints included asian-americans at 6%, latinos at 6%, native americans and as of the islanders a 2%, and 4% other. the occ is located on the seventh floor of 25 vaness ave. we are easily accessible by public transportation. we receive walk-in complaints from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. we also receive off-hours complaints through an answering service. we receive complaints by e-mail, telephone, mail, and fax. complaint can also be filed that district stations or at 850 bryant st.. those are forwarded to us by the

police department. our speak speak several languages, including cantonese, mandarin, and spanish. for the languages, we obtain interpretation services. that concludes my remarks. if you have questions, the senior investigator, who is in the audience, is here to answer them. thank you for your time and attention. [applause] president mazzucco: thank you. the occ brings credibility to an investigation regarding misconduct with police officers because they are separate agency that works under the police commission. the director has done an excellent job of resolving these matters in a professional manner. she mentioned the mediation program. it is an incredible program. what happens is we hear complaints where an officer was rude to me or the officer did this, they handcuffed me.

i felt i was not treated properly. in this mediation, there will bring the parties in and the officer will explain, for safety reasons, i have no choice but to handcuff you. it is part of the levels of force. i do talk loudly. i am screaming at you. that is what we're trained to do. the person will say, now i understand. they say, officer, i did not like that. i did not feel good about that. it is the training exercise for officers and individuals. we have to give the director credit for this program. it is not just mediation. it is the incredible impact along with the police officers' associations. thank you very much. anything for the director, commissioners? >> thank you. >> yes. president mazzucco: we will move

on to line item 1c. >> 1c is the commission president report and the commissioners reports. president mazzucco: the commission has been dark for two weeks for the holiday season. we did have a meeting the week before christmas. we attended the medal of valor ceremony. several officers received a medal of valor for incredible conduct. several gold medals and several bronze. it was quite the scene. it is being aired on government tv. it is incredible. you would be proud of the work of our officers, how they risked their lives to save others. it is incredible. i want to thank the chief for putting that together. thanks, commissioners, for being there. every commissioner was present. we talked about the bad things they did. these are the good things. i attended a press conference today with the chief regarding statistics.

it is very similar to what you heard today, but more detail. i would like to thank the officers. those numbers are down because there is a more focused approach to policing. officers are going to the hot spots. that has reduced crime significantly. frankly, we are doing a lot more with less due to budgetary constraints. we have lost on many officers this year? >> 150 full-time employment. [inaudible] president mazzucco: we are doing a lot more with less. they're being smart about policing. that credit goes to the command staff, but it goes to the men and women you see behind you who are out on the street. they are the ones -- they are the boots on the ground. they're the inspectors assigned to the station. they are doing a lot more with less and we are proud of their

accomplishments. we are proud of their numbers. under your directive, chief, there is more professionalism. thank you for taking on the issue about the officer-involved shooting and educating the public, as you did yesterday evening, about the split-second decisions officers have to make. you got out ahead of that and i give you credit for transparency. those are the things i have been involved in since the break. i will turn it over to my fellow commissioners. >> i would just urge you -- back to the medal of valor ceremony, if you can watch it, do so. people like to watch the sparks that fly. it really is -- it is for those officers. don't focus so much on who is getting the word, but the things they did to get the award. not a lot of people would do

that. we worked hard to get that televised. for a long time, it wasn't. i will urge you, if it comes on, sit and watch and listen to the stories of what those officers did. they deserve those commendations. >> i have a couple reports. start with the good stuff. right before the break, i met some members of the pal program. it is a program to train young people on activities in the police department. it is great for young people who are excited about learning more about the police department and law enforcement. a number of our law enforcement officers went to the program when they were younger. it was encouraging. applications are coming up pretty soon for the future class of pal young people. i encourage everyone to get the word out there. another thing i wanted to

mention is that for those familiar or not, the lunar new year for number of asian communities is coming up, including chinese and vietnamese. during the celebration, it is also a time when sometimes the not so nice members of the community prey on other members. there will be extortion, asking for money from businesses. the chief is going to be presenting on this and raising awareness on january 19 at 12:00 at the gates of chinatown. the commissioners are welcome and encouraged to attend. i will try my best to attend. in january 20 at the nebraska medical services, i believe the supervisor elect will be there to make the same announcement. i encourage everyone to keep that amount. the last thing i want to report as i attended a community

meeting about the department the chief organized last thursday. it was a meeting over at the bayview area of the day after an officer-involved shooting where there was a vietnamese-chinese person who was mentally ill but was killed. members of the community appreciated the chief coming out the next day and organizing a bilingual forum to allow people to ask questions. we did get good questions. i spoke directly with residents. they were concerned. they have questions about their being more than one incident of mentally ill asian-american residents being shot or harmed or killed by an officer, regardless of whether it was in your out of policy. that was a concern. we will be receptive to hearing those concerns and learning more about it. the president and i will be meeting with the office of citizen complaints in a couple

weeks to discuss strategies we can take and recommend in terms of policy and training regarding mental health. it goes to that concern, regarding these residents. president mazzucco: thank you. anything further? >> i spoke with the commissioners about this. i will be joining the subcommittee. it is one of the most important issues we are facing. president mazzucco: the commissioners said the biggest issue you see is mental health. just walked on union street. you see people sitting on corners talking to themselves. it is out of hand. our officers are the ones dealing with them. the mental health professionals are not on the street. it says men and women of the police department. we're working -- the chief is training the officers on how to deal with the situation. they are not psychologists.

the officers are getting injured. the public is being injured. we really need to look closely. the chief has a group of officers. commissioner hammer is heading to memphis to see how they work their teams. would you like to briefly mention that? >> very briefly, i want to say that the san francisco police department already has what is considered to be one of the best training. police officers deal with people with mental illness. we have over 800 officers who have completed a 40-hour training. by industry standards, that is one of the highest in the percentage of people who go through training. we need to continue to improve the way we do business. we are aware there are other parts of the country where they are trying different models. in the case of memphis, memphis

started in the late-1990's, having a multi disciplinary team that response to certain incidence of mental illness. i looked at that in 2002 when the l.a. system was developed. we want to see where that system is today. the reality is, we have to continue to focus. you can have specialized teams of people who respond, but at 2:00 a.m., the person who will respond will be the first control officer that gets the radio call. we have to remember that no matter how much training we provide, we will never be trained psychologists. we need to give them all their tools. another thing we will be doing is i will come back to the commission to introduce a review of the use of a taser. we will do that the third week of this month or the middle of february.

the san francisco police department is one of only three major cities in this country that do not have the taser. it is not a non-lethal weapon. it is less lethal. sometimes it can be a contributing factor in causing death, especially when you have someone who has a pre-existing cardiac condition. having said that, one of the things we also know is the use of firearms, the likelihood, not surviving the event is much greater than in the very low likelihood that a taser can cause death. we believe that with proper training and protocol, this is a tool that should be in the bag for san francisco police officers. there's no excuse in today's environment for police officers not to have this tool. it is not a toy. it is a weapon. it has to be taken seriously.

there has to be protocols. there has to be proper training. i can tell you that the shooting that occurred yesterday -- very seldom and my unequivocal in this stuff. the taser will not replace the firearm. yesterday was a perfect example of a case where we had an officer approached an individual that was acting violently. he was armed with a large knife. we used to the pepper spray. we know that is generally effective. it did not impact the individual. the officers -- we wound up with one officer being severely injured. he was stabbed seriously in the shoulder. eventually, we try then to beanbag shotgun.

eventually, we wound up engaging in a shooting, as this individual started to throw the knife. we had a video that was provided by a member of the public. we made that available to the media yesterday. we were really struggling. we had a hard time just copying the video from the iphone into one of our computers. we were informed later that what appeared to be -- , one member of the media have better equipment and was able to break it down and in handset. the officer was jumping out of the way. it states what i believe is the obvious. we really need to look at training. we also need to face the reality that there are other tools that

should be provided to our men and women. president mazzucco: thank you, chief. [applause] we will get public comment right after this. >> in the subcommittee we will have, we will involve the department, it will be focused on dealing with mentally ill members of the community. that is a separate issue from tasteers. it is not something you adopt for targeting mentally ill members of the community. i want to clarify that. president mazzucco: anything else? we normally hold public comment until we have had the report from captain mannix. two people want to say something. i do want to take you out of turn. yes? use the microphone. public comment is closed to three minutes.

-- is kept to three minutes. >> you mentioned -- pardon my voice. you were examining memphis, tennessee. isn't that one of those cities that is three cities? las vegas and san francisco have decided not to deploy tasers to officers. if that is the case, how does memphis to deal with mentally ill people? that is my question. >> the answer is yes. [inaudible] the question whether memphis is one of those cities, they're one of the major cities that does not. las vegas does have a taser. we want to see what they are

doing today. i can tell you that i looked in 2002, and when we started to go in the field, which we will do again, we found out that often, the teams that were trained, by the time they got to the scene, events have already taken place. we have to see what they are doing today. there is not just one way to handle these issues. we want to look at what is going on around the country and l.a. county. l.a. county has a similar system. we want to see if it would work for us. the point i was trying to make is you can have greater training. you have to be careful with training. when we spend 40 hours training a police officer, we paid millions of dollars in training per year to develop. there is a balance. we have to make sure that we evaluate training as a business

model. we don't have a -- we don't have an infinite level of resources. we have to remember that, unless we're prepared to spend an inordinate amount of dollars in having trained psychologists able to respond on a 24-hour basis, we will end of still having police officers being the first responder. most of these things are completed in the matter of a few seconds. we have to strike a balance between training and equipment. we have to do what works for us. that is what i'm hoping to do. it is important for the christian know that the -- for the officers to know that the occ suggest other ways of doing business. they will be traveling with us and commissioner hammer. i am telling of the people, you

have to look behind the curtain. ok? you can go almost anywhere and find things that look good on paper. you have to see how they work on the field. i'm asking our officers, you need to jump on the black and white. you have to go for a couple of shifts and see what happens. sometimes, what is on paper and what actually occurs are often not the same. we also have to look at the population of memphis serves. we have to look of the level of mental illness in the city. we have to look at the proportionality of officers to residents. a lot of things come into play. those things will have an impact. what will be the right tool for us? i also want to say this is a continuous progress -- process. what works today should be improved to mark. what we're doing now is a

continuation of how we do business. president mazzucco: thank you, chief. i think we're now ready to move into line item number two. >> captain ann mannix of northern station addresses the commission on police activities in the northern district. >> i want to welcome all of you, commissioners, chief, staff, fellow officers, and members of the community. i am a fourth generation san francisco and a graduate of washington heights. i've been with the department almost 25 years. i can say i have enjoyed every assignment i have had. none more than this, though. i am not the best at this, so bear with me. the no. police district runs quite a distance from markets street to the bay.

we have these diverse communities. i have to think henry for putting this power point presentation together. we have five patrol sectors. we are at our five-car, the marina district. in the back of the room, you have your beat officer. matt works union street as well as chestnut street. he is very busy. in the one-car, we have violence reduction officers working. we have housing unit officers working. they cross over into the two- car and three-car. you have dedicated patrol cars. you have foot beats that run along polk street. we have seven-day coverage for chesnutt and union streets. all the foot beats are seven-day

coverage. facts about the northern district. we are 5.3 square miles. we have a population of over 96,000. we encompass five supervisory districts. sorry to put up the new supervisors before they ended the reign -- [laughter] sorry. anyway, you met mark tonight, the new district two commissioner -- excuse me, supervisor, that covers this area. no. demographic, the district itself is made up -- this is taken from 2010 totals.

this is the city make up. actually, no. demographic makeup. we get into the demographics of our system -- station. back in november of 2009, was appointed captain. one of the many duties i was given was the creation of an advisory board. i had a great time putting it together. a couple members are here tonight. many of you know alan. he is in the audience. sorry. tina is also in the audience. don't be shy. ed is not here from larkin street. we put together representatives from all over the district. we meet once a month. a project that we did complete

-- we see ourselves as educators. what we're doing is we came up with a way to advise people how to reduce victimization, especially toward auto boosting, which affects the whole city. across districts, there is no pattern, really. some districts are more violent- prone than others. this is a crime that occurs again citywide. what we cannot with was -- what we came up with was an education program. i'm hoping the mta will put stickers on signs warning people against leaving valuables in cars. we had a contest from kids in the western and asian community. they made artwork that we could -- western addition community. they made artwork that we could

use as well. this is the makeup of northern station right now. i have the staff, many of which in the back. we have a street crimes unit. we have a plain clothes operation. we have day watch, watch, and might want. day -- watch, night watch, and swing watch. we have a 4:00 p.m. watch, 6:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m. watch. they work 10 hours. those are the hours they start. i'm using military time. sorry. one sergeant, four officers. they wear plain clothes. during 2009, we had one and

eight promoted. we had a reduction. we work with neighboring districts to supplement the loss. we will partner but the park district and to target operations in the tenderloin. it has been good working relationships between the district. this is why. i will explain this to -- know, this is not it. this is the makeup of northern station. there is the ethics breakdown. 105 male officers. ethnic breakdown is here. languages. i will not read it. spanish, italian, basque, polish, cantonese. there is no number assigned to it. these languages