president mazzucco: thank you very much. >> good evening. my name is jeremy miller. over the past come months i have addressed this board, and my words have been critical. i stand by them. however i do not come in such a critical mood to this meeting. i want to thank the commissioners, chief godown, and especially the community and the gentleman from memphis for coming out and taking such a serious look at a very real crisis situation facing our

community. i want to focus on a few points. the resolution at hant hand, crisis intervention training is a necessary component of addressing police interest action with -- interaction with people with mental health. however, there are a few things that really need to be looked at. one in particular, i notice there were sections of it emphasized what to do when interacting with a person that had a blated object and that seemed to leave a huge loophole open. what if it is a blunted object, does that give officers an excuse to shoot at that point? what if it is a gun? so loopholes like this need to be looked seriously at. also, i want to say that i recommend that you check out the

beautiful people out here that work with these communities every day. because these people have resources of their own and have special expertise and should be consulted. >> hi, my name is lydia. i'm a single mom living in the tenderloin. also as a consumer ever mental health -- of mental health services in san francisco, i can tell you these mental health crises are going to increase with the death of 1,000 cuts that has happened to mental health funding over the past few years, and i urge you to adopt this resolution before you, and look more closely and adopt a model like memphis has. i don't believe it will solve all of the problems related to

mental health crisis, but it will certainly be a good start. thank you. >> good evening. flm director for the coalition on mome homelessness. i want to read through the recommendations. a group of us got together shortly after the latest non-lethal shooting of randal duncan. the mental health board, ourselves, the education, conservation, and national association for the mentally ill of san francisco. and what we attempted to do was come with consensus recommendations to you regarding how to address the response to people who were experiencing a psychiatric crises by the police department. we had basically three recommendations. we did not have a chance to look at the rezzluge at the meeting

as a whole, but i think you will see the resolution experience is very much in line with what we are recommending. first we recommended the san francisco police department fully fund the 40-hour crisis intervention training with the training of all officers and dispatchers. however sfpd. i want to know that education, not incarceration depends on, as stated on the funding, that they would like part of that funding to go to a response. part of our conversation was around really the training alone was president going to be enough. that there had to be a look at dispatch with and who was responding to the call. so the second recommendation into the city of san francisco through the police department, create a working group tasked with addressing the dispatch of mental health professionals respond jointly to crisis. this would probably -- possibly

include exchanging dispatch breaux protocol and expanding the capacity of urgent care. and the third is that the san francisco police department investigate the shootings of michael lee, fit eafment wi, and randall douglas. and i have give you a copy of the recommendations. >> hi, my name is sonia mason. i'm from oakland, california, and i have acknowledged a lot of hurt on the homeless here in san francisco.

i think every person who might be homeless, i think don't think they should be shot at in wheelchairs. i think everybody should be treated like a human being. as a human. i can safely say if you looked like george bush's daughter or any of you panels' kids were in the same position, i think you would feel as i do. i am just speaking as a person and a humanist who respects everybody, and everybody should be treated with respect. i recently interviewed some people who were homeless, and they were saying how, you know, everybody takes away from them. they have no homes to go to. they have no place to live in. that is hard. it gets hard on people like

that. and people who are disabled which enables a lot of people to get disabled, for the most part. so i'm saying as a humanist, especially for african-american history month and the honor of dr. martin luther king, i think everybody should be treated equal. even the people with mental disabilities, they should be treated fair. you wouldn't want that to happen to your kids. let's forget about white supremacy and let's start over. thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. my name sl ribbi adi cochran. we have a problem here, and the

problem is we have many mentally ill patients that have been shot or injured. and it behooves the police department to consult with the comperlt which in this case was the medical profession, the psychiatrist, the psychologist. we always learn something new every day. even the police department can start something new by talking to the experts. many police departments in the country have done so. even in israel they have done so. so it would be wise also to to ask people to con sult. >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners.

>> i still don't fully understand how c.i.t. works. what i am happy to see in there rezz is i will have an opportunity to understand and learn how c.i.t. works. what's good in this resolution is that the community remains involved with the development of the crisis intervention model. there efforts have been extremely necessary. if we're going to use a society using policing, this is a good first step. all of you, but especially commissioners -- i hope that this kind of more honest community-minded process, hopefully with a longer timeline that provides the time we need for consensus building will set

the tone for the kind of decisions we see from this commission and at the department in the future. it is a refreshing change. thank you. >> thank you. >> hi. i'm just a mom of a daughter who is metropolitanly ill who resides in san francisco. i have been living here for the last six months with my daughter after her having a psychotic break and have been priffy to using many of the -- privvy using many of the services that san francisco has for mentally ill. all and all they are great. you have services more than many other places, including the time i live in. the reason i'm speaking of tonight, is that anything that could help police officers to coordinate better with all the other agencies would be a good thing.

right now with all your agencies, very few of them talk to each other on a regular basis, and that's a problem. i think the police officers are great. i think that this would help them. i look at homeless and the mentally ill a lot differently before my daughter became mentally ill. and even though she doesn't look like a lot of the homeless mentally ill people on the street, the chronically, you know, just really horrible people that you know, people see, that are dirty and, upping, defecate on the streets and things like that, but those people are people, and they were normal at one time just like all of us, and they deserve that respect.

>> thank you very much. >> good evening. we appreciate you holding this hearing on a topic. i'm concerned by the recent shootings involving individuals with mental health issues. research has shown victims of mental health are more often victims of violence against them. also, when involving law enforcement it is the compassion and tactful show of force that may assist the de-escalation vs. acts of force which escalates a situation. when consumers of mental health services resort to aggressive acts are doing so as a defensive nature against what is per seeved as threatening, fearful,

and due to symptoms. and the way to respond to the situation would need to be different in arriving at a garden variety scene of the crime. the situations have to be flexible. i whole heartedly support intense training of officers in dealing with mental health and those suffering from mental illness, but just doing mass training and expecting the officers to suddenly have equal skills to deal with situations is not the only solution. what is needed is something needed for c.i.t. to develop crisis intervention team. it has been cut and cut over and over. so they can work hand in hand. also identify officers with greatest interests, most amenabl e attitudes and have them be

deployed and be first responders. also i wanted to mention the issue of cultural confidency. when we talk about people with different cultural back grounds, that has to be part of the training as well. [applause] >> i'm elle suchurt. i have two sons who both had psychotic breaks when they were in their teens. i was one of the lucky people who had dr. levin come. i realized a lot of people later did not have a good outcome, and i was haunted by the fact that my son could have been shot

because i called the police. he had chased me with a knife. but we got the knife away from them. i have read that other parents have taken the knife away, but the fact that they had one would have made them seem really dangerous to the police. these are my boys now. they are doing great. a lot of people see people when they are at their worst, but it can be very temporary. these things happen for various reasons. so don't look at that person as hopeless, please. that's one of the things we have to get across, too, because the cynicism is a kind of hopelessness. i want to say, too, how we do things differently. for parents, one of the first

things you learn is, don't say the trouble with you is -- that seems like a simple thing. but that's a habit. who doesn't say the trouble with you is. we just have to unlearn some things, some bad habits and cultivate good ones, and you'll find it helps you in every walk of life. memphis training will only be an enhancement for san francisco. please, please do it, and nami will help you all we can. and i'm also from the army and i'm concerned about our vets coming back. we have to treat them better. [applause] president mazzucco: next speaker. >> hi, i waited all night. i've -- i look this good because i've been to judge zimmerman, golden gate.

we need to talk about intervention. a at the present time friend at mental health was able to help me go get good health. recently i had 108 temperature on cesar chavez' birthday on march. i went to cedars and they said do you want to hurt yourself or killing yourself? i said no. i said, yes, -- they asked if i wanted to hurt anyone else? and i said yes, like my neighbor across the hall abused me. i think they should be possible. call reports on people who have abused you. sometimes they apologize and

you-all get alone long. and you know people have real problems and are doing different things. they don't take it seriously. they allow it to build up on you. i am here to say for the people out there, we need intervention. we learn to live isolated. one lady she hit me in the eye because i didn't give her a joint. i learned at that time, make sure women have cannibus. two months later she pushed her tv out the window. san francisco is known as the number one place where people commit suicide. we want to be part of the intervention with the officers and everything. thank you.

president mazzucco any further public comment? hearing now, it is time for the commissioners. i want to start off by saying this is probably the best presentation this commission has had. we have members of the public defender's office explaining the impact on them. we have heard from members of the mental health profession telling us what we can do better. laweding our officers for the strong work they have done. we have heard from the police officers association, vice president kevin martin, who is an experienced beat officer on the 6th street beat most of the time, if i'm not mistaken. we have full support of everyone in this room, if not everybody. >> and great public comment, too! president mazzucco: and great public comment. so i want to thank commissioner chan and commissioner hammer for

their work. this is an incredible model and this seems like the right thing to do. i only have one question after making that statement. to help dr. marshall out a little bit. what exactly do you do to de-escalate. let's give an example. someone in this room is holding a knife and they are suffering from a mental health issue, what would you say to them, major? >> when an officer is faced with a challenging situation, we want to make sure we are representing body language and verbage that would suggest or indicate that we're there to help the individual. understanding an individual that may be holding a knife may not necessarily mean that that person is wanting to hurt the officer. because of the severity of the illness, it may be perceiving that the officer is trying to

hurt that individual. so understanding that the officer is afforded the opportunity to slow things down, to use slow speech, to even introduce themselves, and to often -- and to offer, asking their names. a culture we call, when we meet someone, you want to say, hi, my name is joe or sam. my name is officer cochran. could you give me your name. it could be as simple as saying, it looks like you are having a really tough time right now. it looks like you may be afraid. i can see that you are upset. so these expressions of emotions is very critical. so you are actually making it one-on-wup. many times in the law

enforcement culture we have to grea correct a lot of our officers when they are talking to citizens. because officers work together as a partner they say we would like for you to do this, or we would like to talk to you, and we say, no, no, no, let's loo -- leave the "we" word alone. let's say "i." i want to talk to you. i would like to hear what your story is about. i want to know what is really troubling you today. many times when you ask our c.i.t. officers, there are mr. deescalation -- there are many deescalation skills. we -- it implies not only die dack tick training -- didactic training. i'm trying to give you a full flavor of what the intensity level is.

one of the things officers often rerp refer back to their verbal skills is, an element of listening. many times people have mental illness, they don't feel like people are listening to them. many times people have mental illness and nobody sees them. oh, yeah we see them with our eyes. but we don't see them as a person. we don't have that opportunity we don't have that opportunity to express, i can see you are really having a bad day. we are trying to slow things down. so the individual that's standing before you with any type of instrument, whether it is a knife or an instrument ever a stick or a delub or something like that, many times it is strongly suggesting this individual is a -- is very afraid. fear is in the midst of crisis. that's why it is a crisis. it is not only the fear of the

individual, it is the fear of the officers, too, and we have to have that understanding. i'm om briefly summarizing. >> that's a good example. i want to thank the mothers in the audience that spoke. commissioner kingsley: major cochran and dr. dupont, thank you for all your time.

over time, have you had an opportunity to look at our 40-hour training that i believe a number of our officers have gone through in the san francisco police department in connection with mental health and mental illness? i guess that's the preliminary question. >> i have seen some of it. if there are symptoms of mental illness, i know it will be within the training. eight hours of interacting with people with mental illness is very, very possible. one of the things we encourage,

and i know your training does, too, we want the officers to talk. it is what we call the human side. how much we're alike. most of the time in that discussion is i want a job. i want a home. this is something we all have in common. i know that's been introduced into your 40-hours or so of training. i'm not sure, but the levels of verbal deescalation skills, when we started we started with four hours of verbal de-escalation and then realized it had to be more than that.

it requires a certain skill level. oftentimes we have law enforcement and co-training. so we have not only mental health issues. so the co-training and techniques. so it is 40 hours. it is very intense. i know your 40-hour question is

also very intense. commissioner kingsley: ok. i understand. there are a number of officers that have gone through that. what could we do to perhaps supplement what they have through the trainer model forward consistently and more quickly. >> that's an excellent question. >> so maybe that's a follow-up. >> we're looking at not just a training. we're saying how does this work together? our focus would be on how do you take that. that would be the short answer to your question. there are two follow-up quest

the interaction of your questions. the interaction of your police and sheriff and whether or not in san francisco have we addressed or coordinated or is there a need to coordinate with the sheriff's department? that is a question out there. >> there are a nu number of issues controlled. our department does not focus on corrections only. our department does not focus on corrections only. >> all right.