have functioned as a coordinating role for the city. over all, we administer five federal and three state grants for the city and county to support a number of different functions throughout the city. most notably, a reentry social worker position, support for a social worker to support children of incarcerated parents have the public defender's office, several adult probation officers, shares, deputy positions. we have worked with the juvenile probation department and the department of public health to leverage and augmon our portfolio of community-based partners. we administered approximately 63 grants to community-based organizations, totaling $12 million. we currently participate on the

reentry council and a couple of the subcommittees. i just want to thank once again the supervisor for formalizing our relationship with the reentry council. back to the point of the time line and prioritization. please note, dcyf prioritizes the work of the reentry council and the work of public safety in general, and will do all we can to ensure our services continue. and we will also do all we can to insure the timeline that the council sets forth for us will be met. not only because we want to meet, but because we all work together to meet it. thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you, director. any other city departments want to speak to this? then we will open up for public comment. >> my name is laura anderson, on behalf of the district's attorney's office. i just want to quickly support

our support for the reentry council generally and for the legislation and for the report that was done. we have seen a lot of progress and 3 entry council was formed over the past five years. the annual report in front of you is an example of the kind of reform we have seen. it has extensive recommendations that need to be taken seriously. it was conducted through an inclusive process that included community representation as well as city representation. for that reason, we are excited to work with the city department to implement these recommendations. at the district attorney's office, we consider reentry it for public safety issue. to that end, we have staff counsel, contributed staff to the council meetings, will continue to do that, we have corralled support, federal dollars for address a reentry, and we will continue to do that as well. we are very excited to be a part of this. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you.

good to see you. we will open this up for public comment on both the hearing and the modifications to the reentry council itself. >> my apologies. i just wanted to ask supervisor mirkarimi if there could be a couple of additional amendments that could be made to the amendment -- ordinance? supervisor mirkarimi: we have amendments here before us. are there two more than these? >> no, i just wanted to be sure. it was not in the printed record. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, before us is pretty self-explanatory on a modification to the reentry council, which has come a long way in a short print of time.

two very the nine amendments that are before you, gan and i. i would be happy to entertain a motion to accept the amendments. supervisor campos: so moved. supervisor mirkarimi: if it is ok, we will file a hearing on item six. item seven, if we can accept as amended. supervisor campos: so moved. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. we will accept that. i just want to thank everybody on their fantastic work on the reentry council, city agencies, and to the community-based organizations who have been absolutely steadfast in their ability to help provide what is a crucial diagnostic that had not existed in san francisco until just a few years ago. thank you to the sheriff's office, district attorney's office, public defender, district attorney, dcyf, and the

rest of the city family for being here. madam clerk, we will now move onto the next hearing please. item eight. >>supervisor mirkarimi: i am sorry. item five. >> item 5. ordinance amending the san francisco administrative code section 2 8.85 to end the city administrator as a member of the justice tracking information system committee governance council and to designate the city administrator as the chair of the council. supervisor mirkarimi: who would like to speak to that? >> good afternoon, supervisors mirkarimi, campos, cohen. i'm with the city administrator's office. we were asked by the mayor to assume responsibility with the

administration of the justice project which had been responsibility of the mayor's office of criminal justice. the city administrator, now merely and i, continue to conduct due diligence, interviewing each department representative, reviewing the extensive documentation of the project, lowering the status of each case management system, speaking with the department and technology, and concluded that a transfer of authority would be beneficial to the project. so at the january meeting, the justice governance council approved the transfer unanimously. today, i am seeking your approval of the required amendment to the administrative code and then have to answer any questions you may have. supervisor mirkarimi: supervisor campos? supervisor campos: thank you for being here today. the first question that comes to mind is why the need for this change? >> could the governor's council come up?

thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. eileen hurst from the sheriff's department. i am speaking today in my capacity as the co-chair of the just discovered it's council. as originally placed in the administrative code, the executive sponsor of the justice project was to be the mayor's office on criminal justice. at the time the decision was made, that office was staffed with people that they could dedicate to just this project, including budget staff, project management, you name it. in the ensuing years, staffing at that office has been greatly reduced, and at this point, there is one person there. it simply does not have the resources to do the

administration of the project as it needs to be done. so my understanding is that then-mayor newsom asked then- chief administrative officer ed lee to look at taking over the project. supervisor campos: what i would say is i have every confidence in the city administrator's office being able to effectively play this role. i think it makes a lot of sense because of the abilities that are there to make that change. the issue for me is not so much what happens here, but where does that leave us in terms of what the mayor's office of criminal justice actually does? if they are not doing the coordination of these kinds of projects, then i do not understand what their function is, at this point. but that is a separate and larger issue.

supervisor mirkarimi: we could to calendar that item. supervisor campos: to the extent that maybe this signals the elimination of that position -- i can see that as well. maybe that is the direction the mayor's office is going. i think that there is reasoning behind that, if that is the case. i was just wondering what that meant in terms of what this office and actually does. but i do think that the city administrator's office can definitely play this function and play it well. thank you. >> we agree. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. we appreciate it. any public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. i wholeheartedly support this. i agree we should ask of the mayor's office on the question -- but separate of that, this

issue needs to be addressed. putting justice undercao makes sense. can we take is that objection? very good, so moved. madam clerk, let's return to the hearing itself. item eight. >> item 8. hearing to receive a report on the status of the san francisco police department training programs with respect to crisis calls involving people with psychiatric disabilities. supervisor mirkarimi: very good. do we have commissioners hammeror chan please? -- hammer or chan please? >> supervisors, thank you for having us here today. i'm a member of the san francisco police commission. i am here to report on what the commission did last week, which

is unanimously adopt a resolution that deals with mental health crisis calls. i am happy to explain that resolution to you. i also have hard copies i would like to give to you. the police commission formed a subcommittee over the past couple of months as a result of a retreat we had where we voted on our priorities. our number-one priority was developing a better plan to respond to mental health crisis calls. the subcommittee is made up of commissioner jim hammer, president thomas moser go, and myself. we met with the police department, the office of citizen complaints, and with a number of mental health stakeholders in the community to talk about the different models we can adopt to deal with mental health crisis calls, to respond effectively and safely as

possible. what we came up with, after the department and occ visited memphis and los angeles is something called the memphis model. i will explain what that is, and i am happy to answer your questions. i also want to make sure that we think chief godown, the mental health stakeholders, and the department of public health, the mental health board, and the coalition on homelessness. i am sure i am leaving out a few amazing people that helped in this effort. in particular, and joyce hicks from the -- going into the model, the commission finance the about the last week, it is called the crisis intervention teams. it is an innovative first responder model of police-based police-based intervention with police and attkisson partnerships.

developed by the memphis police department in 1988, the memphis model is recognized as the best breakfast by the u.s. department of justice and also by the u.s. department of health and human services. in addition to the partnership among law enforcement, mental health providers, and community advocates, the memphis model relies on specially trained cit officers, while continuing their duty as regular officers in their district, there also dispatched as first responders to mental health calls. a good parallel would be the swat team, gang task force. this is a particular, specialized unit to deal with mental health crisis because it is a special live population with its own needs and requires training and planning to address these needs. it makes perfect sense to the commission and department why you need specialized unit, especially in san francisco where we have some of the highest volumes of mental health crisis calls compared to other cities in the country.

central to this model is an understanding that individual of mental illness are a unique population and deserve special care. officers applied to be a cit officer to enter this elite unit. they are selected based on their background, supervisor recommendations, and skills, to ensure they are a good fit for this program. cit unit will be brief and problems of with mental health stakeholders who are going to and have formed a working group. mental health cynical others, cit team, coordinator, and the department coordinator who had been on thecit units as well as the office of consumer complaints, will come together to create the programs for this model. they will be brief us as to how the cit unit is working. and they will work together to advocate for more resources for the mental health community over

all. that is a very quick the brief. i am happy to answer questions. i should also say the architects of the memphis model, sam cochrane and randy dupont, did fly to san francisco to explain this model to us and answer our questions. they testified last wednesday in detail about this program and they were amazing in guiding us along the way. supervisor mirkarimi: i just want to extend -- i can say this safely for all of us -- that was an impressive hearing. i watched it. i thought the work that you and commissioner dejesus and hammer put into that, i really just made the police commission shine. i very much appreciate the effort that led up to it and the result coming from it. >> thank you.

president thomas mazzucco was also agreed to build the bridge between the public and the mental health stakeholders. it was great to see the mental- health community come together and agree we need this reform. supervisor mirkarimi: leading up to that, a number of us elected expressed concern about what we heard a couple of months ago about the elimination, series reduction of mental health training for the primary responders of the police department, related to these in gauging the people with mental health needs. when they are confronted with someone with a mental health crisis. so you put the police in a defensive position for those few months. they certainly have to defend their position to say why they wanted to reduce the services. but the hearing itself turned it around a little bit. they realized you are also

speaking of -- the police department realized the things you are speaking of now. it forged this in a partisan direction, and it is a considerable shift. >> your analysis of the way the conversation shifted is insightful. sitting on the police commission, having multiple discussions -- there was tensions -- people from the community, and the commission upset about training, why we were not told. it was not a very productive discussion. when the subcommittee thought about this, we thought, let's not have a debate versus 10 or 20 hours of training. we need to have a real discussion and not reach to the community about how you can translate that training to the ground. when officers trained in this area and are called to a situation where someone has a mental illness, that they use

that training, as the members from memphis said, they need to walk out of training into something. if they walk out into nothing, no deployment plan, the training is wasted. it is important that we make use of the amazing trading at our stakeholders have put together on an everyday basis. supervisor mirkarimi: related to the hearing will just add on the state of reentry, the repeat offender population in san francisco come as supervisor cohen and others have brought up, there are specialized needs of the population. sometimes, those needs are substance abuse, sometimes they are mental health. sometimes affiliated with other needs in particular. this is not just a matter for the police department, even though they are the first responders in this public safety needs, but it is for all these

other departments, city agencies involved in this question. yet, we are still trying to get a better handle on how that response is going to be applied and applied effectively. not expecting the police to do it all themselves. >> that is why the working group i discussed is in this resolution. the first few paragraphs talks about the formation of this working group where you have a police department representative, cit coordinator, office of citizen complaints, and other stakeholders. our first meeting is tomorrow at 2:00 at the police department. the chief will be talking about the coordinator position. that working group is what drives this program. as the memphis model describes, the cit model is not a police program but a community program. it is to better communication that there will be better attention and increased

resources paid to this area. supervisor mirkarimi: what is wrong with any of the memphis cit model? is there anything that you do not think fits well with san francisco? instead of just completing it, what needs to be tailored to san francisco? >> the memphis model has been around since 1988. i should tell you, other members are amazing. they went from 122 shootings in a year to 15 to 20. the results speak well for how successful the model is. in san francisco, our mental health system -- we need more communication. our dispatch, there is quite a bit of work to make sure that e911 is trained and they know to ask for a cit-trained officer.

there is quite a bit of work in that area. i have tried to improve the dispatch part with language access, but there have been challenges. i will be for the working group to work through, to build a better process of communication so that 911 dispatchers know and ask for these officers. supervisor mirkarimi: supervisor cohen? supervisor cohen: thank you for your work. i am pleased to see this model and look for to its implementation. who is going to be doing the training? >> great question. it will be the cit coordinator in partnership with a mental health stakeholders. we researched their academic institutions and hospitals and asked for professionals from those hospitals and academic institutions to donate their time. that is part of the reason why

this is a community program. people are donating their time to provide this training. we already have existing training. rather than starting from scratch, we would see this as additional components to add to it. supervisor cohen: so we are to have the experts from memphis to come? >> the cit coordinator would likely go to memphis. i think we sent three members to go to memphis before we adopt the program. now that we have adopted it, memphis has invited us to come back, to bring our cit coordinator, mental health stakeholders, to get more intensive training. that group would then come together and revamp and revise their training and find folks who are professionals who are willing to give their time to training. and it would be 20% to 25% of

the permit would be trained intensively in this cit training. then there would be a basic training for all officers, about 16 hours. so you have a special unit that gets that training, and those that they are being deployed as first responders, as well as a basic level of understanding with all officers. supervisor mirkarimi: supervisor campos. supervisor campos: thank you, commissioner, for being here. i also want to thank hillary ronin from my staff for helping to monitor what has been going on with this issue. i want to reiterate what supervisor mirkarimi indicated about the work that so many commissioners did on this important item. certainly, commissioner hammer, president mazzucco, but i also want to thank you, commissioner, and commissioner dejesus because

i know you have put a lot of time and energy into this. first of all, i i think it is especially important that before dealing with the issue of teasers, that the police commission chose to grapple with this issue. i think that there is, to some extent, a connection, but that there is, in my view, not a full understanding of how important the mental health piece is, and i think that having a hearing on this before that was a very this -- important discussion on cases was an important statement, and i'm proud of the fact that that statement was made. >> that was a discussion amongst the commission because our first meeting of the year was when the case your discussion was calendar -- when the taser discussion was calendared.

so i'm really glad that we reorganized the way we discussed it at first focused on the mental health issue. supervisor campos: a lot of credit has to be given to you for raising that issue and also to the president who ultimately controls the agenda, and for his willingness to listen and be responsive. one of the things i thought was an unfortunate as the issue of mental health was juxtaposed to the issue of tasers was the statement by former chief gascon where the issue happen in the tragedy happened where there were some mental health issues involved and pointing to that as a justification, in my view, without fully knowing exactly what transpired in that incident and whether or not it was prudent -- proven with any

certainty that one tool or another would have prevented the tragedy. so i think that we have to be very careful about how we talk about mental health, how we talk about tasers, and i think that the commission needs to be given credit for that. with respect to the message model, i wonder, commissioner, the extent to which this remarkable outcome of of raising this very successful model will shape what happens on the discussion of tasers. as i understand the memphis model, in memphis, tasers are not used. i'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that. >> thank you for highlighting that. it was the president decided to do that, and i appreciate that he did because it led to a healthier discussion. the commission does have an

agenda item scheduled for next wednesday at 5:30 at city hall, room 400, regarding the taser discussion. i assume it will be a very lively discussion amongst everybody, and i think it is interesting that memphis does not have tasers. they specifically chose not to because they realized that the effectiveness rate was not high. they did qualify that it was based on their review a while ago because they started implementing them at the memphis small they while ago. instead, they had a different intermediate device they use, a rubber bullet gun, and they said they rarely actually pull the trigger. i think they are just pulling it out to scare folks. in general, their number one way of responding to a mental health

crisis is 3 d escalation techniques that are a lot more successful than any type of weapon. these techniques are often the opposite of what the charter might be used to, so instead of raising your voice and moving in, you lower your voice and move out. you try to buy more time rather than shorten the incident, so those are techniques i think we should discuss, coming up with an effective way of dealing with these intermediate situations compared to other types of devices. supervisor campos: what i would say on this issue is that i think in respect of of where we are on tasers, whether one supports it not, i hope we have as open a dialogue on the issue and process, that it is as inclusive as possible because i did think that whether you think that they should be used or not,

i think if you're going to use them in the end, that is a position where there has to be as much community by as possible. i do think that trying to understand what is happening or not happening in other jurisdictions is really important. to the extent that here we are, saying that we embrace the best practices that memphis has inc., i do think that's we also look at those practices in the context of some of these things, including tasters -- including tasers. i think it is a positive sign, what i have seen, and i hope the dialogue is as robust as possible. i hope also to include members of the board of supervisors and the public safety committee, certainly, to the extent that th